It includes a collection of summer cottages built along or near the shores of the lake between about 1880 and 1903, a period of prosperity in Harrisville and nearby Keene.

It is unusual in that most of the owners and occupants of its properties were from nearby towns, and not from further afield, as the populations of the summer colonies of Nelson and Dublin were.

The district covers 66 acres (27 ha) from the town line between Harrisville and Nelson to the southern end of the lake, and includes 76 contributing buildings.

[1] The Silver Lake area was first settled in the mid-18th century, and was predominantly agricultural in use until the arrival of the railroad at Chesham in 1880.

Around 1886 Corban Farwell and Wellington Seaver, the major landowners around the southern end of the lake, began selling off lakefront lots, on which vacationers built modest cottages.