The Early Years - Pre 1958
In the spring of 1920, newspapers started reporting what they called the "Biggest Boom in Adirondack Annals". It was first announced to Browns Track Guides Association by the incorporators of Ga-Wan-Ka, Lyon de Camp of Thendara, Horace de Camp of New York and Fred Reusswig of Utica. It included 17,000 acres of timberland for property development to transform Thendara and the lands around Old Forge into a resort. A $20,000 office building for the corporation was built next to Van Auken's Hotel as the corporation headquarters. They had working capital of $100,000. They had B.H. Colling, and advertising lecturer at the College of New York City, on site in Thendara overseeing the work, John Ralph from Long Island in charge of field operations, and the distinguished New York architect, H. Van Buren Magonigle, as their architect.
The tract for development at the time was the only remaining section accessible by state road and easily available for improvement. It included First, and Second Lakes, Gibbs, Rondaxe and West Mountain Lake, Lotus and Nameless Lakes, Deer Land and Okara Lakes and 22 miles of frontage on the Moose River. The guides were told that the grand plan would create a water area larger than Fourth Lake thorough dams and locks.
It was to be a seven-year development project which coincided with the beginning of work on the South Shore Road. The centerpieces were the $100,000 Thendara Golf Club, a 50-acre park with tennis courts, and a community center built in a different section of the development each year of the project.
Lyon had an interest in and respect for the Indians, and chose the name for his development Ga-Wan-Ka, the Iroquois word for "playground" as a permanent memorial to the League of the Iroquois that once dominated New York State and fished and hunted each year in the surrounding mountains and lakes.
When the project was officially announced to the public with great fanfare on May 20, 1920, it was to begin at the Hellgate Ponds which Lyon had renamed Okara Lakes, Easka and Tekeni, Iroquois for "the eyes".
On June 26, 1920, the Ga-Wan-Ka section was dedicated to the Iroquois in a special public ceremony and spectacle led by the Chiefs of the Iroquois Council. They inspected all of the lands and legally deeded the lands to the Ga-Wan-Ka Corporation, erecting stone monuments at the four corners of the tract to designate its boundaries. A portion of it along the Moose River was reserved a hunting camp for the use of hunters and warriors of the Six Nations. There was a Pageant of the Six Nations, a Feast of Welcome, and a Fire Dance. Smoke signals were sent from the high ledges by the various nations, "So that the great dead may be remembered forever." As one writer pointed out, the messages were a little long-winded. Conservation officers were called in to put out the brush fires.