NY Times September 15, 2006
Near Lake, and Away From It All
By: Julia Lawlor

In Eagles Mere in Central Pennsylvania, many of the cottagers (local lingo for second-home owners) spent their first summers in diapers on the beach at Eagles Mere Lake. Families have vacationed there every summer for generations.

"We've been going every summer for 15 years, and we're still newcomers," said Holly Schadler, 50, a lawyer from Chevy Chase, Md. She and her husband David Keating, 50, a political consultant, bought a split-level house with mountain views last year. In summer their three children take off on their bicycles in the morning and are on their own until dinnertime. "Coming to Eagles Mere is the thing they look forward to most during the year," Ms. Schadler said.

The usual approach to Eagles Mere, about 30 miles north of Interstate 80 in the Endless Mountains of the Appalachians, is from Route 42, which winds past old barns and sleepy little towns. Eagles Mere's homeowners treasure the remoteness. "When they go home, they don't even tell their neighbors where they've been," said George Freeland, 61, who spends summers in Eagles Mere and winters in Arizona.

Paul Shuman, 49, and his wife, Margaret Polaneczky, 50, of Manhattan had never heard of Eagles Mere until friends invited them for Labor Day last year. They bought a house that very weekend, after having spent years searching for a vacation place for themselves and their two daughters. "We loved it," said Mr. Schuman, a middle school teacher. The family had looked at developments in the Poconos but found them too crowded and "artificial," he said. Their three-bedroom, two-story cottage in Eagles Mere, built in the 1930's, is a five-minute walk to the lake and cost $360,000. Last fall at a festival in nearby Forksville, the family saw their first lumberjack contest. "They were taking chain saws to pieces of wood--stuff you wouldn't see in Manhattan, " Mr. Schuman said.

The Scene Among the 150 or so full-time residents in the borough that is about two miles square, everybody knows everybody. There is no traffic light. Nor are there numbered street addresses. Instead, people give their houses names like Kozy Korner and By-Da-Wee, and pick up their mail at the Post Office.

The entire borough is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with many well-preserved examples of late 19th-and early-20th-century houses. The hub of downtown is the Sweet Shop, part soda fountain and part casual restaurant, where a hamburger costs $3.95 and everyone gathers on summer nights for ice cream. A few shops sell antiques, gifts, jewelry or clothing. The only bank opens three days a week and closes for lunch.

The 114-acre lake is surrounded by hemlocks and laurel and has a swimming dock, a small sand beach, canoes and sailboats for rent, and an old-fashioned green wooden bathhouse. Jet Skies and gas-powered motorboats are forbidden. A 26-foot wooden boat dating to the World War I era, the Hardly Able, carries passengers around the lake.

Almost all Eagles Mere residents hold membership in the 335-member Eagles Mere Association, which allows them use of the lake. Membership costs $2,000 to buy and initial share and $578 annually in dues, according to Bill Feese, the association manager. Renters (about 85 homeowners rent out their houses in summer) can join the association temporarily.

The association owns all the land around the lake within 100 feet of the shore and forbids development on it. As a result, there is no such thing as a lakeside property in Eagles Mere.

The Eagles Mere Athletic Association runs a summer program of sports and activities for children, and there are musical performances, mostly classical and jazz, in the David A. Dewire Center, a community meeting place that also functions as a center for teenagers. Although children's activities are more structured than they once were, things haven't changed much, said Gail Meyer, who moved full time to Eagles Mere two years ago after spending every summer of her life there. Her grandchildren are the sixth generation of her family to vacation there. "My father's family started coming here from Baltimore in 1890," she said. "It was like going to camp for the whole family, and it still is."

Winters are harsh, typically with more than 100 inches of snow, but year-round locals make the best of it with cross-country ski trails, ice skating and a toboggan run.

Eagles Mere began as a commercial enterprise, according to the borough's unofficial historian, Bush James. In 1794 an Englishman, George Lewis, bought 10,000 acres to start a glassworks using sand from the lake. The venture eventually failed, the property changed hands, and the lake was renamed Eagles Mere. "A mere is Old English for an enclosed body of water," Mr. James said, "and there were eagles here." (An occasional eagle can still be spotted flying over the borough, though no local nests have been found.) In the 1880's wealthy lumber and railroad barons from Williamsport, 35 miles to the southwest, made the town a summer getaway. Many of their larger summer houses survive, although five hotels built during that era are gone.

Pros Eagles Mere is serious about preserving its natural resources. Water from the lake "comes close to being drinking quality," said Mr. Feese of the Eagles Mere Association. That is in part because of the nearly 400 acres of wetlands and forests owned by the Eagles Mere Conservancy that are off limits to developers. The borough also requires homeowners to get permission, in some cases, before they cut trees on their property.

Cons Restaurants are scares in Eagles Mere. Besides the Sweet Shop, other choices for dinner out are the Crestmont Inn and the Eagles Mere Inn. (There is also dining at the Eagles Mere Country Club for members). Wine is served at the recently opened Eagle Rock Winery, but only until 8 p.m. "If you're looking for excitement, don't come up," said Lee Hays, 76, a year-round resident who manages the summer arts program, Eagles Mere Friends of the Arts, and is married to the mayor, Betty Hays, 76.

The nearest grocery store is six miles to the north in Laporte.

The Real Estate Market After a dozen years of relatively modest price increases of 1 percent or 2 percent a year, housing prices jumped 30 percent between 2004 and 2006, according to Douglas Rider, president of Sullivan County Real Estate in Eagles Mere. Mr. Rider attributes the increase to buyers' realization that Eagles Mere was a bargain compared with vacation spots like the New Jersey Shore, Vermont and New Hamshire.

Houses now are $350,000 to $1.5 million, with a median price of $450,000. But this summer the market peaked, Mr. Rider said, with some houses now sitting unsold for six months and inventory growing. "When homes come on the market now we are lowering prices slightly--3 to 5 percent," he said. "It's becoming more of a buyer's market."

Most sought after houses nearest the lake, which rarely come up for sale. Those sell for $700,000 to $1.5 million. Large Victorians in other parts of Eagles Mere are $400,000 to $800,000, depending on the renovation required. A development built in the 1980's, Mountain View Estates, has houses on two-and-a-quarter-acre lots for $350,000 to $800,000; another development, Happy Hill, has modern log houses for $350,000 to $700,000.

One trend that hasn't hit Eagles Mere is the teardown, which has forever altered the look of some resort towns. Most here are confident it won't happen. "The culture here would make that difficult to do," Mr. James said. "I don't ever see these big old houses disappearing."