History, Natural History & the Arts
Lake George’s network of navigation buoys represents one of the lake’s most important safety systems, guiding thousands of boaters around hidden hazards every boating season.
From the main lake to the Narrows, buoys mark underwater rocks, shoals, channels and speed zones, helping boaters safely navigate one of New York’s most beautiful — and deceptively challenging — lakes. [Read more…] about Silent Sentinels: Lake George Navigation Buoys
After the Second World War, Lake George underwent a remarkable transformation. In this episode of the ADK Talks podcast, Lisa Hall of The Bolton Museum and Tony Hall, publisher of the Lake George Mirror and a regular contributor to New York Almanack, explore how rising prosperity, automobiles, roadside motels, Storytown, and the Adirondack Northway helped turn Lake George into one of the Northeast’s great family vacation destinations. [Read more…] about How Lake George Became A Vacation Destination
The 1906-built Forward launch was one of the first gasoline-powered vessels on Lake George. The 45-foot-long watercraft was initially a recreational boat for the Bixby family of Bolton Landing.
It later served as an excursion watercraft under different ownership. According to local lore, in the 1930s, the wooden runabout sank. [Read more…] about Lake George’s Forward Shipwreck
It was the year 1898, and only days from the end of summer. A group of boaters and swimmers at Lake George had just finished organizing a training session by the recently established Volunteer Life Saving Corps.
This was an era when organized water safety and life-guarding were virtually nonexistent, and swimming was more often viewed as “bathing,” requiring no formal skill. [Read more…] about Davis Dalton & The Volunteer Life Saving Corps
The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks) have announced recommendations by the New York State Board for Historic Preservation to add 25 properties and districts to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.
The nominations include an intact 1905 metal casting foundry complex in Hudson, an 1873 house that reflects Syracuse’s layered history of immigration, urban renewal, and grassroots historic preservation, a cohesive group of Colonial Revival apartment buildings in Kenmore built during the 1920s and 1930s suburban housing boom, and an amendment to the 1971 nomination for Revolutionary-era Senate House in Kingston to include its 1920s commemorative museum annex. [Read more…] about 25 Properties Recommended to State, National Registers
There is no such thing as dead wood. Any wood boat, even one as modest as my sixteen-foot rowboat, will teach you that. Wood is moody; it swells and contracts; it looks and feels different on different days.
But wood also gives you the impression that it is collaborating with you; you have an undeniable sensation that your boat is actively supporting you as you row, keeping you afloat (aloft, even), pulling you onward. [Read more…] about The Smith Rowboat: A Unique Contribution to Watercraft History
The Adirondack Northway (Interstate 87) made Lake George more accessible than any other resort area in the Northeast. So, it’s appropriate that the birth of the modern interstate highway system can be traced to Lake George; specifically, to the 46th Annual National Governor’s Conference, held July 11 to 13, 1954, at the Sagamore Hotel in Bolton Landing.
To be precise, the Conference was the site not so much of the birth of the interstate highway system, but of the announcement of its birth. [Read more…] about The Adirondack Northway’s Ambiguous Legacy
The Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks) has announced the most recent recommendations by the New York State Board for Historic Preservation to add 20 properties and districts to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.
The nominations include John Steinbeck’s writing cottage in Sag Harbor; Cluett, Peabody buildings in Troy; Lake George’s Mohican Point; a small surviving commercial historic district on Seneca Street in Buffalo; the architecturally significant post Vatican II St. Peter’s Church in Manhattan; the home of prominent Black community leaders George and Theodora Bragg in Elmira; as well as additional documentation of LGBT history for the Louis N. Jaffe Art Theater Building in New York City. [Read more…] about State Parks Announces 20 Nominations for State and National Registers of Historic Places
It was Saturday night, August 12, 1911, and 300 people attending the weekly dance at the Sagamore Hotel in the Town of Bolton on Lake George were startled to see a huge fire to the west. The C. E. Ingraham building on Stewart Avenue was ablaze.
As the town’s volunteer fire department confronted the inferno, some hotel guests went by automobile and on foot to lend a hand. Leading them from the Sagamore was retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Winfield Scott Schley, a co-founder of the National Geographic Society. [Read more…] about The Night A Rear Admiral & Nat Geo Co-Founder Battled A Lake George Fire
According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, outdoor recreation is a $34 billion industry in New York State, responsible for more than 250,000 jobs.
