A Saratoga Story Told in The Grand Irish Seanchaí Storytelling Tradition  |  Part 4

Written by Eamon Ó’Coileáin (Ed Collins)

As more elegant hotels and resorts were being built in the Adirondacks in the late 19th century, more and more wealthy Americans summered there. But, as we know, there is wealth, and then there are the “glittering elites.” The Irish have a saying, “Cut your coat according to your cloth.” These “Gilded Americans” traveled to Saratoga and then into the Adirondacks, indeed cutting their own coats according to their luxurious batts of cloth: they lived the “Great Camp” lifestyles. The “Great Camp Magnates,” following in the footsteps laid down by Thomas and William West Durant, enjoyed their opulent summer Adirondack lifestyles sustained by Irish domestic help, caretakers and wilderness guides. Alfred Gwynne and Margaret Emerson Vanderbilt’s Great Camp Sagamore, lavishly expanded after purchasing it from William Durant, was arguably one of the most illustrious. At Camp Sagamore, the Vanderbilts relied on Richard and Margaret (née Callahan) Collins, both of Irish heritage, to maintain and ensure year-round order, organization and entertainment for the family and their guests. The Collinses saved enough from their years of service to the Vanderbilts to earn their own “Failte” sign – they purchased The Duryea Camp on Blue Mountain Lake and renamed it The Hedges, still welcoming guests under different management after more than 100 years.

North Creek Railway Depot Museum today.

Photo by Ed Collins

With railroads, roads, lodging and resorts being built, and the advent of the automobile in the early decades of the 20th century, the Adirondacks were attracting more and more “vacationers” who “motored” their way into the mountains rather than travel by trains that all started with Thomas Durant’s Adirondack Company Rail Road leaving from Saratoga Springs. The Irish played an important role in promoting our state’s great mountains, valleys, lakes and streams for everyone to enjoy. In 1871, Irish immigrants John and Mary Cunningham started a family on a farm near Chestertown. Son Patrick James “P. J.” Cunningham grew up to become an Adirondack Fire Warden and then one of the first Adirondack District Forest Rangers, working the woodlands until retiring his ranger boots in 1940 at age 69. While serving as a forestry Fire Warden, P. J. established Cunningham’s General Store in North Creek in 1909.

Vintage “Snow Train” Poster. Photo courtesy of
The North Creek Railway Depot Museum.

Curiously, P. J. began turning the store’s barrel staves into skis and lengths of leather into bindings. True to the old Irish crofter proverb that “you’ll never plough a field by turning it over in your head,” P. J. turned his ideas into actions selling skis, bindings, poles, and winter gear and thus helped foster the sport of skiing in, and attract winter recreationists to, the Adirondacks. P. J.’s descendants still own and operate the business today as Cunningham’s Ski Barn, believed to be the oldest continuously operating ski shop in America. By adding skiing in the winter to canoeing, fishing, hiking, camping and hunting during the warmer seasonal months, the Adirondacks had become a year-round destination.

Today, New York State’s Adirondack Park, covering an area larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Great Smokies National Parks combined, welcomes millions of visitors every year. These days, vacationers traveling into The Park can motor on The Adirondack Northway, a main artery that courses along the shoulders of Saratoga Springs. Thomas Durant’s Adirondack Company Rail Road eventually became the Adirondack Railroad and then the Adirondack Branch of the D&H Railroad in 1902, with the tracks carrying passengers and, at various times, freight cars hauling Adirondack almandine garnets, the world’s largest, out of North Creek.

P.J. Cunningham being thanked for 50 years of Forestry Service. Photo courtesy of
The North Creek Railway Depot Museum, donated by the Lussi Family.

In the 1930s, the rail line was affectionately known as “The Snow Train” carrying thousands of skiers from Saratoga Springs to North Creek and its Ski Bowl, the precursor to Gore Mountain Ski Center, now the largest ski operation in New York State, all as a result of Durant’s original vision for opening up the Adirondacks to “Wilderness Experiences.” His tracks helped in America’s World War II efforts by hauling titanium dioxide out of Tahawus for military purposes. After the war and until 1989, freight trains continued to cart titanium from Tahawus and garnet out of the Adirondacks while intermittent passenger service carried visitors between the city of “Health, History and Horses” and North Creek.

After 1989, Durant’s original Adirondack Company Rail Road tracks lay dormant until used as part of the scenic sightseeing Saratoga & North Creek Railway, which ran from 2011 to 2018 when all locomotive rail service again ceased operation. In a welcoming throwback to the 19th century when bicycle peddle power was a popular Saratoga Springs and North Creek mode of getting around locally, Durant’s tracks at North Creek are now ridden by vacationers seeking  to  capture  the  “Adirondack  Experience” by peddling Revolution Rail Company rail bikes out of North Creek along the Hudson River through forest canopies and on trestle tracks over water. The railroad baron’s North Creek Train Station still stands today, over 150 years after its opening, as The North Creek Railway Depot Museum.

History perhaps has not been as kind to Durant as his descendants might have liked it to be, based on his many alleged financial transgressions. However, Dr. Thomas Clark Durant’s ambitious endeavor to build a gateway rail line from Saratoga Springs into the vast northern wilderness did have a major positive impact, eventually transforming The Adirondack Mountains into a great and memorable “Wilderness Experience” destination for millions.

Read Simply Saratoga Fall, due out in September for more of this great tale!