Posts Tagged ‘John Apperson’

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

A Lake George Park: Enlisting Women to the Cause

John Apperson Overlooking Lake George (Adirondack Research Library Photo)Although many books are available about the “great and gracious” on Millionaire’s Row at Lake George, few authors have written about the social and political drama that unfolded there, starting around 1920, as automobiles and improved roads began to change the status quo, revealing the tension between commercial interests and those who wished to create a Lake George Park.

Among those in favor of creating a park were several millionaires, including William K. Bixby, who donated land on Tongue Mountain to the state, and George Foster Peabody, who gave land for a campground (Hearthstone) and a park, on Prospect Mountain. Another wealthy landowner, Mrs. Stephen Loines, a widow with three unmarried daughters, contributed significantly to the cause, not only through her gifts of land, but in her efforts to influence public opinion. » Continue Reading.


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Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Setting the Record Straight on Lake George:
Robert Moses, John Apperson, and Tongue Mountain

Christmas PhotographAccording to local lore, Robert Moses, secretary of the State Parks Commission, and John Apperson, leading defender of the “forever wild” clause of the NY constitution, had a confrontation of historic proportions, one summer day in August of 1923. Moses, who was already carrying out an ambitious scheme to grab power, had convinced Governor Al Smith that the development of state parks would be a very popular election issue.

As the center-piece of his plan, Moses wanted to build a parkway on the Tongue Mountain peninsula (plus, eventually, gas stations, scenic overlooks, and hotels). Apperson wanted to prevent development altogether.  He dreamed of bringing the central portion of the lake (Tongue Mountain, the Narrows, Black Mountain and Paradise Bay) under state ownership, and thus under the protection of the NY constitution.

The battle over the highway at Tongue Mountain happened quietly, behind the scenes, and out of the headlines.  In fact, Robert Moses’ biographer, Robert Caro, never mentioned this story, and apparently knew little about the work of John Apperson at Lake George.  Fortunately, we can now examine letters and documents long hidden from view that shed considerable light on the politics concerning the creation of a Lake George Park.
» Continue Reading.


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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Robert Moses and the Lake George Park Commission

Almost every park and camp ground in New York State is administered by the Office of Parks and Recreation, with the exception of those in the Catskills and the Adirondacks. The Department of Environmental Conservation manages those.

Wint Aldrich, a Deputy Commissioner for Historic Preservation at Parks through four administrations, once explained that anomaly to me. “The Conservation Department didn’t want Robert Moses anywhere near the Forest Preserve,” Aldrich said.

Moses, who had controlled everything even remotely related to New York’s parks since 1924, was notoriously averse to wilderness preservation. » Continue Reading.


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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Adirondack Ice: Skate-Sailing

“I pray that each year, as I age, I’ll have the rare opportunity to once more glide with the wind, be part of the ice and the winter breeze. It’s a crazy thing to dream of, pray for, or depend on…..ICE; black crystal clear ice. Wind, a whish of the skates, and off I go once more.” Peter White, dedicated skate-sailor, 2009

Rarely practiced today, skate-sailing was quite popular from the late 1800s through the 1940s. Eskill Berg, of Schenectady, a Swedish engineer at General Electric, introduced this wind-driven sport to the Lake George area in 1895.

While it disappeared for a long stretch in the early 1900s, the sport enjoyed a comeback in the 1980s under the leadership of, among others, William M. White, a well-known skater and conservationist. An active member of the Skate-Sailing Association of America, he thought nothing of sailing some twenty-five miles on Lake George, racing along on his personal set of wings while relishing the silence and freedom of the sport.

Most of the early skate-sails were made of two tapered spruce spars attached in a cross formation with a sail made of cotton. By the 1980s, Dacron and nylon were used with spars of aluminum and fiberglass, reducing the sail’s total weight from some eighteen pounds to eight. Sails were either rectangular or kite shaped with the longer spar resting on the skater’s shoulder, the shorter one pointing skyward. Later models had the added safety feature of small plastic or celluloid windows which allowed the skater to navigate with better visibility, increasing his ability to avoid treacherous cracks, pressure ridges and open water.

