If a Mount Rushmore honoring the important figures in the history of Saratoga Springs were to be commissioned, Gideon Putnam would be the George Washington of the localized monument. Today, Putnam’s name is most commonly associated with the iconic hotel in the Spa State Park, but many generations ago the Massachusetts native played a lead role in the establishment and development of Saratoga Springs.
1763 Gideon Putnam is one of 12 children born to Stephen and Mary Putnam.
1782 At the age of 19, Putnam marries 16-year-old Doanda Risley of Connecticut.
1789 Putnam settles his family in the wilderness near High Rock Spring. “This is a healthy place,” Putnam writes of Saratoga in his memoirs. “The mineral springs are valuable, and the timber is good and in great abundance, and I can build me a great house.”
1791 Putnam rents 300 acres of land and opens a sawmill producing staves and shingles on Fish Creek. In little time, the business prospers.
1803 Putnam opens Putnam’s Tavern and Boarding House, a three-story guest house with 70 rooms that was the first hotel in Saratoga Springs, on an acre of land beside Congress Spring. Locals dub the place “Putnam’s Folly” for its “pretentiousness” and its owner’s “optimism and ambition.” Undeterred, Putnam expands the hotel to include a parlor, dining room and ballroom, and renames it Union Hall.
1805 Putnam purchases 130 acres adjacent to the acre he had originally bought near Congress Spring and begins to allocate the land that will later become downtown Saratoga Springs. He arranges the layout for a village with broad roads (i.e. Broadway) and public springs in the center. He also donates and designates land for a church, school and cemetery.
1811 Putnam’s success with his hotel convinces him to build another across the street. While overseeing the development of what would become Congress Hall, Putnam falls off some scaffolding and breaks several ribs.
1812 Never fully recovering from the injury, Putnam dies from complications at the age of 49. He becomes the first person interred in the cemetery he himself laid out: the Gideon Putnam Burying Ground, located just off South Franklin Street.
1869 Putnam’s original hotel is renamed the Grand Union. It stands on Broadway until its demolition in 1953.
1935 More than 100 years after his death, another hotel, The Gideon Putnam, is erected in honor of Saratoga’s founding father. Originally part of the New York State Reservation at Saratoga Springs, you can find the hotel in the Saratoga Spa State Park today.