COOPERSTOWN, a village and the county-seat of Otsego county, New York, U.S.A., where the Susquehanna river emerges from Otsego Lake; about 92 m. (by rail) W. of Albany. Pop. (1890) 2657; (1900) 2368; (1905) 2446; (1910) 2484. It is served by the Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley railway (owned and controlled by the Delaware & Hudson), and is on the line of the Oneonta & Mohawk Valley electric railway. The village lies in the midst of a hop-growing and dairying region, and has cheese factories and creameries. It has a public library, Thanksgiving hospital, a Y.M.C.A. hall, and the Diocesan orphanage (Protestant Episcopal). Cooperstown is a summer resort, Otsego Lake (9 m. long and with an average width of about 1 m.), the “Glimmerglass” of Cooper’s novels, being one of the most picturesque of the New York lakes. Cooperstown occupies the site of an old Indian town. In 1785 the site became the property of Judge William Cooper, who in the following year founded there a village which took his name and was incorporated in 1807. Judge Cooper himself settled here with his family in 1790. His son, James Fenimore Cooper, who lived here for many years and is buried in the Episcopal cemetery here, made the region famous in his novels.
See J. Fenimore Cooper, The Chronicles of Cooperstown (Cooperstown, 1838).