In 1916, another engineer named John S. Apperson, an outdoorsman and dedicated conservationist who also promoted this stylish riding-the-wind sport at Lake George and elsewhere, designed an innovative and faster sail. It had a trapezoidal rather than traditional kite shape, carried sixty to sixty-five square feet of sail, stays to keep it taught and it featured a detachable jib. Known as the Apperson or Schenectady sail, it became quite popular and widely used. Today, Peter White, a zealous Lake George skate-sailor and the son of William M. White, carries on the tradition of his predecessors, often still using his own antique Apperson sail.

A skate-sail is easily and quickly assembled. Resting it on the shoulder, twisting one’s hips into the right position, and nestling into the sail, the skater skims over the ice at speeds of 40 to 50 mph if the wind is good and the ice clear. As with iceboating, only certain special conditions favor this sport: smooth, strong, snow-free ice and a good 25 to 30 mph wind. It is a happy moment when the Gods favor the skate-sailor with such a perfect day.

Like so many of the best things in life, one must be on location and ready to grab the opportunity when ice and wind conditions are favorable. What a joy to swoop across a lake with the lightness of air and carefree as a bird.

According to Apperson, “ice bound people can find no other sport that can surpass skate-sailing for the exhilarating sense of freedom and action; the stimulation of flinging one’s self at the wind.”

Caperton Tissot is the author of Adirondack Ice, a Cultural and Natural History, published by Snowy Owl Press.


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Tuesday, November 2, 2010

The National Adirondack Debate of 1932

It is fitting that the Lake George Land Conservancy has created a John Apperson Society of friends and donors. Through his work for a wilder Lake George and Forest Preserve throughout the Adirondacks in the first half of the 1900s, Apperson, the General Electric engineer, gave heart, body and soul to healing what he considered the ills of industrialized, over-engineered society – to the extent that Apperson acknowledged that Lake George was his wife, and the Lake’s islands were his children.

The following story was verbally told to me by Paul Schaefer, and thankfully written down by Paul as part of a published article called “Four Battles for Adirondack Woods and Waters,” which appeared in the 1992 Park Centennial issue of Adirondac, the journal of the Adirondack Mountain Club.

A young Paul Schaefer was enamored of Adirondack activist Apperson from the day he first met him around 1932. As Paul often said, it was the pure sense of joy that Apperson exuded about conservation in the Adirondacks which galvanized young people looking for a cause. And these were very important years for the Adirondacks, as for the nation. The 1932 national election loomed, as the Great Depression sucked hope and savings from so many. One can imagine the anxiety that gripped the country and the opportunity for hucksters, demagogues, as well as statesmen.

In 1931, New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt was preparing to run for the Presidency, but so was former New York Governor Al Smith. In the New York Legislature, a bill had been passed which seemed right for those hard times. It would encourage the state to purchase more land but also allow “cutting, selling and removing trees, timber, forest products and other materials on any lands within the forest preserve counties but outside of the Adirondack and Catskill Parks.” This was the so-called Hewitt Reforestation Amendment to the Constitution. It seemed to make sense to Governor Roosevelt and many other conservationists. After all, many lands near the edges of the Adirondacks and Catskill were cut-over, or abandoned farmlands. Reforesting these lands would not only put people to work but also replant a renewable forest resource for the future.

John Apperson recognized the problem. The Adirondack Park was much smaller in those years. Lake George, Great Sacandaga Lake, Schroon Lake and the mountains north of Lake Placid were not in the Park. The Hewitt bill would permit lumbering in those places right against the smaller Blue Line boundary, and exclude them from being acquired as “forever wild” Forest Preserve where lumbering was not permitted. Apperson had long believed that the Adirondack Park should be enlarged to include all of these lands of which bedrock geology dictated a certain Park unity. Travelers approaching the Park from the southwest and southeast hit the gas pedal as they sense the geological uplift which tells them they are entering the Adirondack region. In 1931, politics intervened to give a very big boost to Apperson’s sense of geological logic.

