The Borscht Belt was about 100 miles northwest of New York City in Sullivan and Ulster counties in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. Sometimes known as the "Jewish Alps," it covered an area of about 250 square miles. Jewish farmers, encouraged by the Jewish Agricultural Society, started settling this rural area beginning in the 1820s. Prefiguring the "back-to-the-earth communes" of the 1960s, some Jewish settlers founded socialist agricultural communities, and some of the bungalow colonies fomented much left-wing activity. In the Mirth Bungalow Colony, for example, "entertainment" included political discussions and poetry readings.