Of Saratoga Springs, Thomas Durant,
Railroads, The Great Camps and The Irish

Eagle Bay Hotel, c.1900-1906

Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.

Brothers Timothy, Eugene and Cornelius Murphy, all born in Ireland, arrived in Chestertown in the 19th century, joining an energetic Irish community. All three brothers engaged in the hospitality “Fáilte” trade, establishing the Murphy Brothers Hotel in Wevertown, the Loon Lake House, the Hotel Atateka, and Murphy’s Friend’s Lake Inn, the last still welcoming guests today without the Murphy family namesake attached to it. In a memoir of family history, descendant James Murphy commented that so many summer city boarders came to these hotels that “. . . they liked to call Friends Lake a body of water surrounded by Murphys.” As well, in Saratoga County’s neighbor Warren County, Irene and James McVeigh opened McVeigh House at Loon Lake as a boarding dwelling, a wee bit later turning it into a first-class hotel. John Conley was an early investor in the grand Ondawa House in Schroon Lake, later to be purchased and operated by the O’Conner brothers. In the year that Thomas Durant completed his Saratoga to North Creek Adirondack Company Rail Road, 1871, Irishman John McInerny, anticipating the benefits of Durant’s Adirondack train line, erected his hotel in North Creek, The American Hotel, attracting north country visitors well into the 20th century.

Irish Corkman Patrick Moynehan (yes, the Irish he with an “e”) became known as “The Lumber King of the Adirondacks,” owning more than 30,000 acres of timberlands and venturing into the hospitality business. He “welcomed” travelers to his Adirondack Hotel on Long Lake, installing another Irishman Patrick McSweeney to manage it. Moynehan, with his brother Dennis, established the Eagle Bay Hotel Company on Fourth Lake, and later extended his hotel ownership to include The Adirondack House in North Creek. Charles O’Hara helped attract visitors to The Fulton Chain of lakes by building the Inlet Inn on the channel to Fifth Lake. On Raquette Lake, the Bryeres built the grand hotel Brightside, expanding it to a major resort of cabins and buildings on over 100 acres. Matriarch Mary Bryere, nee Gooley of Irish lineage, was said to be able to “swing an ax and pull a crosscut saw on a par with any man” in helping to build the original hotel log by log.

Oscar Wilde in his 1882 American Tour
“Lecture Attire.” Photo: Napoleon Sarony,
courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1882, celebrated Irish wit, poet and playwright Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde traveled to Saratoga Springs to stage two notable lectures on a year-long American Tour. From Saratoga, he ventured far north into the Adirondacks to rest under the “Fáilte” sign of the Chases’ Loon Lake House. The Irish-American Chase family’s eventual “hospitality” footprint became so large it had its own general store, post office, one of the first Adirondack golf courses, an elegant train station, three hotels and numerous cottages for more than 800 guests on 4,000 acres, “welcoming” the social elite of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. through Saratoga Springs. Its only current remaining gem, “The Irish House,” still “welcomes” guests today.

North Creek Railway Station sign.
Photo by Ed Collins.

Aiden Lair Lodge

Then, of course, ‘tis story of Michael Cronin that is forever etched in Adirondack history. Michael and Lilian Cronin, both descended from Irish immigrants, ran the well-known Adirondack inn and stagecoach stop Aiden Lair. In the pitch-black first hours of September 14, 1901, Mike hitched up his Morgan horses to a surrey and, with a vacationing Vice President Teddy Roosevelt, who the previous day was hiking Mt. Marcy, dashed in record “Midnight Ride” time through a tempest on rain-slicked Adirondack rutted earthen roads to Durant’s original North Creek train station to a waiting Adirondack Railroad, the rechristened offspring of Durant’s original Adirondack Company Rail Road, where “T. R.” learned he was now president: President William McKinley lay dead in Buffalo from an assassin’s bullet. Michael Cronin’s great grandson, also Michael, reveals that, “What Cronin knew, and did not tell Roosevelt, was that by the time T. R. arrived at Aiden Lair, a call had come to Mike Cronin informing him that McKinley had died, that T. R. was now President, and that Cronin damn well better be careful with his passenger.” A special Adirondack Railroad train had been dispatched from Saratoga Springs to North Creek on the late Thomas Durant’s original tracks to take Roosevelt back to Saratoga where he transferred to a line to Albany and from there for a journey to Buffalo where McKinley lay deceased and T. R. was sworn in as the 26th President.

Read Simply Saratoga Summer, due out in June for more of this great tale!