History, Natural History & the Arts
A log camp opposite Three Brothers Island at Lake George, whose original core was built in 1928 for a niece of George Foster Peabody, will be disassembled, removed and replaced by a contemporary mansion.
The Town of Bolton’s Planning Board approved the new owner’s request to replace the camp in a March meeting. [Read more…] about Historic Lake George Camp Being Replaced with Mansion
Glen Underwood, the author of the recently published Discovering George Foster Peabody (Abenia Cottage Press, 2025) was at the Lake George Historical Association recently to discuss the life and legacy of the banker and philanthropist. The program included the unveiling of a portrait of Peabody that will hang in the museum.
Appropriately enough, the museum overlooks Shepard Park, named in honor of Peabody’s close friend, Brooklyn politician Edward Morse Shepard (1850-1911). Shepard is remembered at Lake George today largely because the Village park bears his name. Peabody, who actually paid for the park and gave it to the Village, has fared less well. [Read more…] about George Foster Peabody and Lake George
The automobile and the highways built to accommodate them gradually but inevitably displaced the nation’s light rail systems, including those in the Lake George region. Long before there was a Northway (I-87), tourists disembarked from trains opposite the Lake George steamboat pier, trolleys rattled along Canada Street toward Warrensburg, and a cable railway carried hotel guests from Lake George Village to the top of Prospect Mountain. There was even a marine railway to launch the pleasure boats that were transported on freight trains from factories in the Midwest.
But the Delaware and Hudson Railroad (the D&H), transporting people from New York City to Montreal and dozens of points in between, including the steamboat landings on Lake George and Lake Champlain, was the system’s apex. [Read more…] about They Came by Train: Lake George Railroad History
After the Million Dollar Beach and the Adirondack Northway came the Prospect Mountain Highway. The last of Lake George’s three great public infrastructure projects, it was completed in 1969 and opened on June 14 of that year. In other words, at the end of the 1960s. The Age of the Automobile was giving way to the Age of Aquarius.
The modernist building that was to be the project’s literal and figurative crown, its vertex – the so-called Summit House – was never built, a victim, perhaps, of the public’s disenchantment with automobiles, grandiose public projects and even with government itself. [Read more…] about Prospect Mountain: An Environmental History of a Lake George Attraction
In 1901, Saratoga Springs’ Katrina Trask (1853–1922) purchased Lake George’s Diamond Island for the reported sum of $750. Three years later in 1904, Ms. Trask, an ardent pacifist, funded the creation of a large granite peace obelisk that was installed at the north end of the island. [Read more…] about 1904: A Peace Obelisk Erected on Diamond Island, Lake George
I spent my last year of high school at a day school in Brooklyn Heights named Saint Ann’s. Across the street was the church with which the school was loosely affiliated – the Church of Saint Ann and the Holy Trinity.
I don’t think I entered the grand though deteriorating Gothic Revival church for any reason other than to take part in my class’s graduation ceremonies – though I later came to know it as a peerless concert venue. (In some circles, it’s best known as the hall where an unknown Jeff Buckley launched his tragically short career with a tribute to his late father, the folk singer Tim Buckley.)
I wish I had found reasons to visit the church more often. I would have introduced myself to its assisting priest, the Rev. W. Howard Melish, a leftist activist who had written articles for the Daily Worker, the newspaper edited by my father in the 1940s and 50s.
And we could have talked about Lake George. [Read more…] about Lake George Millionaires and Ministers
“The Spa is new in every sense of the word. In addition to new equipment, new buildings and new treatments, it presents a new conception of the treatment of disease—the conception of health and recreation and enjoyment while finding that health. It is a place where the patient, by the very life that teems around him, will be made to forget he is ill.” – Pierrepont B. Noyes, President, Saratoga Springs Authority. Address of Welcome. The Saratogian, July 26th, 1935. [Read more…] about Saratoga Spa in 1935: A State Health Resort Opens
Katrina Trask, best known as the founder of Yaddo, led an accomplished and intriguing life. Many know the Trask name because of her husband, Spencer, and Katrina’s philanthropy in Saratoga Springs, but Katrina made significant contributions beyond their wealth. [Read more…] about The Fascinating Life of Katrina Trask
Brooke Kroeger’s book, The Suffragents (SUNY Press, 2017) tells the story of how some of New York’s most powerful men formed the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, which grew between 1909 and 1917 from 150 founding members into a force of thousands across thirty-five states.
Kroeger details the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s strategic decision to accept their organized help and then to deploy these influential new allies as suffrage foot soldiers, a role they accepted.
[Read more…] about New Book On Role of Men in Suffrage Movement
A new book by Ellen Apperson Brown, John Apperson’s Lake George (Arcadia Publishing, 2017), offers a significant collection of many Apperson photos published for the first time.
Writing from Virginia where John Apperson spent much of his youth, Ellen Apperson Brown has compiled a collection of captioned photos, along with an introductory essay that reveals much of the public, and private, life of her great uncle, who had such a large impact on protecting Lake George and the Adirondacks.
[Read more…] about New Book: John Apperson’s Lake George
Use your bank’s “bill pay” option (or just send a check)
Thanks for your support! These are difficult times. Without your support we cannot publish the Almanack.
*Donations are not tax deductible.
(Click the X in the top right corner this box to not see this message again for 7 days).