Apollos Smith

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Paul and Lydia Smith's gravestone at nearby St. John’s in the Wilderness Episcopal Church. He donated the land on which the church stands.
Paul and Lydia Smith's gravestone at nearby St. John’s in the Wilderness Episcopal Church. He donated the land on which the church stands.

Apollos (Paul) Smith (1825–1912) founded the Saint Regis House, known universally as Paul Smith's Hotel, one of the first wilderness resorts in Adirondacks. In its day it was the most fashionable of the many great Adirondack hotels, patronized by American presidents, celebrities, and the power elite of the latter half of the 19th century.

Smith was born August 20, 1825, in Milton, Vermont. When he was 16, he left home and found work as a boatman on a canal boat on Lake Champlain; in his spare time, he went hunting and fishing in the Adirondacks, which at that time was largely wilderness. In time he became known as a hunting and fishing guide in the Loon Lake region.

In 1848 he rented a house on Loon Lake that he ran as a small hotel, aided by his mother and father. In 1852, in the town of Brighton Smith bought fifty acres on the Lower Saint Regis Lake for three hundred dollars and built a primitive hotel. He was an excellent host, a charming story teller with a quick wit, and he was known for treating everyone the same. He was also a shrewd businessman, and his wife, Lydia, was good at managing the details of the operation. Smith's real estate transactions were legendary— in one transaction, he bought thirteen thousand acres (53 km²) for twenty thousand dollars, and then sold five acres of it for the same price. At one point he owned thirty thousand acres (120 km²). When he sold land, it was generally to his wealthy clientele, many of whom built Great Camps on the nearby lakes, using lumber from Smith's mill.

Paul Smith's College was built on the site of the hotel, funded by the estate of Smith's son Phelps, who died in 1937.

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