Canaan Pine Grove Association

 village  Add category

The Canaan Pine Grove Association is located on about 35 acres on Belden Street in Falls Village, 2 miles south of Canaan village, between the old Housatonic Railroad line tracks and the Housatonic river.

Pine Grove was the site in August of 1860 where the Poughkeepsie, New York, district of the Methodist Church conducted a week of camp meetings. Less formal meetings had been held on the site from 1856 onward and in 1871 the meeting was permanently established with the annual meeting beginning the last week in August, on the Monday nearest the 20th, and ending a week afterwards.

Campers traveled by horse or by train, and came seeking spiritual renewal and gatherings for prayer. The campers pitched tents in a large circle under a grove of 100 year old pine trees. During the early 1870’s, crowds of 3,500 were common. By the late 1870’s and early 1880’s, crowds of over 10,000 people were drawn to Pine Grove from as far away as Hartford, New Haven, and New York City. A separate railroad station was constructed on the Housatonic line to accomodate the traffic.

To accomodate the crowds the Association constructed a large eating and lodging house, The Pine Grove Inn, along with cottages that were rented to people who attended camp meeting. In addition a post-office was built on the grounds and a telephone connection was established in the 1880’s with Canaan. A permanent chapel was constructed as were tennis courts, a croquet lawn, coach houses and a band stand.

The tents gave way in the 1880's to small cottages constructed in the high Victorian Gingerbread style on land leased from the Association and sited on a road that traces the original path of the tent meeting circle. It became the practice of many of the campers, in July and August previous to camp meeting time, to occupy their cottages as a place of summer resort. The last Camp Revival meeting was held at the Grove in 1912.

The Grove is now a permanent summer colony with remarkably well preserved “painted lady” cottages lining the picturesque road through the grove of towering pines.