Queensbury: Warren County's Oldest Town

Queensbury holds the distinction of being the oldest community in Warren County. Quaker settlers first arrived here in seventeen sixty-three, after the land grant of seventeen sixty-two, and the town carried the name of a British royal borough until the Revolution made such names awkward. The county itself, organized in eighteen thirteen, was named after Joseph Warren, the American general who died at Bunker Hill in seventeen seventy-five.

The town sits at the southern end of Lake George, and when the tourist era arrived in the mid-nineteenth century, Queensbury was perfectly positioned to benefit. Steamboats on the lake and the Delaware and Hudson Railroad brought city visitors north, and the resort economy reshaped the area. Today Queensbury contains the commercial and residential heart of the greater Glens Falls area, including Great Escape amusement park. The historic pattern of Quaker farmland yielding to resort culture and then to suburban commercial development is legible in the landscape if you know what you are looking for.