Al Smith was not only running for Governor, but he was the Chairman of the New York State Fish, Game and Forest League, a consortium of hundreds of sporting clubs. Just as important, John Apperson had a friend in Al Smith. While Smith was Governor, Apperson had convinced him to acquire substantial lands bordering Lake George as Forest Preserve.

By 1931, Smith had a natural constituency and influence over conservation legislation which Roosevelt lacked. Smith turned up the political heat on Roosevelt. Within a matter of weeks, the Adirondacks became national news. Al Smith attacked Roosevelt for supporting the Hewitt legislation because it would, in Schaefer’s words, “carve up the great potential that was the Adirondack Park.” Behind the scenes, Apperson was working with these sporting clubs to distribute a pamphlet called “Tree Cutting with Your Money,” meaning that the Hewitt bill would allow unrestricted lumbering at the public’s expense.

At the same time, in an attempt to extend the Park to its geological boundaries Apperson approached Al Smith with a new map and a proposal. Apperson’s map showing how the Blue Line should be extended is archived at the Adirondack Research Library. Smith teamed with State Senator Ellwood Rabenold and Apperson on legislation that would expand the boundaries of the Adirondack Park to follow Apperson’s lines.

Smith’s criticism of Governor Roosevelt went national, and it stung. Governor Roosevelt saw a “win-win” solution for the State and for his own national political fortunes by backing his own version of the Rabenold bill to expand the borders of the Adirondack Park by roughly 1.5 million acres, while simultaneously backing Hewitt’s legislation to permit lumbering and reforestation outside the Park. The Park expansion bill passed and Roosevelt signed it. The Hewitt amendment to the Constitution received public approval at the polls, resulting in the early State Forests outside of the Adirondack and Catskill Parks, now about 780,000-acres in all.

Apperson apparently kept news of the Park expansion bill under wraps. You could do that in those days! Thus, after the November election Paul writes that he and other opponents of the Hewitt amendment “were crushed by their defeat,” only to “savor the joy” of victory upon learning from Apperson that Gov. Roosevelt had signed the Park expansion bill.

Photos: Above – Paul Schaefer with John Apperson, c. 1947, the only known photo of the two together, photo by Howard Zahniser, and courtesy of the Adirondack Research Library of Protect the Adirondacks. Below – “Growth of the Adirondack Park” from The Adirondack Atlas (Wildlife Conservation Society, 2004).


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Friday, October 29, 2010

Lake George Land Conservancy Honors John Apperson

The Lake George Land Conservancy has elected to celebrate the memory of John Apperson by naming a society in his honor.

“The John Apperson Society recognizes Apperson’s significant contributions to the preservation of Lake George and honors those who have followed in his footsteps,” said Nancy Williams, the Conservancy’s executive director.

According to Williams, any individual or family who donates $100,000 or more over a period of five years is eligible for membership in the John Apperson Society.

A donation of an easement whose value equals or exceeds $100,000 also qualifies for membership in the Society, Williams said.

“Every member receives a medal and framed certificate acknowledging the gift. The Conservancy will maintain a plaque for the Apperson Society and the Society members will be recognized each year at our annual Land and Water Conservation Celebration,” said Williams.

The founding members were inducted into the society at the Conservancy’s 2010 celebration, held on Lake George on August 2.

John Apperson was born in Smyth County, Virginia in 1879. His love of Lake George began in 1900 when, as a a patent engineer at General Electric, he made his first trips here to hike, canoe and camp. Apperson first acquired property on Lake George in 1918, when he bought a parcel on Tongue Mountain so that he would have a place to store his boats and where he built a rough shelter.

During those first years on Lake George, Apperson heard became that a developer was planning to build a hotel on Dome Island. With the financial support of William K. Bixby, of Bolton Landing, and Dr. Irving Langmuir, the GE scientists who later won a Nobel Prize, Apperson purchased Dome Island and later donated it to the Nature Conservancy so that it would be kept in its natural state.

