Hay Fever Resorts: When the Only Cure Was a Train Ticket

Picture a well-off Bostonian in the 1870s, packing a trunk in early August. He is not going on holiday, exactly. He is fleeing. For a few weeks every year, his eyes stream, his nose runs, and he sneezes in fits he cannot control — and the only remedy his doctor can offer is geography. So he boards a train north, toward a string of mountain towns that had become famous for a peculiar kind of hospitality: hay fever resorts, refuges whose entire selling point was air that did not make their guests miserable.

These were hay fever resorts in the most literal sense — hotels, boarding houses, and whole villages that marketed themselves to sufferers of what we now call seasonal allergic rhinitis. They flourished for roughly half a century, and they tell a revealing story about how people coped with pollen before anyone could count it.

Key takeaways

• Hay fever resorts flourished for roughly half a century, marketing mountain and seaside air to sufferers of seasonal allergic rhinitis.
• Bethlehem, New Hampshire, was the movement's capital: the U.S. Hay Fever Association was founded there on 15 September 1874 and kept meeting there for the next fifty years.
• The refuges worked because they escaped ragweed, which barely grows at elevation in the northern mountains, while sea breezes dilute pollen at the coasts and late frosts shorten the season.
• Refuge towns went to remarkable lengths for their guests, oiling streets and walks to keep dust down and pulling ragweed and goldenrod from roadsides before the season's guests arrived.
• The refuge map split by season: Gulf Coast towns were reported to relieve the spring (vernal) form, while the fall (autumnal) form sent sufferers north and uphill.

Why Hay Fever Resorts Existed at All

The resorts existed because medicine, for most of the 19th century, had almost nothing else. Hay fever had been formally described only in 1819, and its cause was still argued over — a story we tell in full in how hay fever got its name. One physician who advanced things was Harvard's Morrill Wyman, who studied his own "autumnal catarrh" and published Autumnal Catarrh in 1872. Wyman could not fully explain the disease's origin, but as historian Gregg Mitman recounts in his history of hay fever in America, Wyman's study of its natural history had presented a remedy offering complete relief: "removal to a noncatarrhal region."

That was the whole prescription. No counts, no forecasts, no antihistamines — antihistamines were still more than half a century away. If your air at home attacked you every August, you left that air. Word of mouth did the rest: certain mountain valleys and seaside towns acquired reputations, season by season, as places where the sneezing simply stopped. Hotels learned to cater to the trade, and a seasonal migration of the affluent and the desperate began. It was, unavoidably, a rich person's remedy — it required the price of a railroad ticket and weeks away from work — and contemporaries knew it.

Bethlehem, New Hampshire: The Capital of the Hay Fever Resorts

The most famous address in this world was Bethlehem, a small town in New Hampshire's White Mountains. Bethlehem's high elevation, cool air, and distance from the ragweed-choked lowlands made it a favourite, and its grand hotels filled each late summer with guests who arrived sneezing and, often, stopped within days.

Bethlehem was more than a resort; it was the movement's headquarters. On 15 September 1874, hay fever sufferers gathered there to establish the U.S. Hay Fever Association, and the association kept meeting in Bethlehem for the next fifty years. As its retiring president Samuel Lockwood later reflected — in the line Mitman's history preserves — hay fever was "the only one which has crystallized into an organic companionship" among all the maladies of men. The association swapped intelligence the way sufferers still do: which towns were safe, which weeks were worst, which routes to take.

The medical establishment took the refuge map seriously. A 1917 listing of hay fever resorts published in JAMA — compiled with help from state boards of health so that physicians could direct patients to the nearest refuge — reported that "Bethlehem, located in the White Mountains, has long been a favorite resort for hayfever sufferers," and named neighbouring Bretton Woods, Jefferson, Fabyans, and Dixville Notch as resorts too. You can read the era's own geography of relief in the archived JAMA resort listings. Bethlehem's season also left a lasting human mark: in the 1920s the Hebrew Hay Fever Relief Association organised there, and many of its families settled permanently — a legacy still visible in the town today.

Rival Refuges and the Search for "Pollenless" Air

Bethlehem had competitors. The Adirondacks built their own hay fever trade; Melvil Dewey — the librarian who devised the Dewey Decimal System — arrived there in 1895 seeking relief, found it, and built the famous Lake Placid Club, later hosting association meetings and hoping to certify the place a pollen-free paradise. To earn that status, refuge towns went to remarkable lengths: streets and walks were oiled to keep dust down, and ragweed and goldenrod were pulled from roadsides before the season's guests arrived. It was municipal pollen control, decades before pollen had been properly indicted as the culprit.

