Not until the 1840s, some 35 years after the formation of the Town of Wells, first in the county, did the first stirrings of settlement come. Lumbermen, with a hunger for the heavy stands of virgin timber, first opened the central part of Hamilton County. Harvesting timber generously, acquiring entire townships off the Totten and Crossfield Purchase, they brought with them sawyers, drivers of wagons, and lumber pilers who witnessed the beauty of the mountains with their shimmering lakes and rushing streams. In 1845 they built the first wooden dam at the foot of Indian Lake, raising the water over five feet, for the easier cruising of logs. Originally, Indian Lake had been three smaller lakes joined by a large stream. In the 1860s, the lumbermen built a second dam that raised the water level 11 feet higher, making a lake over nine miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide at its broadest expanse.

With the lumbermen came the first white settlers. Reuben Rist, Sr. brought his wife, Betsy, and his family who settled Indian Lake. They had been living in North River, Warren Co, NY. They settled in a cabin where the present Route 28 crosses the Indian River. Their team of oxen and two wheeled cart were driven by a helper, Benjamin Cleveland, whose two sons helped cut the road for the cart, and later cleared ten acres of fallow, the first such clearing in the area.

During the 1840s and 1850s other settlers moved westward over the same road that then came from Thirteenth Lake south of North River to the Big Brook section of Indian Lake – the same road that Darwin Parker was to use, carrying his young son Alvin, in a pack-basket . Prominent among them were cousins Gideon G. Porter and Willard W. Locke. Natives of Bennington, VT. The two had gone to Burlington to teach. They then opted for a higher education. Porter became the protégé of a well-know group of physicians. Locke began studying law. Marriages intervened to make for rough going. Marks suffered. Kip Wallace, a lumberman from Fort Edward and cousin of Annis Porter, told them of a beautiful Adirondack location, persuading them to accompany him there the following summer. They decided to make Indian Lake their home.

When on September 7, 1850, Truman Brown made his trudging way through the wilderness from Wells to take a census of the Indian Lake settlement, he found ten families. By 1860, there were 40 families living in 38 log houses. The population numbered 156 men and 99 women for a total of 255.

Indian Lake was at that time a series of smaller communities. The community of Sabael was to the south on the lake’s western side. On the east side of the lake was the Big Brook section. To the east lay the communities of Irishtown and Parkerville. Westward was the community of Cedar River. Central to these groups lay an inviting hilltop, with a major fault--its ground in places was uninvitingly marshy. Undaunted by the marshy ground on the hilltop, they chose the site for School District 8 of the Town of Wells at the corner of the road from Indian River to Cedar River settlements and the road to Wing & Taylor’s sawmill, location of the present Medical Center.

Construction of the one room log schoolhouse was delayed by the farm work and struggle for existence of the citizenry. Minutes of the school on March, 1855 mirror their determination to "meet on the first day of May next to finish the schoolhouse and stick to it till it is done." A subscription was drawn for seven dollars to purchase nails, glass, sash and door hangings

Difficult as it was to establish the schoolhouse, it determined the site of the Village of Indian Lake.

Now came uneasiness and dissatisfaction that the seat of town government was to far removed. The final blow came one day when Sanford Perry’s pig invaded Francis Viele’s garden. The distant justices of the peace could not settle a sharp dispute, so a new town was required. Yet one major obstacle existed. Most of the residents of Indian Lake held their land through the benevolence of the lumbering landowners. To few were taxpayers.

True to his colors, Gideon Porter took a piece of 200 acres he had purchased on July 7, 1851 from Gurnsey and Abby Kennedy and Frederick D. Hodgman and sold portions to 15 of his neighbors. His cousin, Willard Locke, used his legal training to petition successfully for a new town.

The application was granted. "And it is today all I hoped to see it", Locke chuckled. Milo E. Washburn was elected the town’s first supervisor at the initial town meeting at the house of Gideon Porter on February 1, 1859.

Existing records of Hoxie’s store from November 22, 1866 to 1870 give insight into the meager commercial life of the town. On Thursday November 22, 1866, Harvey Bonney was paid $22 for fur and 75 cents for two coons. Justin G. Porter was paid $4 for two minks, and S.J. Porter was paid a dollar for drawing feed and $8 for a trip to 34^th Flow. Other entries show John Mitchell paying 55 cents for dinner and George Lamphere buying a jackknife for $1.23.

