LOCALadk Magazine

46 Winter 2018 LOCALadk Magazine LOCALadk Chances are, if you've driven Route 30 through the southern Adirondacks you've passed the village of Northville without realizing it. In the town of Northampton there's a bridge that crosses the Great Sacandaga Lake. Driving over it transports you to a Norman Rockwell-esque place filled with histor y, and more than a few surprises. Northville is home to 1,100 people and two lakes: the Northville Lake, called the "Little Lake" by locals, and the aforemen- tioned Great Sacandaga. You'll also find life-long residents and transplants, a revived Northville Central School, the North- ville-Placid Trailhead, and numerous local businesses. The more you peel back the layers, the more you see how dynamic the village is. This small corner of the park has a unique histor y. Accord- ing to the Northville-Northampton Historical Society, "The first permanent settlement took place in the late 1790's. The village was incorporated in 1873." K .B. Shaw, author of Northampton, Then and Now, wrote that Northville grew rap- idly after it was incorporated. When the railroad came along, "the village was the financial hub of the logging industr y and the gateway to the entire area to the north." The Sacandaga Valley was home to farms and families at that time. The Sacandaga River fed into the Hudson causing flooding. Folks downstream in cities like Albany took to the streets in rowboats when its banks would overflow. On the other side of the river from Northville was a popu- lar tourist attraction: Sacandaga Park. Formerly a Methodist camp, the F. J.&G. Railroad purchased the land and created the amusement park to help bolster their revenue. It was bursting with entertainment. To name just a few as- pects of the park, it had: a nine hole golf course, midway, Sport Island, which held popular for baseball games, a bowl- ing alley, roller skating rink, and a bandstand where J. Phil- lip Sousa and E.W. Prouty's Orchestras played. In the "Rustic Theater" well-known actors such as Zasu Pitts performed. Trains arrived from New York City ever yday. Shaw wrote, "At its peak, the park area drew close to 100,000 visitors an- nually." Many Northville residents worked there in the ho- tels—such as High Rock Lodge, The Pines, and the Adiron- dack Inn—and on the midway, running the train, and so on. Village historian Gail Cramer said, "It was a ver y, ver y busy place. Northville took advantage of that. We had nine hotels (maybe six at any one time —some burned down)." She relat- ed that several different trains would arrive each day bring- ing "people from Albany, Schnectedy, Troy, New Jersey…" Unfortunately for the park, and Northville's economy, the state eventually decided to do something about the Hud- son's flooding. In 1930 the Conklingville Dam was completed and the reser voir, now known as the Great Sacandaga Lake, was created. Gail said that the, "Hudson River Regulating Board bought all the land. You didn't have a choice of how much. They just said this what you're going to get. None of it was really fair if you think about it." She went on to say that when she was younger she never fully realized the extent of what hap- pened to the people in the valley. "Back then … people didn't talk about things." Northville's Renaissance By Tamara Johnson

• Cover