The site was first known as Spirit's Point. Around 1880, the property was purchased by Charles F. Taylor, who made it into an elegant summer resort called Taylor's on Schroon. Taylor was one of a number of businessmen who recognized that the Schroon Lake area was ideal hiking, hunting and fishing country and he began to capitalize on it. Taylor built his hotel in the Schroon Valley, an extremely large and fertile farming area.

The estate was nestled in the rounded crests of mountains, part of a landscape of picturesque valleys that contained both open fields and dense forests. The waters of nine-mile long Schroon Lake lapped the shore of the 327-acre estate, whose guests enjoyed 8,360 feet of lake frontage. Nature lovers among the guests found a wide variety of trees, plants, shrubbery and wild flowers.

When the resort was created, this section of the Adirondacks had just begun to lure summer visitors. The scenery was breathtaking, the atmosphere different and the cuisine at hotels and boarding houses appealing. Travel was leisurely, although not always luxurious, and vacations were long. Plenty of horses, buggies and stagecoaches were available for transportation in addition to train service.

With the turn of the century, the area took on a different aspect. City dwellers seemed to find something in the mountains they could not grasp at seaside resorts. They liked the wide-open spaces ad the many recreational opportunities. There was no crowding in the Adirondacks. Patrons who retuned to the hotels year after year witnessed nearly a century of change, not only in transportation but also in industry. Before the turn of the century, the economic bulwarks of Colonial days disappeared. Lumbering, tanning, potash-burning and lime-making all declined. Farming became less profitable and people outside the industrial area began concentrating on the development of the tourist trade.

By 1900, the area's industrial proclivities had disappeared, never to be regained. The first visitors to Taylor's, no doubt arrived by stagecoach on roads (trails would be more accurate) cut through virgin wilderness. Until about 1882, "real coaches with top railings and spring cushions" as was advertised, trundled through the principal communities and the sparsely settled outlying regions. Horse-cars came in 1885.

About 1900, the village began to improve their streets while the state built better thoroughfares. By 1907, US 9, the main road, once a planked highway from Glens Falls, became a paved turnpike. By 1915, with the introduction of the automobile, more and more people came to the area. The summer resort business boomed.

text by By June Maxam from http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/072906ScaroonManor.html