Description
Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks transports the reader back in time to the days when steamboats, buckboards, and gas lighting were common. Jane and Mark Barlow deliver tales of one-room schools, of ice harvesting, of women who managed households accessible only by boat, of families struck by deaths from tuberculosis or from drowning, of uncontrollable fires and stories of exuberant amusements such as primitive motorboats. People arrived on the first railroad to stretch through the uninhabited Adirondack wilderness and helped establish a thriving community. Early trappers and hunters of the Adirondacks became guides there, eventually establishing permanent camps and hotels. Prosperous businessmen brought their families and built private summer homes. This is the story of Big Moose Lake brought to life by 259 antique postcards and family photographs and previously unpublished memoirs, oral histories, diary entries, and personal correspondence of the men and women who lived in the area.