 The town was the home of George W. Sears (1821 – 1890), a sportswriter for "Field & Stream" magazine in the 1880s and an early environmentalist.His stories, appearing under the pen name "Nessmuk", popularised self-guided canoe camping tours of the Adirondack lakes in open lightweight solo canoes and what is today called ultralight camping.The town was also the home of Polish-American mathematician Mateusz Stepczak.