10 Of The Most Captivating Small Towns In The Adirondack Mountains
The Adirondack Mountains cover a six-million-acre park bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Glacier combined, and the best way to take it in is one small town at a time. Formed from some of the oldest rock in New York State, this is a landscape of high peaks, quiet ponds, and forests protected "forever wild" by the state constitution. Lake Placid, Lake George, and Old Forge are the names most visitors know, but the range hides a dozen more towns worth the drive. Here are ten of the most captivating small towns in the Adirondacks.
Lake Placid
Lake Placid is the only American town to host the Winter Olympics twice, in 1932 and 1980, and it still lives on that legacy. The Lake Placid Olympic Museum keeps the medals, sleds, and uniforms from both Games, including relics of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice." For a jolt of the real thing, the Olympic Jumping Complex lets you ride to the top of the 120-meter ski jump, where athletes still train year-round on the plastic-matted landing hill.
The town wraps around Mirror Lake, not Lake Placid itself, a common surprise, and the walkable Main Street of cafes and gear shops sits right on the shore. When you want the quiet version of the Adirondacks, the trails of the McKenzie Mountain Wilderness start just outside town and climb into some of the range's most unbroken forest.
Lake George
At the southern end of its 32-mile lake, and just north of Warrensburg and Glens Falls, Lake George pairs deep history with unapologetic summer fun. Fort William Henry, a reconstruction of the 1755 British fort, brings the French and Indian War to life with musket demonstrations and cannon firings, the same conflict James Fenimore Cooper fictionalized in "The Last of the Mohicans."
The fun runs right alongside the history. Lake George Expedition Park packs in a Ferris wheel and coasters at the Magic Forest, plus life-sized dinosaurs at Dino Roar Valley, though it closes for the winter, so check the calendar. For the payoff view, drive or hike Prospect Mountain, which overlooks the whole lake and, on a clear day, three states and the peaks of Vermont.
Saranac Lake
Ten miles from Lake Placid, Saranac Lake built its identity on an unlikely foundation: tuberculosis. In the late 1800s, Dr. Edward Trudeau opened a "fresh air" cure cottage here, and the town became the country's leading TB treatment center, a history laid out in full at the Saranac Laboratory Museum, the first lab in the US built to study the disease.
Today the draw is the water and the calendar. Every September, paddlers pour in for the Adirondack Canoe Classic, a 90-mile race across the region's lakes, ponds, and carries. October brings the High Peaks Harvest Festival, and the Pendragon Theatre stages live productions year-round. With three connected lakes at its doorstep, Saranac Lake is a paddler's town first and always.
Old Forge
At the western gateway to the Park, Old Forge is where the Fulton Chain of Lakes begins and the Adirondacks turn into a year-round playground. It is home to Enchanted Forest Water Safari, the largest water park in New York State, with more than 50 rides, and in winter it flips its identity entirely, billing itself the "Snowmobile Capital of the East" on the strength of hundreds of miles of groomed trails that connect across Central and Upstate New York.
Between the extremes, Old Forge is a classic Adirondack base camp. Ride the McCauley Mountain chairlift up for fall foliage or ski it in winter, cruise the Fulton Chain aboard the Old Forge Lake Cruises, or make the easy 40-minute climb up Bald (Rondaxe) Mountain to a firetower with the whole lake chain spread below. The century-old Old Forge Hardware and the Strand Theatre keep the little downtown humming after the trails close.
Speculator
On the north shore of Lake Pleasant, tiny Speculator is the kind of place you reach the wilderness before you have finished unpacking. The oddly named Kunjamuk Cave, a small rock hollow reached by an easy bike-and-hike from town, is the local curiosity, and it sits amid the trails of the surrounding forest. To the south spreads the Silver Lake Wilderness, thick with black bear and birdlife.
North and west lie the West Canada Lake and Siamese Ponds Wildernesses, two of the largest roadless tracts in the Park, laced with deciduous forest and old peaks. For the reward view, the climb up 2,966-foot Speculator Mountain rises straight out of the village and repays the effort with a look across Lake Pleasant and the hills beyond.
