Speculator.

Speculator is a hamlet of about three hundred and forty people on the western shore of Lake Pleasant, in the southwestern Park. It has a single intersection — Routes 8 and 30 — a small commercial cluster of about a dozen storefronts, an old-school family resort or two, and a year-round permanent population that knows each other by first name. There is no traffic light.

Lake Pleasant itself is a five-mile lake, deep enough for serious lake trout, with a town beach on the village waterfront and a state campground on the north end. Sacandaga Lake — a separate body of water, despite the shared watershed — is a half-mile west and offers similar paddling. Both lakes are quiet, small enough to know completely, and surrounded by Sargent Ponds Wilderness and the West Canada Lake Wilderness — meaning hundreds of square miles of state-protected forest preserve in every direction.

The other reason to come to Speculator is winter. Oak Mountain is a small community-run downhill ski area on the village's south side. The snowmobile-corridor network connects north to Indian Lake and south through the West Canada Lakes Wilderness — over a hundred and fifty miles of groomed trail accessible from the village. In a winter season Speculator's permanent population effectively triples, and the entire economy runs on it.