Lake Carey

Lake Carey is a summer community of several hundred families in the Endless Mountains of northeast Pennsylvania. Lake Carey’s story begins in 1874, when the narrow-gauge Montrose Railroad began service to the 262-acre glacial lake named Marcy’s Pond. Cottages with gingerbread porches sprang up almost overnight; hotels, steamboats, and picnic groves swiftly followed. As World War I drew near, the renamed lake and its community were a fixture on the regional map. Their resort status was short-lived, however, as the changing American family and the advent of the automobile began an inexorable transformation. First to go were the crowded steamboats and excursion trains. A new, quieter era began, dominated by rental cottages and—at Lake Carey—regattas. Through vintage photographs, Lake Carey documents how the people who gathered here retained their strong sense of community born of the shared privilege of a place at the lake and the pleasures of summer pastimes.