Saranac Lake has long been reached by many forms of transportation, including train, plane, boat, automobile, stagecoach, and on foot, and seasonal rail service between Saranac Lake and Lake Placid recalls earlier mountain travel. The Adirondacks continue a tradition of inspiring visitors and residents, and three mountains near downtown Saranac Lake still offer the wilderness recreation that drew entrepreneur tycoons, presidents, and glitterati in the early 1900s. Alongside descendants of the original loggers, guides, and speculators, the village is home to artists, writers, and actors, with galleries, professional theatre, cafes, specialty shops, antiques, and everyday services. Saranac Lake also preserves a notable architectural heritage, with many buildings on the National Register of Historic Places and downtown and residential areas showing scrollwork, stone walls, cure porches, and details distinctive to the Cure era of the early 1900s. Within walking distance stands the Stevenson Cottage, where Robert Louis Stevenson spent the winter of 1887-88 and wrote The Lantern Bearers, A Christmas Sermon, and parts of The Master of Ballantrae.