A Village of 4,000 Lands the Winter Olympics

The III Olympic Winter Games opened on February 4, 1932, in Lake Placid, a village tucked in the Adirondacks with fewer than 4,000 residents. It was the first Winter Olympics ever held outside Europe, and the small resort town landed it mostly on the strength of one local booster, Godfrey Dewey, head of the Lake Placid Club and son of Melvil Dewey of card-catalog fame. Dewey lobbied the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland, and in April 1929 the IOC handed Lake Placid the Games by a unanimous vote, beating out rival American bids. Then-Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would be elected president nine months later, helped push state money toward a new bobsled run and skating rink and opened the Games himself. Only 252 athletes from 17 nations showed up, a smaller field than the Games before it, but the event introduced the medal podium to Olympic competition and left Lake Placid the answer to a very New York trivia question.