Long Lake
Named for the 14-mile ribbon of water it sits on, Long Lake is a boating and floatplane town in the geographic heart of the Park. Paddle or fish the lake itself, or wander the streams and trails of John Dillon Park, one of the country's few fully wheelchair-accessible wilderness areas. The climb up Owl's Head Mountain leads to a restored firetower and a 360-degree view of the central peaks.
The area's cultural anchor sits a few miles south on Blue Mountain Lake: the Adirondack Experience, a sprawling open-air museum where you can board a real guideboat, tour a rustic "Great Camp," and trace how people have lived off this landscape for two centuries. Nearby, Buttermilk Falls tumbles in easy reach of the road for anyone who wants the scenery without the summit.
North Creek
North Creek runs on the Hudson River in two ways: as the launch point for some of the East's best whitewater rafting through the Hudson River Gorge, and as the town where Theodore Roosevelt boarded a train in 1901 to learn he had become president after McKinley's death. The Adirondack Glassblowing Studio anchors a small but real arts scene, rounded out by the galleries and performances at the restored Tannery Pond Center.
Above it all rises Gore Mountain, one of New York's largest ski resorts, whose gondola runs in summer and fall for leaf-peepers and in winter for skiers. When the snow flies, the town's own North Creek Ski Bowl, one of the oldest ski areas in the country, lights up for night skiing right at the edge of the village.
Ticonderoga
Sitting on the narrow neck between Lake George and Lake Champlain, Ticonderoga takes its name from a Haudenosaunee word meaning "between the two waters." The French built Fort Carillon here in 1755; the British renamed it Fort Ticonderoga, and in May 1775 the Green Mountain Boys under Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold seized it in a dawn surprise attack, handing the fledgling revolution its cannons. The restored fort is now one of the country's great colonial-history museums.
Hike Mount Defiance to see the cannon emplacements that once commanded the fort below, and stop at the Falls of the La Chute, a series of cascades running through the middle of town. Ticonderoga has one genuinely unexpected attraction, too: a meticulous, fan-built replica of the original Star Trek Starship Enterprise sets, open for guided tours downtown.
Tupper Lake
Twenty-two miles north of Long Lake, Tupper Lake is home to the Adirondacks' best rainy-day answer and its best clear-night one. The Wild Center is a natural-history museum where an elevated Wild Walk carries you into the forest canopy on a trail of bridges, including a full-sized twig treehouse and a spider-web net suspended above the ground.
After dark, the Adirondack Sky Center and Observatory takes over. Sitting under some of the darkest skies in the Northeast, it opens its telescopes to the public for star parties, where the Milky Way arcs overhead in a way most East Coast visitors have never seen. By day, outfitters like Raquette River Outfitters put you on the water to paddle the lake and the river that feeds it.
Wilmington
Wilmington lives in the shadow of Whiteface Mountain, the fifth-highest peak in the state and the only High Peak you can drive up, via the Veterans Memorial Highway that climbs almost to the 4,867-foot summit. In winter, Whiteface has the greatest vertical drop in the East and hosted the 1980 Olympic alpine events; the rest of the year, the road and the gondola deliver the same enormous view without the skis.
The town has a whimsical side, too. Santa's Workshop, in the hamlet of North Pole, has been a Christmas-themed amusement park since 1949, one of the oldest theme parks in the country, complete with reindeer and a year-round Santa. Nearby, High Falls Gorge sends the Ausable River crashing through a granite chasm on a network of trails and bridges, and the river's West Branch is famous with fly-fishers for its wild trout.
The Adirondacks, One Town At A Time
As the first place in the nation granted "forever wild" protection, the Adirondack Park has kept its small towns woven into the wilderness rather than paved over by it. You can chase Olympic history in Lake Placid, race a canoe out of Saranac Lake, ride the water park and the snowmobile trails in Old Forge, or stand where the Revolution captured its cannons in Ticonderoga. Ten towns, six million acres, and every season worth a return trip: that is the enduring pull of the Adirondack Mountains.
