On Sunday, September 6th, Linda Harvey will lead Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation’s Sunday Summer Stroll tour “The Spa Complex” in Saratoga Spa State Park, a National Historic Landmark. In partnership with the Friends of Saratoga Spa State Park, Harvey will share the history of the complex, which was developed with the goal of increasing both therapeutic and recreational use of the park. [Read more…] about Tour Saratoga Spa State Park’s ‘Spa Complex’
Mineral Springs
The Water Cure, Bottled Water & New York’s Local Bottling Industry
The emergence of the bottling industry in New York State occurred due to the rise of the leisure economy and the fashion for the kind of mineral waters available at natural spas.
Prior to the availability of chlorinated water, inhabitants of many highly populated areas of the world avoided unmixed water from most sources for fear of contamination. [Read more…] about The Water Cure, Bottled Water & New York’s Local Bottling Industry
25 Properties Recommended to State, National Registers
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
New York State & The Origins of America’s Oil Industry
The first written record of oil in North America is believed to have been made at Seneca Oil Spring in Allegany County in 1627 when a French Jesuit missionary was led to spring by local Seneca people.
The Senecas prized the oil for medicinal proposes; the spring is located in what is now Cuba, NY. [Read more…] about New York State & The Origins of America’s Oil Industry
Drilling For Salt: Salt Springs & New York’s Salt Industry Origins
As the presence of salt in New York was first made manifest through saline mineral springs it is proper to begin this discussion with the history of their discovery and utilization. The most important of these are in Onondaga County at Syracuse.
About the middle of the seventeenth century several of the Jesuit missionaries during their journeys among the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), in what is now the State of New York, heard local salt springs and related these experiences in the Relations of the Jesuit fathers. [Read more…] about Drilling For Salt: Salt Springs & New York’s Salt Industry Origins
Mineral Springs of the Saratoga County Area: Some History
The mineral springs of Saratoga County first attracted the attention of the white settlers soon after the middle of the eighteenth century. In early colonial days they were westward of the first line of settlements and off the main line of such travel as there was between the valley of the Hudson River and the valleys of Lake Champlain and the St Lawrence River.
The colonists, naturally, established themselves first in the valley of the Hudson and their earliest settlements in this region were some ten miles to the east of Saratoga Springs [near what is now Schuylerville]. [Read more…] about Mineral Springs of the Saratoga County Area: Some History
Saratoga Springs’ Indian Encampments
The tourism fostered at Saratoga Springs by the mineral waters and baths spawned the spectacle of thoroughbred racing during the nineteenth century and also a clubhouse which operated as a casino. They were exciting diversions for those visiting to take the “water cure.”
With so many tourists at the numerous hotels and boarding houses by virtue of the convenient rail connections, another attraction of sorts was fostered, Indian Encampments which functioned much like carnivals. [Read more…] about Saratoga Springs’ Indian Encampments
Saratoga Spa State Park Cuts the Ribbon for Revived Mineral Spring
The mineral springs of Saratoga Springs have drawn crowds for more than a century. Saratoga Spa State Park’s 2,400-acres just south of the bustling downtown hosts nearly a dozen of these bubbling natural wonders.
Often regarded as “an acquired taste,” daring samplers may wince from a modest splash from Hathorn (the park’s most salient and mineral-rich spring), but may relish in the cold, clear, velvety refreshment from the State Seal non-carbonated spring that is rarely without five-gallon containers being filled under its multiple spigots. [Read more…] about Saratoga Spa State Park Cuts the Ribbon for Revived Mineral Spring
A Short History of Finger Lakes Tourism
The geology and climate of the Finger Lakes region presented a landscape of great natural beauty that has attracted tourism and recreation for more than 200 years.
Wealthy elites from the city of New York began building homes at Skaneateles Lake as early as 1809, and mineral springs in Livingston County in the western portion of the greater Finger Lakes region attracted visitors starting in the 1820s. [Read more…] about A Short History of Finger Lakes Tourism
Old Man Patterson’s Spring in Saratoga
Saratoga Springs has been gifted with many unique attributes by both nature and the hand of man. The artesian fountains have been an attraction since the dawn of habitation and have endowed the area with an important role in the development of our nation.
It’s admirable that residents and interested visitors combine with a fervent dedication to the history of the community. We have recently witnessed this in the efforts by the Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation to secure a historic residence, designed and built in the nineteenth century by Alexander A. Patterson, at 65 Phila Street in the Spa City. [Read more…] about Old Man Patterson’s Spring in Saratoga
The Poesten Kill: Healing & Healthful Waters
The Poesten Kill is a mid-sized stream that flows off the Rensselaer Plateau in western Rensselaer County toward the Hudson River. It tumbles through Barbersville Falls and winds its way through the towns of Poestenkill and Brunswick, before reaching the Great Falls above Troy. Below there it’s channeled into a long-abandoned canal (hence Canal Street in Troy) that flows into the Hudson.
In the earliest recorded times, fresh drinking water was acquired from the Poesten Kill and from a spring on Hollow Road in Troy (now Spring Avenue, later the farm of Stephen J. Schuyler). [Read more…] about The Poesten Kill: Healing & Healthful Waters
‘Saratoga Baths’: Saratoga Springs’ Phila Street Bathhouse
The architecture of Saratoga Springs is remarkable, and the tangible link to our past. However some gems have been lost through the ages, due to fire and folly. One such wonder was the Saratoga Bath House, formerly at 25 Phila Street.
[Read more…] about ‘Saratoga Baths’: Saratoga Springs’ Phila Street Bathhouse
When Ballston Spa Rivaled Saratoga Springs
One hundred and ninety-five years ago, on April 27,1825, Professor of Chemistry at Yale University Benjamin Silliman penned a letter to Harvey Loomis, proprietor of the Sans Souci Hotel in Ballston Spa.
It was subsequently printed in the Ballston Spa Gazette in August 1825, and copied in travelogues over the next several years. [Read more…] about When Ballston Spa Rivaled Saratoga Springs