Admission:
Event: $10.00
Event & Dinner*: $39.95
*Extend your time with us and enjoy a meal in our historic Dining Hall. Click below to register for this event and see the option to add a meal reservation. Subject to availability.
In 1850, the Adirondack region was a blank spot on the map, largely unorganized and uncharted. But, by 1900, the Adirondacks hosted elaborate summer estates for the wealthiest families in America: Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Carnegies, Whitneys and Morgans. While certainly not as lavish as their Newport cottages, Adirondack “Great Camps” such as Great Camp Sagamore still had elegant meals, fully stocked bars and dozens of staff to keep them running. The Adirondacks were a destination for escaping the city and recharging in nature, despite the dusty two-day journey. What was the genesis and what circumstances served as catalyst for this phenomenon?
This presentation by Sagamore’s historian, Dr. Connor Williams, will address these questions, and explore how environmentalism, opulence, industry, inequality, architecture and nature all intersected to produce the Adirondack Park (and the Adirondack vacations) we still connect to today.
Connor Williams - Sagamore Historian
Connor Williams, Great Camp Sagamore’s Historian, has formally trained at institutions throughout the Northeast, including a B.A. in History from Middlebury College, an M.A. in Globalization Studies from Dartmouth College, and a soon-forthcoming Ph.D in History and African American Studies from Yale University. As a public historian, he is pleased to have had many years of teaching and public history experience, including service to the United States Congress.
And as fate would have it (and fittingly appropriate for the Durant's Great Camps program), Connor is also 1/16th Durant; this makes him first cousins, five times removed, with Adirondack Great Camp founder and leading architect William West Durant. On a broad scale and across the board, Connor loves sharing the ever-evolving histories of the Adirondack Great Camps to an ever-expanding group of visitors, members, patrons, and friends.