Preparing to Welcome Visitors to Lake Luzerne’s Living History

I'm looking forward to joining Sue Wilder on May 21 to introduce Voices of Lake Luzerne to a dedicated group of approximately twenty Kinnear Hosts and Lake Luzerne Heritage District Ambassadors — volunteers who help welcome visitors to some of the community’s most important historic places. 

Long before someone reads a plaque, opens a guidebook, or listens to an audio tour, they often encounter a human being first — someone who helps transform history from something distant into something personal and alive. The volunteers who greet visitors at the Kinnear Museum and throughout the Heritage District are not simply custodians of buildings and artifacts. They are interpreters of place, memory, and community identity.

And this year, we're giving them a new tool to support their work. 

Voices of Lake Luzerne is an immersive GPS-guided audio experience that tells residents and visitors the history of the town via first-person stories generated by AI in the voices of the town's most notable figures in history. 

“We are a mature group of volunteers who are anxious to impress our young and younger group of visitors this summer to our historic sites,” Sue explained recently. “Our aim is to make the guides comfortable using the audio app on their phone.”

There is something deeply encouraging in that statement.

Too often, conversations about technology assume a divide between generations — as though digital tools belong naturally to the young while older generations are expected to stand aside. What’s happening in Lake Luzerne suggests something entirely different: experienced community volunteers actively embracing new ways to share stories, connect with visitors, and preserve local heritage.

That spirit of curiosity and willingness to learn may be one of the most important ingredients in the project’s success. Participants will have the opportunity to explore how the audio tours work, how stories are triggered geographically, how visitors navigate the experience on their phones, and how these tools can enrich conversations at historic sites rather than replace them.

In many ways, the technology becomes an invitation to more human interaction, not less.

Visitors may arrive after listening to a story about Rockwell Falls, the Wayside Inn, the old pulp mill, Gailey Hill School, or the community’s churches and resorts. The volunteers then become part of the experience itself — answering questions, adding personal insight, sharing memories, and helping connect the digital narrative to the physical landscape surrounding them.