CHAPTER XVIII
THE LAKE OF ROMANCE AND FISHERMEN
The period from 1870 to 1880 was one of rapid growth and development in Cooperstown. The permanent population increased to over two thousand souls, and a number of fine summer residences were erected. Almost all of its natural advantages Cooperstown owes to Otsego Lake. These had been long appreciated by residents of the village, and now began to be generally sought by visitors from afar. In summer, the shores of the lake come to be dotted with the camp-houses and tents of those who sought relief from the swelter of cities in the cool forests of Otsego, and found delight in the sailing and fishing for which the Glimmerglass is famous.
J. B. Slote
The Lake from the O-te-sa-ga
In the summer of 1870 Capt. Daniel B. Boden began regular steam navigation of Otsego Lake by means of a small steamboat which he had brought to Cooperstown by railroad, and which had been used as a gunboat in Southern waters during the Civil War. The boat was renamed the Mary Boden. In the following summer a rival steamboat was launched, much larger than the former, called the Natty Bumppo, and owned principally by A. H. Watkins and Elihu Phinney. At the beginning of the next season the conservative folk of the village were scandalized by the Mary Boden, which then commenced to make lake trips on Sunday, a breach of ancient custom in which the owners of the Natty Bumppo indignantly declined to compete. On a night early in July there was an alarm of fire, a great blaze at the lake front, and villagers running to the scene found that one of the steamboats was in flames and beyond hope of salvage. A small child at a front window of Edgewater, watching the fire, clapped her hands, and cried out, "It's the wicker [wicked] boat! It's the wicker boat!" But it was not the wicked boat that was ablaze. It was the Natty Bumppo, which burned to the water's edge a total loss, the boat that had never left its dock on Sunday. The event was long recalled by some in the village as an instance of grave error in the usually correct dispensations of Providence. The Natty Bumppo was replaced, in the next season, by a new steamboat bearing the same name. The new Natty Bumppo and the old Mary Boden were the famous boats of the lake until they were succeeded by the Pioneer and the Cyclone, and later by the Deerslayer, the Pathfinder, and the Mohican.