LAKE PLACID — The Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society announced on Monday the fourth and final program for its 2024 Winter Lecture Series, titled “Lake Placid Steamboats, Fancy Hotels and the Gilded Age.”

This lecture will feature an all-new historical photo tour looking through the lens of time at Lake Placid during the opulent Gilded Age, the early pioneers, stage lines, the railroads, popular steam and tour boats, and grand hotels. This program will be presented by R.J. Potter, a retired broadcaster who has spent years in the Adirondack Mountains and the Champlain Valley researching and collecting these rare historic photographs.

The event will be held at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts auditorium on Thursday, April 18 at 7 p.m. The program will be recorded and can also be viewed on YouTube after April 18 at www.youtube.com/@DigitalMedia-LPNEHS.

Although Potter was in radio and television broadcasting since he was 18 years old, his early career was in elementary and special education. Potter was an on-air personality at numerous radio stations in Rochester and Burlington, Vermont. He worked over 50 years at various times as an announcer, program director, advertising sales representative and was news director at two Vermont radio stations. He retired in 2007 after being a senior account executive, marketing and producing television advertising at Comcast Communications in South Burlington, Vermont. Potter’s family has deep roots in Lake Placid. His great grandfather, Captain Theodore White, had the first engine propelled steamboat on Lake Placid in 1879. He has spent many years in the Adirondack Mountains and Champlain Valley researching and collecting historic photographs from various repositories.

Winter Lecture Series programs are free and open to the public and will be held at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts auditorium. A raffle for a basket of goodies will be held at each event in support of the Historical Society’s Winter Lecture Series.

For more information, contact the Lake Placid-North Elba Historical Society at 518-523-3830, email director@lakeplacidhistory.com or visit the historical society website at www.lakeplacidhistory.org.