Northville is located right off NY Route 30 in northern Fulton County on the Great Sacandaga Lake. Old NY Route 30 ran through the village center but now NY 30 is routed on the west side of the Great Sacandaga Lake and you must cross on Bridge Street to get there. The present road to Hope, Old Northville Road, is old NY 30, f.y.i. It was both a logging and tourist town for a long time. The Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville R.R. brought tourist up, from the New York Central & Hudson River R.R. mainline in the Mohawk Valley at Fonda, to the Adirondack Inn and other establishments that were built around the tourist-railroad trade in the last half of the 19th Century. Now, that line has been abandoned and part of it is the bike trail in Gloversville. The railroads themselves ran many of the inns and ran special trains for summer vacation, fall foliage and hunting season. Northville is famous for being the starting point for the Northville-Lake Placid Trail hiking trail. (Actually, the trail is NY Route 30 & CR 6 for twelve miles to the actual trail head in Upper Benson.) Northville still has small town charm, but it has a grocery store, pharmacy, hardware and a small department store as well as the many small inns and restaurants catering to the tourist trade. It's main appeal is the Sacandaga Lake, which supports a lot of boating and fishing. See this link on the history of the town, Click here!

A Note About The Great Sacandaga Lake

When they made this huge reservoir they flooded thousands of acres and drowned many homes, farms and a few villages back in the 1920's. So as some recompense, The Hudson River-Black River Flood Commission gave local residents leases on the lake front, even if they lived far away from the lake. Over the years, most of the lake frontage got leased out. Technically, this is in violation of the Adirondack Parks forever wild charter. These lease holdings do have the weight of private property rights. My rule is that if the lake front looks unused and undeveloped(no docks, chairs, fireplaces, etc), it's okay to use for swimming and fishing, as long as you respect things and don't leave any trash, etc. There will be little black & white signs from the Hudson River-Black River Flood Commission marking out the lease holdings. Also, Northville is very stingy about their town beach, restricting it to residents only, unlike the rest of the 'Daks. There is a great spot to access the lake: Go up NY 30 about 1.2 miles, north of the bridge and over the causeway. About 1/2 mile south of the county line, there is a little peninsula just before the water meets the road grade. There is a gate at the end of a dirt track where you can park your car. The water there is fairly shallow, so the boatheads won't be racing there. Also, the spillway south of the village center on Main Street is another good place to fish or swim. Another point of confusion, there is a Sacandaga Lake in Piseco, west of Speculator in Hamilton County. The only thing they have in common is the river that feeds it.