Otsego Lake, the Glimmerglass
Near Cooperstown, New York
Stretching north from the village is Otsego Lake, a shining ribbon of water about eight miles long that James Fenimore Cooper made immortal under a name he invented: Glimmerglass. In his novel The Deerslayer he called the lake Glimmerglass for the way its surface catches and returns the light, and the nickname has stuck for nearly two centuries. The lake was carved by glaciers during the last ice age, more than ten thousand years ago, the same forces that sculpted the nearby Finger Lakes.
It covers roughly four thousand acres and is the largest lake in Otsego County. For the Mohawk and Oneida peoples of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy, these shores were seasonal hunting and fishing grounds long before any European settlement. The lake also holds a hidden importance far beyond its beauty.
This is the true source of the Susquehanna River, meaning the water lapping at Cooperstown eventually flows hundreds of miles south all the way to the Chesapeake Bay. Today you can swim, sail, and fish these waters, or visit the state park on the eastern shore. Standing at the lake's edge at dawn, with mist rising off the glassy surface, it is easy to see exactly why Cooper reached for that glimmering name.
