Local History

The true story of Lake Placid's local mystery. Two divers exploring underwater cliffs near Pulpit Rock came upon a bizarre sight. A perfectly preserved body lay in wait for discovery. Less than three hours later, the corpse was identified as that of Mabel Smith Douglass, first dean of New Jersey College for Women in New Brunswick (now Douglass College and named for her in 1955). She had been missing since Sept. 21, 1933, when her overturned boat was found near Pulpit Rock.

Heaven Up-h'isted-ness and Adirondack 46er compilation. Contains list of 46ers through February of 2011.

In the tradition of Eiger Dreams, In the Zone: Epic Survival Stories from the Mountaineering World, and Not Without Peril, comes a new book that examines the thrills and perils of outdoor adventure in the “East’s greatest wilderness,” the Adirondacks.

Major Call had it all: he was a war hero with a beautiful wife, a new baby, and a promising aviation career ahead of him. But when his wife died in 1954, Call's life went into a tailspin. Always a gambler and a risk taker, he went AWOL and began a crime spree that would end in the murder of a policeman in Lake Placid, NY. But novelist and former FBI agent Conners thinks that Call was involved in another murder and shows evidence that he was the "bushy-haired stranger" in the notorious Sheppard murder in Bay Village, OH.

Small Town, Big Dreams DVD. Lake Placid's Olympic History in an award winning documentary.

An interesting, well-researched book that sheds new light on the 1906 Gillette-Brown murder.

A history of the amazing feat that was the building of the railroad that stretched through the Adirondacks from New York City to Montreal.

A fascinating description of the life of Louie Seymour, an Adirondack woodsman who lived in the late 1800s.

A wonderfully detailed history of camps in the Adirondacks.

Indexed and illustrated with 113 historic and present-day photos, this book is of interest to history buffs, researchers wishing to understand the Outdoor Life once lived at Saranac Lake, and to architectural historians tracing the influence of that life on buildings all over the United States. This book celebrates the cure porch and the compassionate community and triumph over disease that it represents.

Inside the Club by Barbara Campbell. Stories of the employees of the former Lake Placid Club

Great Lake Placid History. Olympics and more