Why Brant Lake?
Alison’s mother has been Summering in Brant Lake for over 60 years. The family carried on that tradition from the last day of the school year until the first day back, making Brant Lake a central part of Alison and her siblings lives. Several years ago, David and Alison bought their own camp on the lake, where they spend the warm seasons with friends and family. It has been a source of happiness, peacefulness and fun for us and our guests. We can’t wait to share it with you. Please try and schedule time to explore the Adirondacks on your journey.
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Since the mid-1880s, Brant Lake has been a popular fishing and hunting area among wealthy visitors, including Theodore Roosevelt. Circa 1900, several hotels began catering to these wealthy visitors. Summer camps for youth were established around the same time.
Brant Lake Camp was incorporated by R.B. Gerstenzang, J.E. Eberly, and John F. Malloy in 1917. The camp was featured in Town & Country magazine.
Brant Lake Lodge was one of oldest hotels in the area of the Adirondacks; it burned down in April 1925.
Brant Lake has had a post office and postmaster since at least 1892. The seat of government of the Town of Horicon is located in the hamlet.
Geography
The hamlet is just east of the Adirondack Northway, accessible via interchange 25. NY Route 8 traverses the hamlet. The hamlet is named for the eponymous lake which it surrounds. Brant Lake's ZIP code is 12815. The central part of the hamlet is located to the south of the lake, but ZIP Code 12815 extends to the northern end of the lake and ultimately to the border between Warren and Essex counties. Several summer camps and vacation homes, as well as homes of those who live in the hamlet year-round, line the perimeter of the lake, especially along the eastern and northern shores. The summer camps include Brant Lake Camp, Point O' Pines Camp, Pilgrim Camp, and the Curtis S. Read Scout Reservation.
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The Adirondack Park is a part of New York's Forest Preserve in northeastern New York, United States. The park was established in 1892 for “the free use of all the people for their health and pleasure”, and for watershed protection. The park's boundary roughly corresponds with the Adirondack Mountains. Unlike most state parks, about 52 percent of the land is privately owned inholdings. State lands within the park are known as Forest Preserve. Land use on public and private lands in the park is regulated by the Adirondack Park Agency. This area contains 102 towns and villages, as well as numerous farms, businesses and an active timber-harvesting industry. The year-round population is 132,000, with 200,000 seasonal residents. The inclusion of human communities makes the park one of the great experiments in conservation in the industrialized world. The Forest Preserve was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963.
The park's 6.1 million acres (2.5×106 ha) include more than 10,000 lakes, 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, and a wide variety of habitats including wetlands and an estimated 200,000 acres of old-growth forests.
History
For the history of the area before the formation of the park, see History of the Adirondack Mountains.
Early tourism
Before the 19th century, the wilderness was viewed as desolate and forbidding. As Romanticism developed in the United States, the view of wilderness became more positive, as seen in the writings of James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The 1849 publication of Joel Tyler Headley's Adirondack; or, Life in the Woods triggered the development of hotels and stage coach lines. William Henry Harrison Murray's 1869 wilderness guidebook depicted the area as a place of relaxation and pleasure rather than a natural obstacle.
Financier and railroad promoter Thomas Clark Durant acquired a large tract of central Adirondack land and built a railroad from Saratoga Springs to North Creek. By 1875, there were more than two hundred hotels in the Adirondacks including Paul Smith's Hotel. About this time, the Great Camps were developed
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