Walter Broughton

Lake Carey (Images of America) Walter Broughton

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.