We enjoyed a day of driving around this beautiful area stopping frequently for more fall photos.
Several of these lakes have islands available for camping. Access is only by boat.
The town of Tupper Lake once had a thriving Jewish population. The synagogue is rarely used now. We went into Beth Joseph Cemetery where we found headstones going back to the 1860s.
In the late 1880s as tuberculosis spread through the eastern states. the town of Saranac Lake became known as a destination for treatment. Patients came to the town for its clean air, considered essential for curing TB. Himself a victim of the disease, Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau came to the small town in hope that its clean air would ease his condition. He went on to develop a treatment regime that attracted patients from throughout the East Coast.
A key approach to a cure was bed rest. This is the cure chair used by patients.
The Adirondack Cottage Sanitorium, or Saranac Lake Tuberculosis Lab opened in 1882 and is now a museum chronicling both the famous patients who were there and the treatments they took.
Among those who were treated by Trudeau were Thea LaGuardia, wife of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, the President of the Philippines, Bela Bartok and Zelman Moses, better known as William Morris of the theatrical agency. Robert Lewis Stevenson came for treatment but Trudeau found he did not have TB. (More about RLS in a later blog). The sanitorium was proud to be open to all, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and European. They bragged of welcoming anyone from gangster to shopgirl. For all his efforts, Trudeau did not find a cure. Today one in six people throughout the world have TB.
You noted the name Trudeau. The doctor was a distant cousin of the family of Prime Ministers of Canada. He was also the great-grandfather of cartoonist Garry Trudeau.
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