“Because of Apperson’s foresight and generosity, Dome Island is still maintained as a research preserve. We think his example is inspiring,” said Williams.

But preserving Dome Island was only one of Apperson’s accomplishments.

He recruited more than 300 people from 12 nations and 27 states to use their boats to carry stones and gravel to rip-rap the shores of many islands to protect them from boat-wake erosion.

Apperson also used his political skills to prevent Robert Moses from building a highway along the shoreline of Tongue Mountain and to lobby for the state acquisition of the Knapp estate.

After Apperson’s death in 1964, Times-Union columnist Barney Fowler wrote, “He was the dean of the implacable conservationists, the man who wanted the woods as God made them. Throughout his entire life he made his power felt.”

According to Nancy Williams, the Conservancy has established a $100,000 gift as the prerequisite for membership in the Apperson Society because that figure is today’s equivalent of the sum Apperson raised to maintain Dome Island in its pristine state.

“In order to assure its permanent protection, Apperson raised $20,000.00 for an endowment,” said Williams. “At approximately 3.25% interest over 53 years $20,000 is equivalent to roughly $100,000 today.”

Photos: John Apperson; Founding members of Apperson Society, Lake George, August 2010. Lake George Mirror photo files.

For more news from Lake George, subscribe to the Lake George Mirror.


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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Dave Gibson: Return to the Moose River Plains

A summer day. The road to the Moose River Plains from Limekiln Lake is free of traffic this morning, the sun’s rays have not yet turned the evening dew to dust. As I drive down the shaded road I think about the work of local people from Inlet who dug and placed sand on these roads to give the heavy logging trucks enough traction on the steep sections. Dick Payne, former Inlet Police Chief, left me memorable impressions of working the Plains in the “old days.” Since 1964 when the Gould Paper Company sold this land to the people of the State, the land is Forest Preserve. As the cicadas begin to whine from the trees, I try to remember another group who hiked in via the Red River valley to discover what was at risk from the Higley and Panther Mountain Dams on the South Branch of the Moose River.

The years were 1945 and 1946. At first, they were flown over the Plains by Scotty, the bush pilot from Inlet. Next, they carried heavy packs, snowshoes and cameras. They “discovered” a strange, beautiful land they had never seen before despite over thirty years of exploration in the Adirondacks. A land threatened with inundation by great dams and reservoirs. Not just the land, and the over-wintering deer, as well as the Plains itself and the great trees were at risk but those same roads where the people from Inlet, who knew this land intimately, worked for the trucks extracting resources from this valley. All were at risk from reservoirs that would provide cheap hydropower to the Black River valley to the west, that would drown even the tallest white pine and red spruce lining the Moose, and its tributary, the Indian, where 19th century trappers and, later, the guides and their sports from the cities hunted, fished and prepared hearty fare.

Their cameras and their story of all that would be drowned by these reservoirs won the day, but only by the hardest. It took ten years of advocacy, publicity, study, photography, lobbying, court action…and plain old stubbornness because their adversaries, the Black River Regulating District, had considerable legislative powers to dam rivers. The final vote came in 1955. The people of the State had to answer the question in the voting booths that fall: “There shall or shall not be constructed the Panther Dam on the South Branch of the Moose River.” “There shall not be,” said the voters, by a million votes. So, later, this land became part of the Adirondack Forest Preserve protected by an article in the NYS Constitution, where no lands can be flooded to regulate the flow of rivers without a constitutional amendment.

I came to view Beaver Lake and the Indian River, where Paul Schaefer and his associates photographed white pines and red spruce hundreds of feet tall, white-tailed deer feeding in wetlands, where they spoke for the life they saw threatened by the dam builders. The Indian River lies at elevation 1815 ft.. The high-water elevation of the proposed Higley Dam reservoir would have been 1892 ft. Panther Dam high flow line would have been lapping at everything below the Indian in elevation, at 1716 ft.

