SARATOGA SPRINGS, a city of Saratoga county, New York, U.S.A., 3o m. N. of Albany and 12 M. W. of the Hudson river; served by the Boston and Maine and the Delaware and Hudson railways. Pop. 193o, 13,169 Federal census. The city is in a region of great historic interest, and has been famous for its medicinal mineral springs since colonial days. It is a pleasure resort in summer, a health resort at all seasons, and is the seat of Skidmore college for women (19I ). Adjoining the city is "Yaddo," the beautiful estate of Katrina Trask (Mrs. George Foster Peabody), which since her death in 1922 has been made a summer retreat for a limited number of painters, writers and other creative artists. Saratoga lake (6 m. long) is 3 m. S.E. of the city. The August races of the Saratoga Association for the Improvement of the Breed of Horses (organized 1863) draw a brilliant attendance. Among the long established hotels are the United States (800 rooms) and the Grand Union (90o rooms). The Convention hall seats 5,000. The 122 springs (heavily charged with carbonic acid gas and containing in varying propor tions bicarbonates of lime, sodium, magnesium, chloride of sodium and other minerals) are in a reservation of I,Ioo ac., owned and controlled by the State. The State bath houses have a capacity of about 5,000 treatments daily, and the bottling plant can fill 6,000,000 pint bottles in a year. The therapeutic value of the springs was known to the Indians, and the Saratoga country was a favourite summer camping ground of the Iroquois. It became a theatre of hostilities between the French and English colonists and their Indian allies. In 1693 a French expedition was checked in a sharp conflict near Mt. McGregor by an English and colonial force. In 1745 the settlement on the Hudson directly east of the present city of Saratoga Springs (called Saratoga at first, later Old Saratoga and now Schuylerville) was attacked by French and Indians, who massacred many of its inhabitants.
The battles of Saratoga (q.v.) in the Revolutionary War were fought at Bemis Heights, 12 m. S.E. of Saratoga Springs. Most of the battlefield has been acquired by the State of New York, and Congress in 1926 authorized making it a national military park. The first white man known to have benefited from the Saratoga waters was Sir William Johnson, whose Indian friends carried him to the springs in 1767. A log house for the lodging of visitors was built in 1771; in 1783 Gen. Philip Schuyler and his family camped at the springs through the summer; in 1791 Gideon Putnam bought a large tract of land and put up the first inn; and in 1793 Dr. Valentine Seaman published a book about the waters which spread the knowledge of their curative properties.
Other hotels (large barn-like wooden structures) were built early in the 19th century, and by 182o the Springs had become a popular resort. The Civil War brought depression, and cut off the patronage from the South; but soon afterwards, with the establishment of the races and the rebuilding of the United States hotel, it again became popular, and in the 1870's and '8os was one of the most fashionable watering-places of America ("the Queen of Spas"). Commercial exploitation of the springs (bottling the water and liquefying the carbonic acid gas) diminished their flow until they almost disappeared, and the resort was again de pressed until the State intervened, first prohibiting the pump ing and later acquiring the property (1909) and placing it in charge of the conservation commission (1916). Under State management the flow and mineral strength of the springs have been restored, and the patronage has increased tenfold in a decade. Saratoga Springs was incorporated as a village in 1826 and as a city in 1915.