What were these towns actually escaping? Mostly ragweed. Ragweed barely grows at elevation in the northern mountains, sea breezes dilute pollen at the coasts, and late frosts shorten the season — so the refuge map was, without anyone knowing it, a rough map of low ragweed exposure. The sufferers were doing exposure science by feel: they could not measure the air, so they voted with their feet and kept meticulous collective notes on where breathing was easy.

The Wider Refuge Map: Two Seasons, Two Directions

Bethlehem was the capital, but the refuge map was national, and the JAMA listings show how carefully it was drawn. The association and the physicians who advised it distinguished between the vernal (spring) and autumnal (fall) forms of the disease, and the safe geography differed by form. The 1917 resort list reported Gulf Coast towns — Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis in Mississippi among them — as affording relief in the spring form, while the fall form sent sufferers north and uphill. Duluth, on Lake Superior, was "favorably reported." Fire Island, the barrier strip south of Long Island, earned the more cautious verdict of "partial relief." The Adirondacks were listed with their highest point noted, as if altitude itself were part of the prescription.

That altitude question dogged the era. Mountain air clearly helped many fall sufferers — less because of thin air than because ragweed thins out with elevation and frost arrives early — yet physicians of the day debated whether height alone protected anyone, and the JAMA compilers printed the caution alongside the listings. What nobody debated was the lived experience the listings codified: place and week determined symptoms, and a sufferer with the means and the knowledge could simply not be there for the worst of it. The refuges also ran on a strict calendar discipline that modern readers will recognise. Guests did not book "the summer"; they booked the exact weeks their home air turned hostile, arriving just before the expected onset and staying past the expected end. It was itinerary planning around a pollen forecast that existed only as collective memory — last year's misery, dated and shared. The association's annual meetings were, in effect, forecast conferences, where the previous season's evidence was pooled and the next season's escapes were planned.

What Replaced the Refuge

The refuge era faded as the science arrived. Pollen was identified as the trigger, counting stations began quantifying it in the 20th century, and medicines eventually made the August exile optional rather than compulsory. The grand hotels declined with the automobile age, and Bethlehem's hay fever fame became a historical footnote.

But the underlying instinct never disappeared — it just got better instruments. The association members comparing notes on safe towns were doing, by letter and word of mouth, what a modern sufferer does with data: checking the air somewhere before committing to it. Today you can scan the whole country's air at once on the pollen heatmap, compare cities on our allergy map explainer, and check the specific places the exiles' descendants still travel between — the Boston pollen count page for the lowland city so many fled, the Rochester pollen count page for upstate New York, and the Denver pollen count page for the mountain refuge ideal, a mile up. And if your own symptoms follow you from town to town, that's a question for a specialist — you can find an allergist through the Pollen Atlas directory. This article is general information only and is not medical advice.

Frequently Asked Questions

What were hay fever resorts?

They were hotels, boarding houses, and whole villages that marketed themselves to sufferers of seasonal allergic rhinitis, at a time when medicine had almost nothing else to offer. As Morrill Wyman's work put it, the remedy was "removal to a noncatarrhal region."

Why was Bethlehem, New Hampshire, the most famous refuge?

Bethlehem's high elevation, cool air, and distance from the ragweed-choked lowlands meant guests often stopped sneezing within days of arriving. It also became the movement's headquarters: the U.S. Hay Fever Association was established there on 15 September 1874 and kept meeting there for fifty years.

Why did mountain and seaside air relieve hay fever?

Mostly because of ragweed. Ragweed barely grows at elevation in the northern mountains, sea breezes dilute pollen at the coasts, and late frosts shorten the season — so the refuge map was, without anyone knowing it, a rough map of low ragweed exposure.

What replaced the hay fever resorts?

The science did. Pollen was identified as the trigger, counting stations began quantifying it in the 20th century, and medicines eventually made the August exile optional rather than compulsory — even though antihistamines were still more than half a century away in the heyday.

Hay fever resorts were a workaround for a missing number. The number exists now: before your next trip, check the free pollen counts and 5-day forecasts for your destination at PollenAtlas.com — the modern, trunk-free version of the train ride north.