To the east, a store had been started by George Griffin. It was later operated by the lumberman, John McGinn. Supplies were brought from Glens Falls by team and lumber wagon. And to the west, in 1863, Richard B. Jackson built his Artic Hotel, later called the Cedar River House. A picturesque white-painted structure, it was of so-called timber frame construction.

About 1870 Milo E. Washburn built the Indian River Hotel and operated a store. By the mid-1870s, the present village center at Indian Lake had begun to develop. The blacksmith Beriah Wilbur had built his hotel on the southeast corner of the roads to Cedar River and to the lake. He also built a home to the east which stands today. Across the street, at the corners, Isaac Kenwell had bought land for $50 and cleared it of trees and built the first village store. Because of the muddy terrain, he had initiated the custom, later followed by others, of building the first floor three steps above the street level, with porches on the entrance and the sides.

It was the opening of Dr. Thomas C. Durant’s Adirondack Railroad in 1871 from Saratoga to North Creek that gave Indian Lake its first generous boost. Durant, with his son William West Durant was primarily interested in the development of Raquette and Blue Mountain Lakes, but Indian Lake was on the route of the stage coaches to these resorts and stops were regularly made at ten local hotels. By the mid 1870s, summer tourists had begun to move into the area.

Milo Washburn’s Indian River Hotel, Richard Jackson’s Artic Hotel and a new resort, William Wakeley’s Hotel at Cedar River Falls, built primarily for the tourist trade, began to cater to the newcomers. British born, Wakeley had sold his North River Hotel and soon was busy hewing six miles of road into Cedar River Falls, where he built a dam, a sawmill and finally his new hotel. He named it Cedar Falls Hotel, but it was generally known as Headquarters. This spot was so remote that each night during the first season bonfires were required to keep the wolves from the tethered oxen. The impressive hotel had a three-story main building, 56 by 26 feet, with two-story wings, each 35 feet long and sported a bar. Before 1878, it was destroyed by fire. Wakeley’s Hotel was rebuilt on a smaller scale, only to go up in flames once more in the summer of 1884.

Indian Lake profited a second time when William West Durant built his lavish Camp Pine Knot and a small community on Long Point at Raquette Lake. His need for a telegraph office caused Indian Lake through which the line of the Adirondack, Lake George and Saratoga Telegraph Company passed, also to receive telegraph service as early as 1880. Harry Linforth, who later went to Blue Mountain Lake in the same capacity, was the first telegrapher.

Under severe financial odds, the Cedar River Mission, organized on August 21, 1859, erected its first Methodist church edifice in 1872 on the parish site of the Indian Lake Fire Department building. Although most of the parishioners were poor, they gave to the extent of their means. Some even mortgaged their homes. The parsonage was completed in 1879.

Improvements in school facilities were seen in 1879, when a larger red painted schoolhouse across the road was built. On September 8, 1888, it was voted to move the schoolhouse across the road and have it shingled. It was the first schoolhouse to occupy the site of the present modern Indian Lake Central School.

By now, several new stores, with dwellings above had been opened on the north side of the street at the village center. Among these were the store of Nelson Ste Marie, a woman’s clothing store of Mrs. Emma Mead, the store of John Ste Marie, and a general store built by T.D. Depan, who originally had started as a harness maker at Indian River. But Indian Lake was to experience new discouragements, hampering its growth. A disastrous fire on April 24, 1891, razed the four stores. Gradually the village was rebuilt.

It had not been the first fire. Hotels appeared particular victims. Beriah Wilbur’s hotel at the corners was destroyed in 1881. It was replaced by the Ordway House. On Sunday, January 11, 1891 the old Central House yielded to consuming flames. On August 6, 1863, the Ordway House was destroyed. On June 21, 1900, the Indian Lake Hotel, conducted by J. H. Wilson & Son, was consumed in flames. On September 15, the general store of T. D. Depan and the drugstore of his son Charles, were gutted. In the summer of 1901, the hotel that had been conducted by Edward McSweeney was burned to the ground.

