🎙️ 🚨 Steamboat Dispatch Presents a Winds of W Mountain Special Episode! 🚨
“Shanty to Splendor: The Brick-&-Mortar Saga of the Banner House”
🧱🔥🛶 From Beaver Pelts to Bellhops – The True Tale of Chateaugay Lake's Most Enduring Hostelry 🛶🔥🧱
☞ LISTENERS BE ADVISED:
This ain't yer usual eldritch foghorn séance from the W Mountain ridgeline. Nay, dear wanderers of the wireless—this time, we’re dealin’ in real, notarized, nail-hammered HISTORY. Actual bricks. Documented land deeds. Dried ink and deed disputes. No telepathic lake trout, no accordion-playing Wendigo (this week). If you suffer from historical vertigo, factual discomfort, or allergic reactions to architectural truth—PROCEED WITH CAUTION. You may experience involuntary interest in regional land-use patterns.
🪓 From the muskeg-sunk shanty of Gates Hoit, which squatted like a thinking outhouse at the edge of civilization, to the genteel clapboarded Banner House—a lakeside resort so respected it even had doorknobs—this episode charts 100+ years of Adirondack pluck, paint fumes, and family ambition.
👤 Meet Samuel C. Drew, who camped like a pioneer but dreamt like a surveyor.
🦫 Meet Jonathan Bellows, who bought the land, bagged the beaver, and built a hotel with the leftover lumber.
🖼️ Meet Arthur F. Tait, a painter so prolific he turned trout and tamaracks into lithographic legend, one Currier & Ives print at a time.
📜 And finally, meet Mr. J.S. Kirby, rebrander-in-chief, who looked upon the Bellows House and proclaimed: “Nay, it shall be a BANNER.”
🎧 Tune in to hear:
How a backwoods outpost became the Crown Jewel of Lower Chateaugay Lake
Why guests once traveled 3 days by steamboat, horse, and boot just to get a decent supper
What a “shanty” really meant to a 19th-century trapper (spoiler: it involved soup and single-pane windows)
And why the Banner House’s legacy still echoes louder than a loon at dusk
📡 Broadcast directly from East Bellmont by the dangerously competent producers of the Steamboat Dispatch Syndicate.
Hosted by professional gaslamp-smoother and honorary historian Mordecai Vilecreek, with a special guest interview featuring Miss Gladys “Chimney Hat” Kirby (via phonograph cylinder).
🧭Hashtags for the Telegraph Age and Beyond:
#WindsOfWMountain #BannerHouseHistory #ChateaugayLakeChronicles #AdirondackLegacy #FromShantyToHotel #SteamboatDispatchSpecial #BellowsToBanner #RealHistoryNoCryptids #TaitPaintedHere #TourismBeforeWiFi #HistoricHotelsUSA
💥 Don’t miss this rare slab of factual programming baked fresh in the iron stove of truth!
Catch it now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever frontier broadband is tolerated.
🎣 Like a smoked Chateaugay Lake salmon trout:
Bold. Local. Historic. And just a little briny.
🔊 [CLICK HERE TO LISTEN]
You’ll laugh, you’ll learn, and you might just find yourself booking a room in the afterlife.