In the Lake George region, outdoor recreation buttresses the tourism economy, which, according to the most recent data available, generates $850 to $887 million a year in sales. In 2023, tourism supported between 6,000 and 8,500 local jobs. [Read more…] about The Experience Economy: Monetizing Warren County’s Natural Assets
It was July 20, 1945, twelve-years since moviegoers gazed in awe at the silver screen as the goliath gorilla known as King Kong battled biplanes flying near the pinnacle of the 1,454-foot-tall Empire State Building in New York City.
Lake Georgians must have felt a similar fright when they witnessed a giant waterspout, reportedly twice the height of the Empire State Building, passing over the 32-mile-long waterway. [Read more…] about 1945: A Giant Waterspout Over Lake George
It was nearly three months after the USA entered World War I (1917–1918) and understandably Americans were nervous about sending troops to fight in Europe. So, it probably sounded like the horrors of war had come home when in the early morning of June 29, 1917, Bolton Landing residents Charles Hier and William Tobin were suddenly awakened by two explosions from the post office.
What the startled Bolton Landing citizens heard was not an artillery barrage. Rather, they were witnesses to “Bolton Landing New York’s Great Post Office Robbery of 1917.” [Read more…] about Bolton Landing’s Great Post Office Robbery of 1917
With a length of 803.8 feet, it was a massive airship, only 80 feet shorter than the 1912-sunk, ocean-liner Titanic.
Along with its sister craft, the LZ-130, the LZ-129 Hindenburg was the largest-man-made object to ever fly. [Read more…] about 1936: The Airship Hindenburg Over Lake George
When one thinks of Lake George, NY, one might conjure up visions of beautiful blue water, sandy beaches, and bountiful history. Here is a story from six-decades ago that generates all three of those mental images. The decade of the 1960s in America was a rebellious era and Lake George was certainly not an exception.
At the start of that decade in 1960, a song, “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini,” sung by Brian Hyland, became a huge hit. The bubblegum-pop tune was about a shy-young woman embarrassed to appear on the beach because of her “itsy bitsy” bikini, that two-piece bathing suit that soon became the norm for female beach attire. [Read more…] about 1964 Fashion History: The Monokini & Lake George
With another strategic land acquisition, Bolton Landing on Lake George is one step closer to realizing its ambitious plan to become a recreation hub of the southeastern Adirondacks.
The Lake George Land Conservancy (LGLC) has purchased a 30-acre corridor between the Bolton Community Center (a.k.a. the Conservation Club) on Edgecomb Pond Road and the 213-acre Twin Pines parcel on Trout Lake, which the LGLC purchased in 2019. [Read more…] about Lake George’s Bolton Landing Trail Network Expanding
More than any other single individual, a summer resident of Bolton Landing on Lake George was responsible for opening Asia to international air traffic. That man – Harold McMillan Bixby — was among the first Americans to imagine that routine, transpolar air travel from New York to Asia was possible. [Read more…] about Lake George Aviation Pioneer Harold Bixby
Will McKay was a very lucky young man. Over the course of two years starting in 1885, he had married his sweetheart Anne, been blessed with a healthy newborn son, and with them at his side was about to embark on a trip to Korea paid for by Thomas Edison.
In 1863, 12-year-old Gojong was crowned Monarch of the Korean Empire. As Korea was forced out of isolationism in the 1870s the country began to move towards Western innovation and technology. One of these was the development of electricity, which had been introduced into Korea through Japan and China. [Read more…] about Until His Luck Ran Out: The Story of William McKay
Dome Island is that rarest of things, an undisturbed piece of wilderness in the middle of Lake George, protected for the past seventy years by the Nature Conservancy and a committee of local volunteers and, in recent decades, by the Lake George Land Conservancy.
More than 60% of its forest canopy is composed of hemlocks, and every year since 2020, when hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) was first discovered among the evergreens’ needles and branches, the Nature Conservancy has treated the invasive pest with insecticides. [Read more…] about Saving Lake George’s Dome Island Hemlocks
It’s nearing peak fall colors in the Adirondack Park. There are many places to see the leaves as mountainsides and valleys turn bright orange, yellow, and red.
Protect the Adirondacks has put together hiking guides to 25 hikes that are easy, moderate, and challenging, but lead to terrific locations to see the fall colors in all corners of the Adirondack Park. These guides include maps, information about hiking conditions, and pictures. [Read more…] about 25 Great Adirondack Hikes to See Fall Colors
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