The trail to Plattekill Falls is a half-mile, 100-ft descent from The Red Cabin, a cabin painted bright red on Platte Clove Road. Platte Clove, a deep valley located in the Catskill Mountains, can be seen from a viewpoint about half-way down the trail.

Platte Clove and Plattekill Falls drew the eyes of early American painters sailing the Hudson River and then hiking the mountains upstate. Having visited Platte Clove and the ruggedness of the surrounding areas, Thomas Cole, a 19th-century English-American painter, founded the Hudson River School, a movement that produced paintings reflecting themes in the mind of every frontiers -man and -woman of the time: discovery, exploration, and settlement.

The movement continues today. The Red Cabin hosts jury-selected artists in various disciplines every summer for week-long residencies.

The Red Cabin in the woods brightly visible from the road should serve as marker that, around here, wonders gouged by Nature over geologic time and that gained the admiration of artists past and present are literally just around the bend.