Grand View Resort

The Grand View in its heyday.

Inspired by the beautiful view from a hillside in Moodus, Connecticut and situated not far from the broad Connecticut River, in 1946 the Pivnick family envisioned a vacation place where families could get away from their everyday city life. Here would be a place where families could come to enjoy the fresh air and relaxing atmosphere of the countryside.  At this time extended families spent their entire summer in the country with the men commuting back and forth as necessary for work back in the city.

The Pivnick’s vision ultimately became “The Grand View Resort and Day Camp” after the family built a hotel, playhouse, cottages and an Olympic sized swimming pool on the property.  For the next 30 years, city folks flocked to the Moodus countryside to this resort and others as more and more similar resorts were built along the road from the town of Moodus to where the Grand View Resort started the trend.  The Grand View’s playhouse with a stage and dance floor brought entertainers and dancing to delight its summer guests.

The original Olympic sized pool at the top of the hill on the property.

Sadly by 1975 air travel, cruises and RV camping became more affordable and the resorts in Moodus became a thing of the past.  Soon after the resort closed it became the home of The Torah Institute, a Jewish heritage learning center and retreat. They enjoyed summers here for about 20 years more until about 1996.  Then for a short time the resort became a basketball camp for city kids but this too ultimately ceased to exist.

Then with no one caring for the once happy, full of life resort, things soon turned into a sad state of disrepair.  Vandals and trespassers began stealing items from the now vacant buildings along with squatters who moved in destroying the property as they occupied the top floor of the hotel building and doing drugs.  Ultimately the property was boarded up completely to remove the vagrants.  Sadly, soon the old hotel will be torn down but it is now beyond repair.  Its life will go on in salvaged doors, windows, mirrors and floor boards which are being used in refurbishing the original cabins, the new bathrooms and the playhouse.

The hotel today.

Finally last October the new owners took over.  Don and Val have lived across the street from Grand View for 45 years seeing it at it's best and it's worst. Remembering the Grand View at its best, they began working hard to bring the happy times back. They are restoring what they can and adding camp sites, modern facilities and safe, fun activities for new families to enjoy the camping experience.  Over a cup of coffee, Val at the age of 71 says it is a labor of love that she and her husband have taken on with this massive project.  

The restored playhouse with the stage in the background and beautiful wood floors.

Then we go outside and climb to the crown of the hill that comprises this property to see the “grand view” that inspired the name of this place.  Indeed, there is a grand view in front of us over the treed landscape below.  Behind us, hills roll away in gentle green swells in the opposite direction-a beautiful golf course owned by others who created it on the grounds of another former resort.

The view of the hotel from the former location of the pool at the top of the hill looking left.

Looking to the right toward Val's current home and the hayfields between where the star gazers sat.

Val sweeps her arm in an arc in front of her laying out the dreams she has for her land before us in loving terms mingled with stories of her own memories of this place.  Her husband has mowed hay on the field that drops off to our right toward the trees for years for her horses.  Though now filled beside us in the past few days, Val describes the Olympic size, ten foot deep pool that existed here in the resort’s heyday.  She likens the resort’s playhouse down the hill to our left to the story of “Dirty Dancing” and she inspires me to watch the movie again to put the images of dancers onto Grand View’s dance floor.  Later as we walk across the long dance floor toward the stage, Val shares a photo and the story of her recent anniversary celebrated here as dancers swept across the floor of the playhouse once again.  Val plans to stress the times and fun of the past as her restored cabins and camping sites fill with today’s visitors.

The golf course beyond the hill at the top of the property.

Last she relates the story of how recently astronomers seeking dark skies and brilliant stars came to point their telescopes skyward here.  Sitting in a circle at the crest of the hill well into the night on blankets, a whole group of new adventurers gazed upward like so many of those who preceded them on this hill marveling at what nature has to offer to those lucky enough to pass this way then and now.