I record a few impressions on this sunny August day fifty years after the stunning impact that this land made on Paul Schaefer, Ed Richard, John Apperson, and Beaver Lake landowner Alan Wilcox eventually changed state policy on wild rivers in the Adirondacks forever.

The trail to Beaver Lake seems to be mine, save for a couple who stop to speak of loons on the lake and I to speak with them of the giant witness white pine beside us on the trail. Its three great trunks each reach a worthy 35 inches in diameter; when combined below there is 12 ft. of circumference on a tree that has witnessed the better part of two centuries. Paul Schaefer and associates photographed it constantly during their ten year struggle. The trail, grassy save where feet have laid it low, is sandy gravel, the easiest walking in the Adirondacks. Nowhere else have I been able to survey Adirondack tree tops without tripping over my shoe tops. Massive yellow birch and sugar maple with full canopies soar above.

Beaver Lake comes into view and then the small field where once stood Alan Wilcox’s camp. The camp had a stove in it that saved the life of a hypothermic Paul Schaefer that cold winter of 1946. The sun strikes a billion sparks on the water this warm day. Stillness lays on the far shore, listlessness on the near one. I am in a hurry to progress to the Indian River, but nature is not, and so I am made reluctant to part from the solitude here. A fishermen’s trail heads west, easy to follow save for the expected deadfall. Along the sun-flooded shore of the lake, giant spreading yellow birch and white pine filter the light. Far above those comforting soft boughs an osprey cries, even from the forest floor I saw its head turning, alert to a fish in the warm surface of this shallow lake with bays thick with pond weeds and lilies. On the forest side of the trail, great boulders are cleft, leaving steep precipices and overhangs of green granitic gneiss. As I near the lake outlet, a muddy shoreline is uncovered where, under the harsh summer sun, footprints of deer and moose are drying. These great animals seem to lead me west into the sun on faint animal trails, meandering up and down slope. Avoiding dense brush and blow down, I try to keep to a contour and keep the outlet in its grassy banks in sight. Then out of sight, I hear its soft murmuring now under deep shade.

Then a large stream is seen in the sunlit valley beyond. My heartbeat quickens and I’ve reached the Indian River. A beaver has worked a stagnant backwater. Beyond, about 5 giant pines, several bleached or dying, stand above the streambed. Large red spruce and balsam fir line the shore as well, along with yellow birch. The scene wasn’t so different than the one Paul Schaefer encountered more than fifty years earlier. I wander among the trees. The river takes a sharp turn at this stretch and splits around a heavily wooded island. Then comes an urge to get in the stream to cool amidst the small schools of fish, probably dace. After, I walk the cobbles in the narrowing streambed, gazing every which way. Somehow Paul Schaefer’s photographs that have captured me for years every time I look at them make this a familiar wilderness. Upstream lies the Stillwater where he took many influential photographs of what would have been flooded. But there is no chance of reaching that today. I am leaving this Forest Preserve land of the deer and, now, the moose and returning home. Retracing my steps, there are bicyclists enjoying Beaver Lake shoreline, children cooling in the stream and kayaks on cars and in the Moose River at the Beaver Lake trailhead. Ahead is ten miles of dusty road back to Inlet, but I am elated. I have stood on the shores of the Indian River after imagining the scene for so long. Paul Schaefer was right. This is still Wild Forest land, not a series of reservoirs. This is our Forest Preserve, open to all. As Schaefer wrote, we all own an undivided deed this land of solitude, peace and tranquility. It is up to us and those who come after us to defend that deed.

Photo: Limekiln Lake-Cedar River Road.


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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Dave Gibson: Lessons in Adirondack Activism

Adirondack conservationist Paul Schaefer was a pied piper for young people in search of a cause, just as John Apperson had been for him when Schaefer was in his early 20s. By the 1970s and 80s, Paul was approaching 80 years of age, and scouts, teens, and earth activists of all ages found their way to Paul’s doorstep. I want to share a few of the lessons he conveyed.

