The book
Kineo Ablaze
By William David Musser, owner of The Oak Lodge.
Kineo Ablaze connects the family's lodge to the vanished resort landscape and the fire-haunted history of Mount Kineo.
Written by William David Musser, the book carries Kineo's past into story: the lake crossings, the old hotels, the people drawn to the mountain, and the flames that changed what remained.
Why the book belongs here
A family-authored doorway into Kineo.
The Oak Lodge is not just a building in the old resort landscape. It is also a family place, owned by the author of Kineo Ablaze. That connection lets this history be told with both curiosity and personal attachment.
The book belongs here because Kineo's real geography still holds the drama of the story: the cliff, the lake, the old hotel grounds, the surviving cottages, and the feeling that the past is never entirely gone.
Inside the story
History carried by firelight
The book sits at the meeting point of family memory, local history, and the dramatic fires that reshaped Kineo.
Mount Kineo rises over the lake as both landmark and witness.
The grand resort world brought steamships, cottages, golf, and ambition.
Kineo's history is marked by what burned, what was rebuilt, and what disappeared.
Oak Lodge remains part of the surviving landscape that keeps the story close.