Every year, on the Sunday night before Labor Day, people all around Great Sacandaga Lake walk down to their own little stretch of shoreline and light a fire. Nobody organizes it centrally. Nobody hands out a schedule. And yet, as it gets dark, 125 miles of reservoir shoreline lights up at roughly the same time — hundreds of small fires strung around the water like a necklace. That's the Ring of Fire, and 2026 was its 39th year.
Where it actually came from
The tradition traces back to 1988 and one family: Agnes Gilbert had spent time around Keuka Lake in the Finger Lakes, where lakefront neighbors lit bonfires together over the Fourth of July. She brought the idea home to the Sacandaga and passed it to her daughter, Sylvia Gilbert Parker, who — with her friend Donna Haydon — started handing out flyers to lake residents in 1988, asking everyone with a beach, a camp, or a dock to build a fire on the same night.
It wasn't a festival with a budget or a permit. It was two women asking their neighbors to do a simple thing at the same time. It worked, and it kept working, because there was nothing to maintain — no committee, no vendor contracts, no tickets. Just an idea that spread from cove to cove until it covered the whole lake.
Why the Sunday before Labor Day, specifically
The timing isn't random. Labor Day weekend is the unofficial last weekend of the lake season — the point where seasonal camps start closing up, marinas start thinking about haul-out, and the crowd that fills the lake all summer starts to thin. Lighting a fire the night before Labor Day turns that quiet ending into something you can actually watch happen. It's become the lake's version of a closing ceremony: not appointed by anyone, just agreed on by enough people, year after year, that it stuck.
What it actually looks like now
By the time it gets dark, fires are burning on private beaches, rented camps, and in front of lakeside businesses up and down the shoreline. A few spots have grown into semi-public gathering points over the years: Sport Island Pub in Northville has run fireworks over the water to go with its bonfire, and Lanzi's on the Lake in Mayfield hosts a large public bonfire for people who don't have their own stretch of shore to burn on. If you're out on the water after dark that night, you're not going to find one big fire to aim for — you're going to see the whole lake doing it at once, which is really the point.
The morning before, Northville runs its own spinoff: the Ring of Fire 5K, a run/walk starting from Northville Waterfront Park that's grown into a real fundraiser in its own right — recent years have raised more than $10,000 for local groups like Sacandaga Helping Hands, the Northville Rotary Club, and the local fire department, with 300-plus runners and walkers filling the village for the morning.
If you're building your own fire
New York State's open-burning rules still apply on the Sunday before Labor Day same as any other night — this is a grassroots tradition, not a blanket exemption. Keep whatever you burn to clean wood, keep it close to the water and under control, and if you're out on the boat after dark, slow down and use extra caution — a shoreline full of fires and boat traffic in the dark is a bad combination to get casual about. None of that is a reason to skip it. It's just the reason it's lasted 39 years without anyone getting hurt.
Next year
The Ring of Fire always falls on the Sunday before Labor Day, so the date moves a little each year. Whatever shore you're on, you don't need an invitation — just a fire, and neighbors doing the same thing at the same time.
Sources: North Country Public Radio, Fulton County NY, Leader-Herald / Daily Gazette, 44 Lakes, Ring of Fire 5K. We don't invent local history — if any of this is off, tell us.