The year 1909 opened with a second major holocaust in the village center. Gone were the stores of Carlos Hutchins, the dwelling and saloon of Jack Ste. Marie, and the blacksmith shop of George Tripp, along with the majority of poles and wires of the North Creek Telephone Company. The merchants strove to recover.

There was a pause. All seemed poised for 1921 and one of the most devastating years for Indian Lake Village. Now a sizable building, the Indian Lake High School was burned to the ground on Thursday night, January 25, 1921. The tragedy of the school scarcely had been overcome when fourteen buildings in the heart of Indian Lake village were destroyed by a fire, which started in Roscoe Tripp’s Garage on Thursday, November 16. For a time it seemed that the entire village would be lost. The only recourse was to retard the flames by dynamiting Nelson Ste. Marie’s store, site of the present Pine’s hardware. Matt Johnson and Jack Burgey placed the dynamite under the stairs, lit the fuse and rushed from the building. Later, Mattie Ste. Marie’s scissors were found stuck in the roof of Bill McCane’s store next door. Five families were left homeless. In time, the village center was restored.

A new spurt of life was felt when Isaac "Ike" Kenwell, builder of the first village store, sold the hotel he had operated for 15 years on Raquette Lake for $14,.000 and returned to Indian Lake. A lumbermen at heart, he reentered his favorite occupation. In 1886, he bought from Isaac Pinney 75 acres of land just west of the village center and built a sizable house. As an avocation, he raised prize horses. With organization of the Union Bag and Paper Company of Hudson Falls, Ike became its northern representative.

Two new churches came to the village in the 1890s. Their roots ran deep. In the 1870s, several families who had been members of the second Baptist Church of Fort Ann, Washington County, moved to Indian Lake. Here they found others of the sect, including the Gideon Porters. On August 28, 1875, the group organized under the leadership of the Rev. Joseph B. Webster. Worship meetings were held in homes and at the old district schoolhouse on Christian Hill just south of the village. The site chosen for their church edifice was south of the corners on the west side of Lake Avenue. Formal dedication took place July 18, 1892. The parsonage was established on May 18, 1910 when George and Meta McCane sold them their nearby home and half-acre lot.

Before 1880, transient Catholic priests representing the Diocese of Ogdensburgh were visiting the town. The first organized church was incorporated as St. Gabriel’s Church of Indian Lake on November 25, 1881. Masses were said, somewhat irregularly, at the home of John McGinn, the Canadian Irishman, who had settled at Indian Lake as northern agent for the lumbermen, who later became Finch, Pruyn & Company.

Stronger organization was required. St Mary’s Church of Indian Lake was incorporated on August 24, 1895. The church edifice was built in 1895 on lower Main Street and enlarged in 1928. Rev. F.C. Hatch of Olmsteadville held regular services at the church from the close of World War I until 1958. At that point Rev. James M. Flattery was assigned as first resident pastor. The congregation had outgrown the older wooden church. Land westward in the village was purchased from Charles H. Wilson and Mrs. Ethel Tripp and an attractive masonry church was built. The first mass was celebrated there on Sunday, May 31, 1959. In September 1959, the seven room rectory was built next door.

In fall, 1948, a fourth church became part of the community under the leadership of the Rev. Fred Howenstein. The foundation for the Independent Baptist Church was built in a beautiful location along the Sabael Road on Christian Hill. The nearby parsonage was completed in 1975.

Two blacksmith shops in town came to prominence. George H. Tripp, who came from Stony Creek in 1880, was regarded as an artist in blacksmithing. He occupied a shop on the south side of the street at the present site of Marty’s Hotel, later moving it across the street. A community leader, George held nearly every office in the town and from 1892 to 1896 served as Sheriff of Hamilton County. His shop was destroyed in the village fire of 1909. It was rebuilt as a garage since automobiles were coming to town. (Nelson Ste. Marie bought the first automobile owned at Indian Lake on Monday, May 17, 1909.)

It was again rebuilt after the fire of 1921, and ownership changed hands between Roscoe Tripp and Edward Brooks, and Carl Montgomery and Howard Armstrong. Montgomery purchased the garage in 1959, selling it to McConkey in 1971. It is now the village’s Chevrolet garage operated by Mike and Helen Townsend.

