ABOUT MOSS LEDGE CAMP, EST. 1898

Moss Ledge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moss_Ledge) is a privately owned Adirondack Great Camp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Camps) designed by William Lincoln Coulter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_L._Coulter) in 1898 for Isabel Ballantine. Ballantine was the granddaughter of Newark beer baron, John Holmes Ballantine.  At the turn of the century in 1900, Ballantine Beer was larger than Anheuser-Busch and later went into decline.

The camp was Coulter's first commission after moving to Saranac Lake in hope of a cure for his tuberculosis. The camp is located on Upper Saranac Lake near two other Coulter Great Camps, Prospect Point Camp and Eagle Island Camp.  When originally built, there was no road to the camp and it was accessible only by boat.  All of the building were constructed by a crew who lived on the property and who milled the logs on the property.  When we were renovating the Redfield building, our workers located a time capsule in the wall -- a pack of cigarettes from the late 1800s along side the signatures of two of the workers left behind on paper.

As noted in the original camp log books, the first guest when the camp opened in 1898 was Teddy Roosevelt, just before being elected the Governor of New York and later the Vice President and President of the United States.   Teddy Roosevelt, then the Vice President, was back in the Adirondacks when President McKinley was asassinated in 1901:

"When Roosevelt descended Mt. Marcy on September 13, [1901],  a carriage was waiting to bring him to the nearest train station at North Creek, thirty-five miles away.   Roosevelt arrived at North Creek just before dawn on Saturday, September 14, 1901.  It was then he learned that William McKinley had died a few hours earlier at 2:15 am.  Without delay, the new president boarded a train for Albany and later another bound for Buffalo."   -Teddy Roosevelt Inaugural Website  

The name is taken from a nearby rocky, moss-covered ledge that still is a notable feature of the shoreline. The camp consists of a main lodge, guest house, dining hall, boat house, and, some distance from the rest, a tea house built on a promontory overlooking the lake. The buildings are constructed of unpeeled logs; some are notched-corner style log cabins, others are shingles over plank walls. The style is similar to nearby Camp Pinebrook, another Coulter design.

The camp was donated to Syracuse University in 1948 and bought by the Pollack family in 1972 and by the Lincoln family in 2016.

In 1986, the camp was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  In 2018,  Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH) awarded its Adirondack Preservation Award to the Lincolns for the restoration and rehabilitation of the historic camp. 

The Adirondack Park was created in 1892 and is 6,000,000 acres, about 1/2 private and 1/2 public.  

https://visitadirondacks.com/about/adirondack-park.     It is the largest National Historic Landmark in the United States, covering an area larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and the Great Smokies National Parks combined.