The Saratoga lake houses were a group of nightclubs operating in the vicinity of Lake Lonely on the east side of Saratoga Springs, New York from the 1920s until the early 1950s. They offered fine dining and top quality entertainment along with illegal liquor during prohibition and illegal gambling. Although there were many speakeasies in Saratoga Springs during this period, six were well known as "lake houses": The Arrowhead Inn, Riley's Lake House, The Piping Rock Club, Newman's Lake House,The Meadow Brook (earlier Mayfair), and Smith's Interlaken. Origins During the 1800s establishments known as "lake houses" surrounded Saratoga Lake, offering fine dining in a country atmosphere a short excursion out of town. Many advertised "Fish and Game Dinners", and featured fish caught in Saratoga Lake and cooked immediately. Moon's Lake House, the reputed site of the invention of the potato chip is the most well known, but there were Myers Lake House, Avery's Lake House, and Crum's Place and the White Sulphur Spring Hotel at the south end of the lake. In the mid-1800s John Morrissey opened the Saratoga Race Course in 1863. In 1866 he opened the Saratoga Clubhouse downtown, offering high-stakes gambling for the town's fashionable visitors. The clubhouse was later bought by Richard Canfield and was expanded to today's Canfield Casino. However, in 1907 Saratoga Springs banned gambling in the city and the casino was closed. Prohibition In 1920 the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. Saratoga Springs soon became a center for bootlegging between Canada and Albany. "Bootleggers shipping booze from Canada passed through the city. And the roadside inns around its outskirts were ideal places to make stops." Enterprising criminals, sensing an opportunity, quickly opened so-called carpet joints, which combined gambling, illegal liquor, fine dining and entertainment. The mobsters usually kept their involvement second- or third-hand, operating through local associates. One such was Louis J. "Doc" Farone, later convicted of "operation of three gambling houses in Saratoga Springs — (1) Riley's Lake House, (2) The Brook [i.e. Meadowbrook] and (3) Smith's Interlaken. ... although defendant was not the record holder of title to any of the three houses, he nevertheless held a beneficial interest in and controlled all of them" The clubs were open mostly in the summer from June until the close of the month-long Saratoga Race Meeting around the end of