Down the street to the east was the blacksmith shop of George Morehouse, who came from Johnsburgh. Morehouse listed himself as a locksmith. In 1905 he served as a mechanic. Morehouse served the town as supervisor from 1905 to 1910, and the shop was taken over by Allie Hunt, formerly of Raquette Lake. It was torn down and a hardware store erected in its place. Roy Savage, a later owner, moved the hardware business to the location of the present hardware store built by Nelson Ste Marie, and presently operated by the Pine family. Gilbert Spring took over the Savage store and had it enlarged. Spring died August 8, 1962, and Spring’s General Store has since been operated by his widow, Ruth Spring.

All of the larger village hotels have succumbed to fire. The last of three hotels at the corners, the Commercial Hotel, burned in January 1917. Yet two smaller inns remained.

John Ste. Marie early had operated his tavern next to the Tripp Garage. It was destroyed in the first village fire in 1891 and was rebuilt. In May 1914, Ste. Marie sold the business to Frank Pelon and moved to Gloversville. Frank added the hotel. Henry Farrell took over the business on June 1, 1927. Later came Franklin and Marie Savarie Farrell, who acquired the bar from the old Nassau Inn of Princeton NJ complete with inscribed pewter mugs of many former under graduates of the Ivy League college. The Farrells ultimately sold the property to Richard and Madeline Scully. The Scullys had converted the inn since to a large restaurant, taproom, and liquor store.

William Carroll constructed Marty’s Hotel at the turn of the century. The west side was used for the family’s home. The east side was a meat market until the 1920s,when the Carrolls bought the Frank Washburn place at Sabael and operated the Lake View House. The establishment was occupied and operated as a small hotel for many years by several parties, including the Francis Farrells. It was then acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Martin Harr, Jr. and operated by Mrs. Harr. Martin Harr, Jr became the village postmaster. The present proprietor is their son, Walter Harr.

The Indian River Company built the modern masonry dam to maintain the level of the Hudson River in 1898 under an agreement with the Forest Preserve Board. The present large Indian Lake was now complete. Summer visitors began to increase. Summer hotels and boarding houses sprang up on the road along the west side of the lake. Early in the decade, Hosea G. Locke built his well-remembered Locke House. Two miles farther down the road, George Griffin opened the Griffin Indian Lake House. Later, James and Ellen Porter McCormick built the Indian Lake House at Sabael. Olive Carroll ran the Lake View House.

The Town of Indian Lake was significantly enlarged in 1915. Since its beginning, travel in and out of the village had been difficult over the roughest of roads toward North Creek, Warrensburg and Glens Falls. The original track had detoured by way of Thirteenth Lake, south of North River, to enter Indian Lake’s Big Brook section. Later, the road took a more direct course toward North River and North Creek. Despite its use by stages, it remained in abominable condition.

The Indian Lakers were desperate for a suitable road to get them out of the wilderness. It would have to pass through Essex County’s Town of Minerva. But the people of Minerva were not going to build such a road to accommodate the residents of a neighboring town. Only a few of Minerva’s residents lived along the old road; its town center was to the north. In complete frustration, the Indian Lake town fathers had considered building a road by private subscription far to the westward in their county, to the railroad station at Raquette Lake.

Then, a new concept developed. Why not try swapping land with Essex County for a strip of land between Indian Lake Village and North Creek on which they could build a road of their own? The state of New York agreed. In 1915, the land was exchanged. The Town of Minerva was delighted to get rid of this expensive obstacle. The Town of Indian Lake was overjoyed to receive the land, laughing that they had gained their objective in exchange for pure wilderness land in the mountains to the North. Both were satisfied. To be sure, it put a large jog in the formerly straight boundaries of the counties, but this was little compared to the bumps that would be removed from the odious highway.

Significantly, the modern highway to Lake Pleasant was completed in 1955. Held up for years because it was to cross state land, the paved road made a direct route for the three towns at the northern part of the county to their county seat at Lake Pleasant. Perhaps more important, it caused the village of Indian Lake to become a communications center and the most centrally located village in Hamilton County. It also was instrumental in bringing the Hamilton County residence of the New York State Department of Transportation in 1969 and the Indian Lake Maintenance Center of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in 1974.

