A history of Saranac Lake,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Saranac Lake from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗This area was occupied by Iroquoian-speaking peoples for hundreds of years, and by other Indigenous peoples before them. The historic Mohawk people extended their hunting grounds to this area.
The area was first settled by European Americans in 1819, more than three decades after the American Revolutionary War. As the Iroquois, mostly allies of the British, had been forced to cede their land to the United States following the war, millions of acres of New York were opened up to non-Native development in the postwar period.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Saranac Lake’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
0 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewTwelve Adirondack Sketches - Camp…, 1875: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Saranac Lake
See all 28 →
Saranac Lake, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Twelve Adirondack Sketches - Campe Edgar, Lake Saranac by Boston Public Library (1875) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (6). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.