7 Offbeat Upstate New York Towns To Visit

A plain Ticonderoga storefront houses a full-scale replica of the original "Star Trek" bridge. That is a fairly ordinary day in Upstate New York. Lake Placid has a coaster that drops down an old Olympic bobsled track. A grain silo in the Catskills moonlights as the world's largest kaleidoscope. The towns up here have a real soft spot for the strange. The fun is figuring out which one is hiding what.

Ticonderoga

A full-scale recreation of the original "Star Trek" set fills a building at 112 Montcalm Street. Local resident James Cawley built the bridge, transporter room, and sickbay from copies of the show's original 1960s blueprints. He opened the set to public tours in 2016 under a license from CBS. History reaches back two centuries at the other end of town. On May 10, 1775, the Green Mountain Boys captured Fort Ticonderoga in one of the Revolution's first offensive victories. The fort operates as a museum today on the shore of Lake Champlain near the Vermont line.

Mount Defiance rises just south of the fort and looks down on it from about 850 feet. Below, the La Chute River drops through a series of waterfalls on its way to Lake Champlain. The La Chute River Trail follows that channel past the sites of the mills it once powered.

Lake George

Lake George carries the nickname Queen of American Lakes, a 32-mile body of water at the southeastern edge of the Adirondacks. Grand resort hotels lined its southern shore through the 19th century. The Sagamore on Green Island has taken guests since 1883. A few miles south in Queensbury, Six Flags Great Escape houses the Comet. The 95-foot wooden coaster came from Crystal Beach, Ontario, before its 1994 reopening here.

The hiking starts close to the shoreline. The Pinnacle is a short, steep climb to a lookout over the lake. Longer routes head into the Black Mountain Range above the eastern shore, where Black Mountain itself tops out near 2,600 feet. Every September, the Adirondack Balloon Festival sends more than 100 hot-air balloons over the region. Ten miles south in Glens Falls, the Hyde Collection hangs works by Picasso and van Gogh inside a 1912 mansion.

Woodstock

Woodstock gave its name to the 1969 music festival, even though the concert actually happened about 60 miles southwest in Bethel. The town leaned into the legacy anyway and built a year-round arts scene around it. The Woodstock Playhouse stages concerts and theater through the season. The Center for Photography draws working photographers with rotating exhibitions and workshops.

Mount Tremper, about 20 miles west, holds the Kaatskill Kaleidoscope. The 56-foot device fills a converted grain silo at the Emerson Resort and projects a light-and-sound show overhead that Guinness has recognized as the world's largest kaleidoscope. East toward Saugerties, Opus 40 spreads across 6.5 acres of hand-laid bluestone that the sculptor Harvey Fite built on an abandoned quarry over nearly four decades.

Cooperstown

Cooperstown calls itself America's hometown, mostly on the strength of the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum on Main Street. The Plaque Gallery lines its walls with bronze tablets for more than 350 inductees, from Babe Ruth to Ichiro Suzuki. Two blocks of the same walkable downtown hold the Fenimore Art Museum, known for folk and Native American collections, plus contemporary shows at The Art Garage.

At the edge of town, Rail Explorers sends pedal-powered railbikes down a retired line beside the Susquehanna River. The 8-mile round trip passes farmland and woods on tracks that no longer carry trains.

Lake Placid

Few offbeat New York towns can point to a genuine Olympic legacy. Lake Placid hosted the Winter Games in 1932 and again in 1980. The 1980 tournament produced the Miracle on Ice, when the US men's hockey team beat the Soviet Union on February 22 on the way to a gold medal. The Lake Placid Olympic Museum displays equipment, medals, and footage from both Games.

Right downtown, a 2.7-mile path loops Mirror Lake, the smaller lake fronting Main Street. A spur off that trail climbs Cobble Hill for a view over the larger Lake Placid. Outside town at Mt. Van Hoevenberg, the Cliffside Coaster reaches about 7,000 feet, the longest mountain coaster in North America. It follows the route of the 1980 Olympic bobsled run down the slope.

Old Forge

Old Forge works as the western gateway to Adirondack Park, the six-million-acre mix of public and private land that holds the 46 High Peaks and around 3,000 lakes and ponds. Enchanted Forest Water Safari, the largest water theme park in the state, operates on the edge of the village. McCauley Mountain's chairlift carries skiers up the slope in winter and foliage riders in fall.

The quirk shows up in late June, when residents open their private backyards for the Secret Garden Tour, a one-weekend look at plots the public never sees. For a slower way into the woods, the Adirondack Railroad departs the Thendara station beside Old Forge for excursions through the surrounding forest.

Saratoga Springs

Saratoga Springs built its name on mineral water that comes straight out of the ground. Public mineral springs bubble up across town and inside Saratoga Spa State Park, where the Roosevelt Baths still offer soaking treatments fed by the carbonated springs. The same park grounds hold the Saratoga Performing Arts Center and the National Museum of Dance, billed as the country's only museum devoted to professional dance.

A thatch-roofed Tiki Tour boat cruises Saratoga Lake, serving food and drinks aboard. A short drive south in Stillwater, Saratoga National Historical Park preserves the ground where the 1777 Battles of Saratoga forced a British surrender that brought France into the war.

The Stranger Side of Upstate New York

These towns built their oddities out of local raw material. Cooperstown turned an old rail line along the Susquehanna into a pedal-powered railbike route. Saratoga Springs piped its carbonated springs into the Roosevelt Baths. Near Woodstock, Harvey Fite spent nearly 37 years stacking bluestone from a dead quarry into the Opus 40 sculpture. Mount Tremper packed a kaleidoscope into a farm silo. The common thread is reuse, each spot repurposing something already standing rather than importing a theme from elsewhere.