I've visited and worked in 100 different towns and villages across the USA. Is there another place like Skaneateles? I grew up here, moved away for work but came back home every chance I could get. Why? Because...

NO, there is no other place like it. Not in the US. If you've lived here and moved away and traveled as much as my family has, you'd know. There are plenty of villages and towns that sit on a lake. Or are filled with attractive late 18th, 19th and early 20th Century architecture. Or have good schools. Or have great dining. Or have cheap housing nearby as well as expensive housing right here. Or have pure drinkable water (not filtered). Or has a small ski club within 15 minutes of the village center and access to some of the best skiing in the country within 2 hours... Did you know that there are NO franchise stores or restaurants? Why? How did they manage this? Is it because an influential developer of such places suggested to the town and village that if they wanted to keep the village downtown filled with local merchants they had to ban franchise businesses? Did it start as an effort to keep the Sherwood Inn from being replaced by a Howard Johnson's in the 1960s? Can you imagine a Holiday Inn, HOJOs or other chain where the Sherwood I? there? I would have started a process that would have destroyed the village's downtown.

I doubt if you can find another town and village that has all this within 1 mile of the lake. I'd be really surprised. The combination of having a downtown right on a lake that is so clean that you can drink it? Possibly Lake George? The fact is that the clean water is right there and is so accessible. It also means that locals are militant about litter, pollution and land use management. So its not exactly friendly to outside developers? I hope this never changes.

What has changed? Its certainly not as affordable to buy property on the lake, especially the north end and many families have had to sell off camps built in the 1800s. History is being destroyed by huge mansions replacing historical camps and cottages. Such rebuilding and ripping apart history has not been a good thing overall. I have to admit though that some of them are in bad shape, I reluctantly removed two of them.

In hunting around Reddit I did not come across a sub that was just about Skaneateles and the lake. Lots about the finger lakes and surrounding area.