Sylvan Beach’s development came about through a combination of two factors. First, the Beach was blessed by resort potential resources, recognized by observers as early as 1790. In their writings, such noted New Yorkers as Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, Elkanah Watson and DeWitt Clinton recorded observations about the beauty and potential of Oneida Lake and its unique east shore.

The Lake’s location made recognition of its resources inevitable. In colonial times Oneida Lake occupied a key position in the significant water route from New York to Oswego and then, via the Great Lakes, to the west. In the colonial and early national eras (to 1825, the Erie Canal’s advent), this route was the most convenient waterway across New York. Many travelers had to journey through it and thus witnessed the rich regions through which it flowed.

James D. Spencer can rightfully be considered Sylvan Beach’s founder. A man known for his industry and frugality, Spencer brought his large family to the hamlet of Fish Creek, Town of Verona, in the 1840s. He engaged in the sand business, ran a small tavern, farmed a bit and even attempted drilling for oil on his property. Spencer began a series of real estate investments in 1847 in Verona and Vienna Townships. The bulk of his land was located in the prime development areas bordering Oneida Lake. It was through Spencer’s real estate manipulation that resort settlement on Oneida Lake’s east shore began.

Sylvan Beach’s first commercial resort facility was the Forest Home, established by Spencer’s son, Lyman, in 1879. In the years 1881-1886 the hotels, cottages, and a small amusement area first appeared.

In the beginning Sylvan Beach was a largely quiet place, often referred to as a retreat from civilization’s woes. It had one large hotel, the Algonquin, which held over 100 guests, and its cottages and boarding houses were usually booked well through the summer season. It had far from reached its peak, however. In 1891, Dr. Martin Cavana, a physician from Oneida, moved to Sylvan Beach and established the Cavana Sanitarium for the treatment of chronic diseases. Martin Cavana became Sylvan Beach’s leader, boss man and dedicated promoter. It was through his work that the village emerged from its retreat status to become the Coney Island of Central New York.

Cavana lived at the Beach from 1891 until his death in 1924. These were the resort’s golden years. During this era Sylvan Beach played host to hundreds of mass picnics, and gatherings of groups and organizations who found the village a prime watering spot. Sunday School groups, industrial workers, veterans’ organizations, and political parties met at the Beach each summer for galas beyond compare. The largest picnic of Cavana’s day was that of hop growers. Every July some 20,000 to 40,000 hop people, growers, workers, and even sympathizing hangers-on, converged on the Beach via scores of New York, Ontario and Western, and Lehigh Valley Railroad cars.

In Cavana’s time, the Beach’s hotels and cottages could accommodate over 1,000 guests at a time. Old-time beach people fondly recall the summer boarders descending from trains on Railroad Avenue (now Main Street), laden with heavy trunks for a lengthy beach stay. The greatest of beach hotels was the Saint Charles, founded in 1899. This hotel, owned by Louis B. Chesebrough (of Vaseline fame), was considered a high class place, rivaling the best lodges of the St. Lawrence or the Adirondacks. The Saint Charles operated private carriages to transport its patrons from the railroad station to the hotel. It held balls while other beach establishments celebrated with dancing parties. Until its destruction by fire in 1914 the hotel remained a symbol of Sylvan Beach’s prosperity in the Cavana years.

During the Cavana Era Sylvan Beach’s identity as a workingman’s middle-class resort emerged. Throughout its history the Beach opened its doors to all people. The black man, indigent farm workers, proper schoolmarms and churchmen, factory laborers, businessmen, the unemployed and the prosperous have all been welcomed at the Beach.

From Cavana’s death until the early 1930s Sylvan Beach underwent a period of great transition. The Beach, from 1924 onward, never fully or permanently regained the prosperous magic of its golden years. The Great Depression undermined the resort’s financing; many businesses suffered from the hard times. More importantly, however, replacement of passenger trains by automobiles hurt the Beach economically. From 1920 to 1930 the number of autos in New York quadrupled to approximately two million. No longer did Sylvan Beach occupy the role of “most convenient, reasonably priced resort in Central New York.” Autos brought the Adirondack, the Catskills, and every corner of New York within driving range. Sylvan Beach’s “trounced-in two-week tourist” became a hard-driving, two-hour stay motorist. Hotels, dependent on the boarding vacationer, were crippled. The village fortunes since the ‘30s transition period have been irregular and often lean.

The various decades at Sylvan Beach since Cavana’s death have had their highlights. The ‘30s and ‘40s witnessed the heydays of Russell’s Hotel and Danceland, a melodic nightclub catering to the big band sound. Russell’s played host to such famed thousand-dollar bands as Glenn Miller, Harry James, the Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington and his Harlem Aristocrats, and the Latin sounds of Desi Arnaz. Crowds of upstate lovers of dancing consistently filled Russell’s Hall. For the Glenn Miller concert the beach crowd was so large that traffic was backed up three miles south of the village on Route 13, the Beach’s main highway.

The ‘50s at Sylvan Beach were prosperous years, characterized by large beach crowds, hundreds of patrons jamming the vivacious Midway, a nightlife extending into morning’s early hours, and above all, a good feeling within the village. Since the ‘50s Sylvan Beach has, in general, experienced years of decadence. Its once famed Midway deteriorated into an artifactual state; its waters were rumored to be polluted (a myth that has since been thoroughly refuted); and its people lost the secret of working together that propelled them in the past. In the ‘60s the Beach’s famed fishing pier was closed as being unsafe and the many popular commercial bingo halls were forced, by law, to shut their doors. These were bad years for the village.

In 1971 a group of beach residents banded together in an attempt to solve village problems. Entitled the Committee for Incorporation,. the group succeeded in having the village formally incorporated and governmentally separated from its surrounding Town of Vienna. The incorporation of the Village in 1971 gave this lake shore community what it so desperately needed. Home rule — that capability of controlling its own destiny and control it, it did!

From the reopened fishing pier to the million dollar federal grant that created the Beachfront Park and Bathhouse, the Pedestrian Mall through the Amusement Park, the Bandstand in the Village Park, the Brick sidewalks and the gas lights on the streets. This grant was the spring board for the private sector to come forward and invest in their own future. New reassurance, night clubs and new rides in the amusement park, new camp grounds, upgraded marinas and a merchants association that would make Sylvan Beach a household word synonymous with good clean family recreation.