Where Was Dirty Dancing Filmed? The Real Kellerman’s Resort

Dirty Dancing was filmed in Virginia and North Carolina, not in the Catskills. Mountain Lake Lodge near Pembroke, Virginia played Kellerman’s, the resort where Baby spends the summer of 1963.

The rest came from an old boys’ camp on Lake Lure, North Carolina. Its cabins became the staff quarters, and its gym was the dance floor for “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.”

The shoot ran in September and October 1986, about 43 days in all. This guide counts down the 8 Dirty Dancing filming locations, from a golf course in North Carolina to the resort where you can still sleep in Baby’s cabin.

#	Real place	Plays	State	Can you visit?
8	Bald Mountain Golf Course, Rumbling Bald	The golf course	NC	Yes. Check with Rumbling Bald
7	The gazebo, Mountain Lake Lodge	Penny’s dance lesson	VA	Yes
6	Camp Chimney Rock, Lake Lure	The staff cabins	NC	No. The cabins are gone
5	The stone stairs, Lake Lure	The watermelon stairs	NC	From the water only
4	The camp gym, Lake Lure	The final dance	NC	No. The gym is gone
3	The dining room, Mountain Lake Lodge	Kellerman’s dining room	VA	Yes
2	Mountain Lake	The lake lift	VA	Yes. The lake is mostly dry
1	Mountain Lake Lodge, Pembroke	Kellerman’s and Baby’s cabin	VA	Yes. You can stay

The 8 Dirty Dancing Filming Locations

The countdown starts on a North Carolina golf course and ends at the real Kellerman’s.

8) Bald Mountain Golf Course: Baby Asks for $250

The green where Baby asks her father for money was a working golf course near Lake Lure.

Baby finds her father on the golf course and asks for $250. She can’t tell him what it’s for, and he trusts her. It’s the money for Penny, and it sets the second half of the story moving.

The crew filmed the scene on the 16th hole of Bald Mountain Golf Course, dressed to look like a practice green at Kellerman’s. The course belongs to Rumbling Bald Resort, named after the mountain that rises above the north side of Lake Lure.

7) The Gazebo at Mountain Lake Lodge: Penny’s Dance Lesson

The white gazebo on the lawn is where Kellerman’s guests take their dance lessons.

Early in the film, Penny leads a crowd of guests through a dance lesson at the gazebo. It sits on the lawn below the Stone Lodge, and locals say Virginia Tech engineering students built it for the film.

The lodge still uses it. On its Dirty Dancing weekends, the gazebo is where guests take their own dance lessons, 40 years after Penny’s.

6) Camp Chimney Rock: The Staff Cabins

The cabins where Johnny and the dance staff live were part of a boys’ camp in North Carolina.

The staff quarters are where Baby walks in carrying a watermelon and sees the staff dancing for the first time. The crew found them at Camp Chimney Rock, an old boys’ camp on the shore of Lake Lure. Its cabins, dining hall and gym all ended up in the film.

The cabins were pulled down after filming, and the land is now Firefly Cove, a private development. Fans can’t walk in, but the lake tours still point it out from the water.

5) The Stone Stairs at Lake Lure: “I Carried a Watermelon”

The steps where Baby practises her mambo, and carries that watermelon, are still standing.

“I carried a watermelon” is the line Baby says to Johnny when she can’t think of anything else. The stone stairs she climbs with the watermelon were part of the camp, and they’re one of the few pieces of it left.

The same stairs show up when Baby practises her steps alone. They sit on private property in Firefly Cove, so the only way to see them is from a boat on the lake.

4) The Camp Gym: “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life”

The most famous dance in the film was shot in a camp gym, not a resort ballroom.

The Kellerman’s ballroom was the camp’s gym, dressed as the resort ballroom. That’s where Johnny walks up to the Housemans’ table, says “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” and leads Baby onto the stage for the final dance and the lift.

The gym came down within a few years of filming. Its dance floor was saved and laid in the lobby of the Esmeralda Inn in nearby Chimney Rock. The inn closed after Hurricane Helene hit the area in September 2024, so check that it has reopened before you plan a visit.

3) The Dining Room at Mountain Lake Lodge: The Houseman Table

Kellerman’s dining room, where the Housemans eat every night, is the lodge’s restaurant.

At Kellerman’s, dinner is where everything happens. Max Kellerman works the room, Robbie the waiter flirts with the guests, and Baby pours a jug of water over him. Those scenes were filmed in the Stone Lodge’s dining room.

The room still serves meals, and it hasn’t changed much. Lodge staff point to one table as the spot where the Houseman family sat.

2) Mountain Lake: The Lake Lift

The lift in the water, one of the most famous shots in the film, was filmed in Virginia.

For years, Lake Lure tour guides told visitors the lift was filmed in their lake. It wasn’t. The screenwriter, Eleanor Bergstein, remembered it in Virginia. The production designer, David Chapman, found his old storyboard, labelled “Baby Does Lift in Water,” with a sketch of the Mountain Lake pier.

The water was close to 40°F when they shot it. Jennifer Grey later said you had to be “really young and hungry” to get in water that cold for that long. Today you’ll find a plaque and a mostly dry lake bed, because Mountain Lake drains on a cycle of its own (more on that below).

1) Mountain Lake Lodge: Kellerman’s and Baby’s Cabin

The real Kellerman’s is a stone resort hotel on a mountain in southwest Virginia, and you can book a room.

