Lake Placid

Twenty-five years ago, Lake Placid was a quiet mountain village best known to avid hikers and skiers and to those who had attended the 1932 Winter Olympics. All that changed in a heartbeat with the coming of the 1980 Winter Games, which put the place on the map.

Today, almost everyone who visits the Adirondacks [1] visits Lake Placid, which centers on one long and sometimes very congested Main Street running alongside the lake. The village draws almost as many visitors because of its upscale shops and restaurants [2] as it does for its lonely, mountainous countryside. Even the former Olympic sites [3], now managed by the Olympic Regional Development Authority, have become popular tourist attractions.

One of the more confusing things about Lake Placid is that it’s not located on Lake Placid, but on Mirror Lake [4]. Lake Placid, a much larger body of water, lies to the immediate north of the village.