One spring day in 1990 I met with Paul to discuss Governor Mario Cuomo’s Commission on the Adirondacks (Berle Commission) report which was about to be made public. Paul mentioned that on Earth Day, a group of “idealistic” young people had come down to pay him a visit. He had planned to show his award-winning film, The Adirondack: The Land Nobody Knows, but his Bell and Howell 16-mm projector could not be found (I had borrowed it). Instead, Paul invited the students into his living room. “I’ve never had a better time in my life,” Schaefer told me. “These kids were idealists, and we need them.”

They declared that one of their proposals was to do away with Route 28 and 30 between Blue Mountain Lake and Tupper Lake. “You mean you want to close the road?” “Yes,” they responded, “it damages the wilderness character of the park.”

Paul challenged them. “Before you come up with some hair-brained scheme like that you take me up on this: you start at my cabin near the Siamese Ponds Wilderness, and you walk the 15 miles across that wilderness to Indian Lake, taking a tent, pack and compass. Until you do that, you don’t know what wilderness is, you have no conception of it. You can’t possibility advance your cause by closing a road, the lifeblood of the economic well being of the park for wilderness reasons if you haven’t crossed a wilderness area on your own two feet and knows what it’s about. If you want to advance your cause in the Adirondacks, you’ve got to temper your idealism with realism.” He was very stern with them, but he closed with “I’d love to have you come back and talk more.” They were very surprised to learn they had been invited back after the lecturing they had received.

On another Earth Day, Paul was asked to give a presentation at the local high school. The student that issued the invitation told him that “kids my age just aren’t interested in the environment. They’re not motivated.” Paul responded, “I’m sorry to hear that but it doesn’t matter how many show up.”

It turns out Paul couldn’t make it, so he asked a fellow Adirondack activist named Bill White (Bill was also a protégé of John Apperson) to deliver the program in his stead. Afterward, Bill White dejectedly reported to Paul that only two people showed up for the lecture, including the girl and her teacher.

Schaefer responded, “Bill, you’ve got to remember that in 1946 I took the train out to Broome County, Binghamton, and we went all that way to talk about the Moose River Plains in the Adirondacks, and our fight to prevent the dams from flooding it. Only 15 people turned out for the meeting. Oh, it was bitterly discouraging to have brought ourselves and our information so far for only 15 people. But remember Bill, while we needed thousands of brochures to be distributed in Binghamton over the next few days, among the 15 in our audience was a man who stood up after our presentation and said ‘you give me 50,000 of those brochures and I could use another 50,000 and I will distribute every one of them.’”

It turned out that Broome County produced the most votes in 1955 to defeat the Panther Mountain Dam proposal (to amend Article XIV, the Forever Wild clause in the NYS Constitution to build a huge power dam on the South Branch of the Moose River). “Never underestimate that one person among 15, or among two in your audience,” Schaefer said.

Photo: Paul Schaefer at his Adirondack cabin, photo by Paul Grondahl and courtesy of the Adirondack Research Library of Protect the Adirondacks.


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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

A Short History of the Moose River Plains

The Moose River Plains Wild Forest, sitting between Route 28 and the West Canada Lake Wilderness in Hamilton and Herkimer counties, is a bit of an Adirondack political and natural history wonder.

The gravelly, flat, grassy “plains” of the Moose and Red Rivers are a significant contrast to the rest of the Adirondack Park and one of it’s more unique (and popular) features. Although it’s hard to know for sure, indications from various studies and permit requests suggest that about 50,000 people use the plains each year (not including the some 500 campsites bordering the area, and the incidental use generated by those in the hamlets of Inlet, Raquette Lake and Indian Lake). “The Plains,” as the area is known, was also the site of one of the region’s legendary environmental conservation fights of the last 100 years. » Continue Reading.


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Monday, January 25, 2010

Ten Influential People in Adirondack History

One thing for sure, this list is not complete. There are perhaps thirty important people who didn’t make this short list. Suggestions from readers on the original post seeking nominations offers a much more complete list of those influential in the Adirondacks, but I said ten, and so here is ten. I’ve listed them roughly chronologically.

