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The Great Sacandaga Lake

Although traveling around the world, seeing new faces and places, and learning about history is exciting, I believe it's important to alway return to "the nest". Where I grew up, there is also a lot of American, and family, history. One perfect example is my family's house set on the majestic, Great Sacandaga Lake.

The "lake" is actually a reservoir. This part of the Adirondack region of Upstate NY was flooded after the construction of a damn in Conklingville, NY in 1924. The damn was completed in 1930. The reservoir feeds into the Hudson River and is managed by the Hudson River-Black River Regulating District. Interestingly enough, the money used to maintain the damn, reservoir, and surrounding land (which is owned by New York State) mostly comes from the electrical companies that run hydro-electric turbines at the damn.

The damn was completed, and the land inside of the reservoir was flooded in 1930. Many families from the surrounding towns and cities in the Upstate, Adirondack region (and as far as New York City) came to build "camps". These small summer houses were mostly only suitable to live in during the summer season. My family was one of these early immigrants to nature's newest sanctuary in 1934, building a small camp on the south-western border of the lake. Since then, my great grandparents, grandparents, parents, brothers (...you get the point...) have been spending their summers up at this lake, soaking up the sun and peacefulness of a complete escape from "reality". Driving down the country roads to our tiny slice of Heaven, I can't help but feel at ease, like everything I worried about is sapped out of me. It remains my favorite place on Earth.

Cheers, M@

PS: Check out this album and this album on my Picasa site for more pictures.


Sources: Great Sacandaga Lake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sacandaga_Lake (viewed on 17-Oct-08).
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