Luke Dow has been working at the Lake George Steamboat Company since he was just a teenager. His family has owned the company since 1946. Luke is a diver, engineer, and runs the company’s social media.
The Steamboat Company purchased an underwater drone this spring to inspect their ships, but Luke is also using it to explore remnants of history preserved right in Lake George.
“The thing that most people don’t know is there’s still a lot of history of our boats at the bottom of the Lake ... About 99% of the population will never don a diving suit and dive down in order to see these ships. This drone allows us to bring the ships to them,” said Dow.
At Dog Beach, a place where thousands of people swim every day in the summer, there’s another little known piece of the lake’s past — a submerged spur track that was installed in the early 1900s.
“Where they used to load pleasure boats and crafts into the back of train cars and they would back these train cars into the water and then the boats would float, and they could pull them out and go cruising around on Lake George,” said Dow.
Luke says there are hundreds of unique discoveries to see below the lake’s surface, and if you’re interested in following along on his journey of exploration, you can check out the Lake George Steamboat Company’s Facebook page.