Until Salt Lake City was awarded the 2034 Games,[2] Lake Placid had been the only North American city to have hosted two separate Winter Olympics.

[3] The museum, which was opened by New York State in 1994,[4] is located within the Olympic Center.

Its collection includes the "Fram III" bobsled from the 1932 Olympic Games which had been missing for more than sixty years prior to being donated to the museum,[5][6] the skates used by Jack Shea in the same games,[7] as well as memorabilia from the 1980 Miracle on Ice hockey team.

[10] In addition to hosting the Lake Placid film forum,[11] the museum's collection also provided materials for the 2004 movie Miracle, which focused on the 1980 hockey team.

[13] It has benefited from and is augmented by the other Olympic institutions and programs located in and around Lake Placid[14][15] which form part of former Governor Pataki's promotion of Lake Placid as a tourism destination.