Saranac Lake

Understand

The area was first settled in 1819; a dam and sawmill were built in 1827, a school was built in 1838, and the first local hotel opened in 1849. Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau arrived in 1876, believing the cold, clear mountain air to be helpful in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis; his Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium was established in 1884. The Trudeau Institute, an independent medical research organisation established in 1964, is a successor to Dr. Trudeau's 1884 Saranac Laboratory for the Study of Tuberculosis. Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, the doctor's great-grandson, grew up in Saranac Lake and maintains connections there.

Hundreds of "cure cottages", private residences with large, glassed-in porches where patients could benefit from the clear mountain air, were constructed in this era. The 1944 introduction of antibiotic drug streptomycin largely supplanted prior treatments for tuberculosis by the 1950s; the buildings were re-purposed, with sixty-three of those still extant in Saranac Lake listed on the US National Register of Historic Places.

The "great camps of the Adirondack Mountains", elaborate summer homes for the wealthy, became common in the region near the end of the 19th century as rail travel placed upstate vacation areas such as the Adirondacks and the Thousand Islands within easy reach for New York City's well-heeled elites.

Five thousand people live in the village. North Country Community College, a two-year public college established in Saranac Lake in 1967, has 1500 students, 143 permanent and 300 adjunct faculty. Paul Smith's College, a private four-year college in the adjacent hamlet of Paul Smiths NY, was established in 1946 and now has a thousand students.

Get in

By plane

Go Adirondack Regional Airport (SLK)

Cape Air provides Essential Air Service flights twice daily from Boston and once daily from New York, New York (JFK).

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By bus

• Adirondack Trailways runs from Albany or Montreal.

By car

Saranac Lake is within the Adirondack park and relatively isolated; there are no Interstate highways in the immediate area.

• From Lake Placid, take NY 86 seven miles (11km) northwest.
• From Plattsburgh and I-87, take NY 3 (the highway through the park to I-81/Watertown) some fifty miles (80km) southwest.

Get around

One quality of Saranac Lake is lack of heavy vehicle traffic. Walking is the perfect way to explore the town.

There is local bus service twice daily to Lake Placid.

Go next

• Lake Placid
• North Pole and Wilmington