It must have been wonderful.
After 5 weekdays and a half-Saturday of cutting deerskin gloves, humping barrels of tanning chemicals, or scraping the hair off hides, Sacandaga Park was just 25 cents and a 45 minute train ride from the pavements of Gloversville. Here a nickel or dime bought a ride on the carousel or roller coaster high as a three story house. There were donkey rides on wooded trails, and a giant Panama Slide from the cliff above the Sacandaga River lagoon. There was even a "Mush Pit" where bent wicker benches on secluded paths offered so much more privacy than the crannys of a wooden milltown tenement.
Sacandaga Park got its unlikely start as a summer temperance tent camp just after the Civil War. By the 1870s, a rail line connected the Village of Northville on the opposite bank of the Sacandaga to the City of Gloversville. The railroad added a platform and laid out a picnic ground at Sacandaga Park. It reportedly took a short time for the Germanic Friendship Society picnickers and their lager barrels to rout the temperance campers.
The railroad expanded its holdings and built cabins, followed by a magnificent inn which mixed high Victorian and traditional Adirondack style in 1889.