Old Forge: Gateway to the Adirondacks is a pictorial history of the transformation of an eighteenth-century lakeside clearing in the wilderness into one of the premier recreational destinations in New York State's six-million-acre Adirondack Park. It is also the story of man's struggle with and passion for the natural world. During the nineteenth century, only a handful of rugged pioneer settlers and sportsmen endured the harrowing, inhospitable twenty-five-mile trek through the foothills of the Adirondack wild forests to the Old Forge lake region. Today, tens of thousands of camp owners and visitors come to share with local residents the magnificent landscapes of the Fulton Chain of Lakes and surrounding hamlets of McKeever, Okara, Thendara, Rondaxe, Big Moose, Eagle Bay, Inlet, and the Stillwater-Beaver River region.