Something I found interesting: five of these men (yeah, they’re all men) were born in the eighteen years between 1840 and 1858—an Adirondack Greatest Generation?

Deganawida (before 1600) – The Great Peacemaker, as he is known to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), helped unite the various local Native Indian nations into the Iroquois Confederacy. In the process he set the Mohawk on a historical path that influenced European affairs. Thanks to the power of their Confederacy, mostly Iroquois names remain on the Adirondack landscape, including the Mohawk inspired “Adirondack.” Without Deganawida’s Iroquois Confederacy we might be speaking French today.

Honorable Mention: Hiawatha, who carried on (and to some extent carried out) Deganawida’s mission, and Arent van Curler, considered responsible for the reasonably good relations between the Dutch and Native Americans, particularly the Iroquois.

William Johnson (c. 1715–1774) – As a commander of colonial militia forces during the French and Indian War, and later superintendent of Indian affairs, Johnson helped keep Iroquois allies working in the interest of the British. He was crucial in the British victory at the Battle of Lake George (1755) and in capturing Fort Niagara (1759) which put an end to significant French influence in the region. Although the Iroquois were important to determining what language Adirondackers speak today, William Johnson was instrumental.

Honorable Mention: Robert Rogers, commander of Rogers’ Rangers and hero of Adirondack folk life, and Hendrick Theyanoguin (“King Hendrick”), the Mohawk Chief who helped bring the Mohawk to support the British.

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) – One of America’s most popular writers of the early 19th century, Cooper did for the Adirondacks what Mark Twain (who hated Last of the Mohicans) would do for the Mississippi. His “Leatherstocking Tales” hero Natty Bumppo served to define American impressions of Adirondack wilderness, and helped create the legend of the rugged frontiersman and the Adirondack Guide. Natty Bumpo rejected the trappings of modern urban civilization, much the way many Adirondackers still do.

Honorable Mention: Chingachgook, who became the idealized embodiment of the noble savage – a natural man, unencumbered by civilization, part of why the Adirondacks still uses so many Native American inspired names for a hundred rundown motels, and Ebenezer Emmons, the geologist whose Romantic native American inspired contributions to the New York Natural History Survey reinforced Native connections and provided the name “Adirondacks.”

William H. H. Murray (1840–1904) – Adirondack Murray has long been considered instrumental in the birth of the Adirondack tourism industry. His 1869 book Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks (which went through eight printings its first year) served as a simple guide to those who hoped to find spiritual enlightenment, physical health, and a return to man’s natural state. The Great Wiki says that Murray argued that the “rustic nobility typical of Adirondack woodsmen came from their intimacy with wilderness.” There’s that rustic frontier nobility again.

Honorable Mention: Long Lake Guide Mitchell Sabattis, who guided Murray twice, and Benson J. Lossing whose heavily illustrated Field-Book of the Revolution served as the basic vacation tour guide model that Seneca Ray Stoddard later capitalized on.

Verplanck Colvin (1847–1920) – The Great Wiki says “lawyer, author, illustrator and topographical engineer whose understanding and appreciation for the environment of the Adirondack Mountains led to the creation of New York’s Forest Preserve and the Adirondack Park.” I, along with many of our commenters who made suggestions for this list, concur. His 1873 report arguing that the entire Adirondack region should be protected was instrumental in the creation of Adirondack Forest Preserve in 1885.

Honorable Mention: George Perkins Marsh, Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, John Muir, and others who convinced Americans that wild places were worth preserving.

Seneca Ray Stoddard (1844-1917) – Perhaps no single person in Adirondack history has had more impact on the region’s modern tourist economy. His guidebook The Adirondacks: Illustrated, published from 1873 to 1914, included the first tourist map of the region, and inspired countless Americans and Europeans to experience the region’s wonders – many of them returned for good. His 1892 illustrated lecture to the New York State Legislature is considered influential in the creation of the Adirondack Park.

Honorable Mention: Almanack reader Mara Jayne’s suggested Adirondack artists: Thomas Cole, John Kensett, Sanford Gifford, Frederic Church, Samuel Coleman, J.D. Smilie, David Johnson, Asher B. Durand, James M. Hart, and Alexander Wyant.

