On a cool autumn evening in 1874, 19-year-old Edward Bennett stood in line holding his two-dollar ticket and waited to board the night boat to Albany. If all went as scheduled, he would arrive by morning just in time to catch the train to Saratoga. There the newly opened Adirondack railroad would take him to the last stop on the line, North Creek, one of the gateways to the Adirondacks. Those who would come to know him as a robust mature adult would not have recognized this skinny, pale Irish farmhand.

And anyone inquiring as to his destination must have smiled when he told them that he was headed for a remote lake in Hamilton County, one of the least populated sections of the woods. The entire county had less than 3,000 souls living on 1,721 square miles, that’s well over a million acres of forest land. The winters were as brutal as they were long; four months, and temperatures as low as -40. » Continue Reading.