Glimmerglass Historic District

Otsego Lake, a long, narrow glacial lake in Otsego County, New York, anchors a 15,000-acre district that includes the village of Cooperstown and parts of three surrounding towns. Ridgelines on all sides frame the landscape, and the area contains farmsteads, lakeside estates, camps, docks, boathouses, gardens, monuments, museums and a dense village center. Land patterns trace to eighteenth-century patent surveys, with long strip lots running from shore to ridge on the west and north. The area is tied to novelist James Fenimore Cooper, whose Leatherstocking Tales and residence drew summer visitors from the mid-nineteenth century. Resort development was slow because of poor roads and limited lodging. The Clark family later bought and reforested much of the east shore and consolidated farms and estates, keeping the scenery that attracted early tourists. The district replaces the earlier Cooperstown Historic District listing and includes Hyde Hall, an early nineteenth-century estate house, with a period of significance from about 1785 to 1949.