The newly formed Fire Company was soon to undergo a severe test. The shrill fire siren brought the Indian Lake firemen from their beds on September 14, 1943. The old wooden Town Hall, built in 1892, was a total loss. The town rented William McCane’s store for its offices until the modern Town Hall was built on Pelon Road below the Health Center in 1982.

Community improvements continued at a rapid pace, with telephones in 1907 and electrical service in 1932. The dam forming Lake Byron, later Adirondack Lake, was completed in 1932. The dam forming Lake Abanakee was built in 1951, providing the community with its third large man-made lake..

Winter recreational opportunities developed with the construction of a community ski slope and lift in 1957. In 1968, a new public beach on Lake Abanakee replaced the original one on Cedar River. A bathhouse was constructed in 1969.

Wakely Lodge, built in 1918 burned in 1958 and was replaced by the present lodge, farther off the Cedar River Road. It is owned by Richard and Ethel Wakely Fletcher. Lake Fletcher was made next to the lodge in 1967 and was stocked with native speckled trout and Canadian red trout. A nine-hole golf course was opened in August 1972.

Today, Indian Lake is a combination of the old and the new, with modern structures predominating. Seeking older landmarks, one first must look to the oldest remaining commercial building---Ste Marie’s Store, formerly run by Pete Farrell, is now home to Hutchin’s Floor Covering. The store has been in continuous operation on the southwest village corner for over 125 years. The Town Library authorized December 4, 1967 in the Allen Brook’s house, one of the village’s oldest houses is now the Indian Lake Museum. The Town Library is a new building on Pelon Road with some major construction being done in 2001. The house built by Beriah Wilbur, its west wing used as a post office after the burning of his hotel, has been torn down to make way for a Stewart’s Shop.. Next to the Firehall was the house presumably built in the 1880s by Walton Hutchins, and later occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Grover Wilson. It was sold to the Richard Scullys in 1971. This house, also torn down, is a part of the Stewart’s Shop location. There are other residents with distant past.

After the loss by fire of the Commercial Hotel at the corners in January 1917, Edward Brooks built his house there in 1924. It was used as a variety store by Gretchen Fish, a business continued by Beecher and Eleanor King. It then became an arcade, run by Peter Locke, primarily for the youngsters of the town. It is now the Pick-it Patch a variety store and the Ice Cream Garden.

The original outlying communities, for which the present village became the center, are now, thanks to automobiles, a part of Indian Lake community---a move perhaps made more meaningful when the district schools were closed and the modern Indian Lake School began to serve the entire area.

Present day Indian Lake is the recreational center of Hamilton County. The visitor can take a poignant walk through Little Canada, where once lived the French Canadian squatters whose land ultimately was taken over by the state. He can climb rockfaced Snowy Mountain or hike to Little Moose Lake, where Sabael’s grandson Elijah Camp, once kept a hunting and fishing lodge. He can scale Chimney Mountain and examine its ice caves, encrusted in every season. He can search for the family graveyard in Parkerville, enshrouded by the encroaching forest, its location unknown even by contemporary family members. Or if he chooses more difficult tasks, he can search for the lost lead mine, where Sabael used to sneak silently into the forest to get metal for making his bullets. The location was Sabael’s greatest secret but its discovery and subsequent loss once more has been claimed by at least two groups of searchers.

With all its obstacles and discouragements, Indian Lake has grown into Hamilton County’s largest town, with a total permanent population of 1410. Conveniences and quaintness are joined in the village where Ste. Marie’s Store still serves its customers, where a supermarket, the post office, snack bars, summer restaurants, the hardware store, (with a little bit of everything), bank, lumberyard, medical center, library museum and a town hall are close at hand. The quaintness holds its own attractions. The convenience allows more time for recreation on lakes and trails. There is hunting and fishing. It is a center for snowmobilers and cross-country skiers in season. White water rafting is a growing recreation in the spring and the summer.

Indian Lake essentially is a capsule history of the hard work and hardships that always have accompanied mountain living. It is deep in the Adirondack heartland.