Edward L. Trudeau (1848-1915) – Almanack reader Amy Catania suggested Trudeau saying, “When he came to the Adirondacks in the 1870s, Saranac Lake had less than 500 residents. Bloomingdale was a bigger town. At his death in 1915, SL had grown to around 8,000 residents. Just about all of the built environment in this little city in the ADKs grew up to serve the TB patients who followed Dr. Trudeau here. Dr. Trudeau built the first laboratory for the study of TB in the U.S. and the first Sanatorium to care for TB patients. Thanks to Dr. Trudeau, Saranac Lake was the national center for patient care and TB research up until the advent of antibiotics. And that meant a lot: the number of Americans infected with tuberculosis in the nineteenth century was as great as the combined number of cancer and heart disease patients today.” I agree – he helped define the Tri-Lakes Region.

Honorable Mention: The thousands of anonymous nurses, doctors, and other workers who cared for the region’s TB patients.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) – Avid naturalist and the founding father of America’s conservation movement, Theodore Roosevelt has been crucial to the kind of wilderness protection and wildlife conservation history that has defined the Adirondack region. Aside from helping to popularize the conservation of wild places, T.R. was a staunch supporter of the scientific approach to forest and wildlife management who pushed against “the depredations of man” by working to strengthen local fish and game laws and to professionalize the New York Fisheries, Game, and Forest Commission (forerunner of the DEC).

Honorable Mention: Foresters Bob Marshall, Bernhard Fernow or Gifford Pinchot who helped reverse the history of exploitation of the Adirondacks by the logging companies.

John Apperson (1878–1963) – Almanack reader Gregory Rosenthal suggested John Apperson by saying “he was Paul Schaefer’s mentor and one of the earliest voices for, and probably the greatest catalyst for, the expansion of the blue line [in 1931] to include Lake George and other southeastern ADK lands.” That’s a big chunk of the region and home to many of those who today oppose the Adirondack Park Agency and it’s controls over development inside the Blue Line. Without Apperson’s leadership, the political landscape of the Adirondacks may very well have turned out differently. Apperson was a charter member of the Adirondack Mountain Club and an early proponents of skiing in the Adirondacks who pioneered the skiing of several routes in the High Peaks and around Lake George.

Honorable Mention: Paul Schaefer, for his work with the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, and Clarence Petty, for his role in influencing the classification of Adirondack lands.

Arto Monaco (1913-2003) – The work of Art Monaco in designing the area’s theme parks has become a central part of the history of tourism in the Adirondacks, and the experience of Adirondack visitors in the last half-century. His creations have been found in the defunct Old McDonald’s Farm (Lake Placid), The Land of Makebelieve (Upper Jay), Gaslight Village (Pottersville and then Lake George), and Frontier Town (North Hudson), at Storytown (now the corporate Great Escape) and Santa’s Workshop in Wilmington (the last of a breed and a spot that made our Seven Human-Made Wonders of the Adirondacks).

Honorable Mention: Harold Hochschild, whose inspiration (and money) was crucial to the establishment of the Adirondack Museum, and Charles R. “Charley” Wood, the Lake George businessman and philanthropist whose impact on the Warren County landscape is undeniable.

Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979) – Nothing on the man-made Adirondack landscape matches the Adirondack Northway, and in terms of impact on the communities along its route, it’s huge. Just for that Nelson Rockefeller could make the list. But while a Republican New York State Governor he also sought passage of three major bond acts that provided over $300 million for land purchases (which helped establish 55 new state parks), created the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Office of Parks and Recreation, and banned DDT. Most importantly, however, he focused attention on suburban sprawl in the Adirondack Park and then appointed the Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks in 1968. That led to the creation of the Adirondack Park Agency – and we know where that story goes.

Honorable Mention: Ronald Stafford for helping create the North Country’s prison economy, and, as Tony Hall noted, for his work as an Adirondack conservationist.


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