The Stone Lodge was built in the 1930s on Salt Pond Mountain, beside one of only two natural lakes in Virginia. In 1986 it was the Mountain Lake Hotel. It played the main resort outside: the arrival, the lawns, the beach games and the cabin where Baby stays with her family.

That cabin is the Virginia Cabin, and you can sleep in it if you call ahead. The lodge runs seven Dirty Dancing weekends a year, with dance lessons, trivia, a scavenger hunt and parties in Mary’s Barn, plus a summer festival in August. The front desk hands out a free map of the filming spots, so you can walk the whole resort with the film in your head.

Kellerman’s on Screen vs Where It Was Filmed

Kellerman’s isn’t one place. Every scene at the “resort” comes from one of two sites 160 miles apart, a Virginia hotel and a North Carolina camp.

• The resort, lawns and beach are Mountain Lake Lodge, Virginia.
• Baby’s family cabin is the lodge’s Virginia Cabin.
• The dining room is the Stone Lodge restaurant.
• The lake lift is Mountain Lake.
• The staff cabins were Camp Chimney Rock on Lake Lure.
• The watermelon stairs are the camp’s stone steps at Lake Lure.
• The ballroom and the final dance were the camp gym.
• The golf course is Bald Mountain Golf Course at Rumbling Bald.

Why Wasn’t Dirty Dancing Filmed in the Catskills?

The story is set in the Catskills, in New York’s Borscht Belt, where Jewish families spent their summers at big resorts. Kellerman’s was inspired by places like Grossinger’s.

By 1986, many of those resorts had closed or were in decline. The producers couldn’t find one that worked, and filming in New York was too expensive. Producer Linda Gottlieb looked at “right-to-work” states, where she could use non-union crews and save money.

Mountain Lake gave them an old stone hotel on a lake, far from anywhere. The camp at Lake Lure gave them the rest. Virginia came first, then North Carolina.

What Happened to the Dirty Dancing Lake?

If you go to Mountain Lake hoping to stand where Johnny lifted Baby, you’ll be standing in a meadow.

Mountain Lake drains through gaps in its own rocky floor. It dropped in 1999, recovered, then emptied in 2008 and stayed mostly dry for 12 years. In 2020 it came back to about a third full. By December 2022 it was down to a couple of acres, and a 2025 visitor found it dry again.

Researchers think the lake fills and drains on a long natural cycle, possibly around 400 years, though leaks in the lake bed play a part too. Nobody can say when the water will come back. So the lift spot is a plaque and a lake bed, with a trail that loops around it.

How Dirty Dancing Was Filmed

A small film with a $5 million budget, two locations and 43 days became one of the biggest hits of 1987.

• The money: The budget was about $5 million. Final reports put the cost as high as $6 million. Vestron Pictures released it.
• The shoot: It started on 5 September 1986 at Mountain Lake and ran about 43 days, ending in North Carolina in late October.
• Fake summer: The film is set in summer, but it was shot in autumn. The crew painted or sprayed the turning leaves green.
• The heat: It rained early on in Virginia. North Carolina was so hot that a nurse stood by with oxygen and Gatorade.
• The song: “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” won the Oscar and the Golden Globe for Best Original Song. Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes won a Grammy for it.
• The box office: It made $214.6 million worldwide, more than 35 times its budget.

When Swayze died of pancreatic cancer in 2009, Mountain Lake set a stone for him on the grounds. It sits beside the gazebo and honors him for his starring role in “the hit movie of 1987” and his “courageous battle” with the disease. Fans still stop there.

How to Visit the Dirty Dancing Locations

The two places are about 160 miles apart in a straight line, and longer by road through the mountains. Plan them as a road trip, or pick one.

Mountain Lake Lodge, Virginia (1 or 2 nights).

1. Book a Dirty Dancing weekend, or a regular stay. The weekends include all meals, group dance lessons, trivia, a scavenger hunt and dance parties in Mary’s Barn. The 2027 dates are already out.
2. Call the front desk to ask for Baby’s cabin, the Virginia Cabin.
3. Pick up the free self-guided map and walk the lawn, the gazebo and the lake bed.

Lake Lure, North Carolina (1 day).

1. Take a pontoon tour with Lake Lure Tours. The lake reopened on 16 May 2026 after Hurricane Helene, and the town plans another drawdown from January 2027, so check lake levels and tour times before you go.
2. Look out for the camp’s stone stairs at Firefly Cove. You can’t land, but you can see them from the water.
3. Play the 16th hole at Bald Mountain Golf Course, or stay at the 1927 Lake Lure Inn, where the cast stayed during filming. Nothing was filmed there, but it has a themed Johnny’s Cabin and Baby’s Bungalow.

Mountain Lake publishes no prices for the themed weekends or Baby’s cabin, so book both by phone.

FAQs About Where Dirty Dancing Was Filmed

The Final Cut on Where Dirty Dancing Was Filmed

So where was Dirty Dancing filmed? At Mountain Lake Lodge in Virginia, which played Kellerman’s, and at an old boys’ camp on Lake Lure in North Carolina, which gave it the staff cabins, the stairs and the final dance.

The camp is gone and the lake is dry, but Kellerman’s is still open. You can eat in the dining room, take a lesson at the gazebo and sleep in Baby’s cabin.

Would you book a Dirty Dancing weekend, or just watch the film again?

For more, see where The Notebook was filmed for another Southern love story, where Grease was filmed and where Mamma Mia was filmed for more dancing, read about Swayze in Ghost in our guide to the tritagonist, or browse all our film locations.