MacNaughton Cottage has stood on its site for nearly two centuries as the only surviving building from the early mining community. Built in 1834 for the owners and managers of a fledgling iron operation, it first housed iron mine owners, and a small addition on the south end contained the McIntyre Bank, the first chartered bank in the Adirondacks. Settlement of the mining community had begun in 1826, a post office opened in 1854, and the settlement received the official name Adirondac, but in 1858 the settlement was abandoned when iron making failed. In 1872, Robert and his wife Sarah became caretakers of the abandoned village and lived in the cottage until Sarah died, and in 1877 the deteriorated village was leased to a hunting club. In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt and his family were staying at the cottage when he received word that President William McKinley was dying, and he began his famous ride by carriage and train to Buffalo to be by his side. James MacNaughton, the son-in-law of Archibald McIntyre, died in 1908, and the cottage bore his name. Hunting club leases ended in 1947, and the village was then used to house miners working at the nearby titanium mine at Tahawus. By 1963, the mine workers were gone and the village was abandoned a second time. In 2003, weather and neglect had left the cottage near collapse when the property was acquired by the Open Space Institute and a decision was made to save this last remaining building from the iron mining era, and in 2005 an initial construction project stabilized and weatherproofed the structure for preservation.