Before the the United States entered the the First World War, along with New England and the Adirondack woods, Lake George was a vacation destination for half the population of the eastern seaboard.
In the summer of 1856, for example, Lake George attracted six thousand visitors. By 1881, that number had grown to 20,000.
In 1882, in its first year of operation, the train from Glens Falls brought 60,000 people. By 1889, 100,000 day-trippers and lodgers were arriving by train every summer.
In 1865, the lake had just six hotels. By 1883, there were 27. By 1890, 100 hotels, catering to thousands of people a year.
“Monstrosities of architecture” to many, they were monuments to native enterprise and provided unequalled luxury and comfort.
Once built, it was no easy task to fill the rooms, but the hotels were built and the guests arrived.
Every summer, the Lake George Steamboat Company’s Horicon, Sagamore and Mohican (then still powered by steam) deposited 110,000 passengers at hotels and landings on the lake.
But the World War One and the Great Depression killed the vibrant tourism industry as Lake George had known it, when a ‘summer civilization’ flourished there.
Business was reduced business by half. By 1933, the steamboats were carrying only 50,000 passengers a summer.
The hotels fell into disrepair. The great mansions, which were built by those who were first introduced to the lake through the hotels, were also abandoned.
It wasn’t until after World War II when Lake George’s tourist industry began to change from a summer-long resort for the wealthy to a place where middle class and working families could come by car for a two-week vacation.
By 1957, there were 14,000 motel units on Lake George, primarily in Lake George Village. From 1952 to 1957, 2,000 units were built, including 500 in 1956 and 200 in 1957 alone.
“Gear Up for Tomorrow,” a 1960 newsreel promoting General Electric that was shown in movie theaters throughout the nation, was filmed largely in Lake George, for good reason.
Lake George had come to exemplify the promise of post-War optimism: a material abundance within reach of all and the democratic mobility, upward and outward, symbolized by the automobile, the interstate and motels.
Read more about Lake George in the 1950s and 1960s.
A version of this article first appeared on the Lake George Mirror, America’s oldest resort paper, covering Lake George and its surrounding environs. You can subscribe to the Mirror HERE.
Illustrations, from above: The first Sagamore Hotel at Bolton Landing was built in the Queen Anne style in 1882-1883; and Wikiosco, built about 1905 as the Lake George summer home of Royal C. Peabody, became a resort in the 1950s before being converted back to a private residence.
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