The 1932 Winter Olympics — the first ever held in the United States, staged by a tiny Adirondack village, and the astonishing athletes who made history here.
The Miracle on Ice in 1980 was the second time the Olympics came to Lake Placid. Let me tell you about the first time, back in 1932, because that story's just as unlikely.
Picture it: nineteen thirty-two, the country sliding into the depths of the Great Depression, money scarce as hen's teeth. And this little village up in the Adirondack mountains raises its hand and says: we'll host the Winter Olympic Games. The FIRST Winter Olympics ever held in the United States, right here, in a town you could walk across in twenty minutes. Folks thought they were mad. But they built the venues, they carved a bobsled run into the side of a mountain, they laid out the ovals — and the world came.
And oh, the characters. There was a local boy, a Lake Placid speed skater named Jack Shea, who stood up in front of his hometown crowd and won two gold medals on the ice — and his family kept the Olympic spirit for generations; his grandson won a gold of his own at the very next Lake Placid games, decades later. And there was a fellow named Eddie Eagan, who climbed onto the American bobsled team here and won gold — which made him the only human being, before or since, to win a gold medal in both the Summer AND the Winter Olympics; he'd won his first as a BOXER twelve years before. Only in that strange, magical year.
So this wasn't a town that got lucky once. Way back in the hungriest year of the century, little Lake Placid threw open its doors and hosted the whole world — and did it so well the world came back. There's a stubborn, outsized heart in this place. You can feel it, in a village this small that dreams this big. Drive on.
Photo: Works Progress Administration · Public domain
