Exhibits - Caroga Museum

The Homestead:

The Homestead is the museum’s home base. There you’ll find the office and the tour guide on duty. There are some items for sale and answers for your questions.

The grandson of Euna Arnst [link to Cobbler Shop], William Arnst, built the Homestead in 1905 near the Wheelerville Tannery and later moved it to its present location. The property for the museum was purchased by the museum from the Arnsts.

In The Homestead, there is a collection of furnishings that would characterize a turn of the century middle-upper class Caroga home. While some of these items were in the original Arnst home, many have been donated from our generous patrons and neighbors. From the coffin style bath tub and the early hand powered washing machine to the Victrola, the parlor square-piano, and American style doll house, these all serve as a reminder of a different time—that wasn’t so long ago.

Also, in the Homestead you’ll find an exhibit of artwork by Canada Lake resident Paul Bransom, the early illustrator for Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows and Jack London’s Call of the Wild and a frequent illustrator for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. You can see some of his early drawings and paintings on the second floor.

Also on the second floor, you’ll find the master bedroom, baby’s room, and a glimpse of items from a one-room school house. Please consult with the tour guide if you want a closer look at any of the books on display.

The Cobbler Shop:

Eune Arnst moved into the Caroga area in 1861 from Switzerland. He was the local cobbler and helped build several of the homes and roads in the area. The Cobbler Shop is an out-building from his London Bridge Road home and is filled with many of his original tools. His family is still an important part of the Caroga community, and they donated the house Eune’s grandson William Arnst constructed in 1905 that has become our home base—the Homestead.

This building also features tools of broom-making, sheep-shearing, black-smithing and other artisanal crafts.

In this photo, Eune displays his different trades: cobbler, barber, and shingle-maker.

The Peg Barn:

The Peg Barn was built in 1862 in the Town of Bleecker by the Rhinehart family. It was moved to the Town of Caroga in 1902 by Peter Stock and in the 1920’s it became an important part of the Fulton County Girl Scout Camp Kowaumkami. It was donated to the museum in 1984 by Martha Kunkel, as long as we were able to supply the manpower to move it. Twenty-six volunteers, including Francis and Emmeran Arnst, worked to disassemble, move, and reconstruct it, piece by piece, on the museum grounds.

The Peg Barn serves as our gallery and is where we present our summer art exhibits and events and hold our workshops. See our schedule for more information. [Link to schedule]

The Peg Barn also features two quilts depicting landmarks or scenes from Caroga, and designed and quilted mostly by Association members. And, beyond a number of amazing examples of taxidermy and items of life from the 1900’s, it also features the following permanent exhibits:

The Nick Stoner exhibit. A detailed look at the life and times of one of Caroga Lake’s most famous residents. He has lent his name eponymously to everything from golf courses to islands in the area. Learn about the Paul Bunyan of the Northeast.

The Wheelerville Tannery Exhibit. Information about the Wheelerville Tannery that used to occupy the area of the Nick Stoner Golf Course. Find out some of the basics of the leather making industry that made Gloversville the biggest producer of gloves in the world—while the hemlock trees lasted.

Sherman’s Arcade:

As Caroga Lake moved into the 20^th century, the hemlock started to run out and the tannery business was drying up. As a result, people’s entrepreneurial spirits went to entertainment and tourism. Hence the rise of amusement parks. Frank Sherman, Sr. in 1919 and 1920 began construction on West Caroga on what would become an iconic location in the Southern Adirondacks—Sherman’s Amusement Park.

The Arcade is a 30’ X 40’ replica of the original Arcade at Sherman’s, and was realized by a very generous donation from Janet Sherman Shepard, donations from community residents, grants and fundraisers. The building was constructed by the volunteer labor of Robert Kane and many helpers. John Papa loaned many Sherman Arcade games for display. Janet Sherman Shepard and Fay Sherman Allen donated their father’s desk, ledgers, tools and many of his inventions that are displayed in the Arcade building.

The Arcade building is also a teaching exhibit for our younger visitors who never had the fun of spending time at Sherman’s Amusement Park. The narrative for each exhibit was written by Judith Smith, and Christianne Smith designed ceiling to floor panels with pictures to support the narrative.

Whether your interests are nostalgic or historical, you’ll enjoy a trip through a piece of one the most famous places for dance, fun and games in the Adirondacks from the 1920s to the 1980s.

Bring nickels—and test yourself on the 1920’s “Kiss O’ Meter”. How passionate are you?

And we’ve just refurbished a pinball machine from 1937. There are no flippers and it’s mostly luck, but you still might get lucky.

Talk with the tour guide to hear the Military Band Organ or “Wurlitzer”—it’s loud, and it’s fun, and it’s how they pumped music into the heart of carousels.

The Ice House:

The Ice house was an important part of the Adirondacks at the turn of the 20^th century. The lakes provided a unique way to have ice throughout the summer months even without refrigeration.

Cut five-pound blocks of ice off the tops of the frozen lakes in winter and stack them in a barn with layers of sawdust or straw between each layer of ice. The ice would stay solid all through the summer. This is the way amusement parks like Sherman’s and Groshan’s Park had ice throughout the summer before electricity. Our Ice House is a personal ice house donated by Doug and Judy Smith from their property on Green Lake. However, barn-sized versions of these ice houses were used for the Amusement Parks, and Sherman’s and Groshan’s Park would hire up to 150 people each winter to fill them up.

There were also ice houses where you could go and buy ice, if you didn’t want to wait for the ice-man to come and deliver ice blocks to your home. You’ll find a classic example of the early 20^th century ice box in the Homestead.

The General Store:

With the help of the Argersinger Fund, the garage on the Arnst estate was converted to a charming replica of a 19th Century General Store. The general store was an essential part of living among the Adirondack lakes. It was your bank, your post office, and the place to relax and play checkers on a cold winter night. It was where you caught up on the world news and found out about the most recent products from Montgomery Ward.

Come and see a wide variety of the items you could get at the general store in the early 1900’s. You’ll be surprised at how many brand names are still around today.

The cash register was made by The National Cash Register Company specifically for candy stores—of which there were many in the Caroga area. We are currently interested in anyone with pictures or stories of Caroga area candy stores—especially the Candy Store on East Caroga adjacent to the camp site.

And please let the tour guide know if you notice the ghost—he likes to move the checkers around, make some interesting noises, and he’s been spotted twice moving from the General Store to the Peg Barn. We think he’s looking for some good checkers competition—anyone game?

One such store in Caroga was run by Henry Knight, here shown in a postcard from about 1910. The postmark “Knights” appears frequently on postcards of the era.