The long awaited reprint of Louis J. Simmons’s “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock” (previously only available in an expensive collectible first edition) is now available thanks to Andy Flynn of Saranac Lake’s Hungry Bear Publishing and the Goff-Nelson Memorial Library.

Louis Simmons, Editor of the Tupper Lake Free Press, published just 2,000 copies of Tupper Lake’s first comprehensive history in June 1976 and it went quickly out of print. Like the original, the new edition includes more than 140 photos (Simmons’s wife Grace was a longtime Tupper Lake librarian after whom the research room is now named).

There are more then 450 pages on the settlement of the village of Tupper Lake and the Town of Altamont (the name of the town was changed to Tupper Lake in 2004) including the local logging industry, railroads, churches, schools, hotels, the Sunmount facility, and local businesses such as the Oval Wood Dish Corporation. The new edition also includes a new index, compiled by Tupper Lake native Carol Payment Poole. Tupper Lake Free Press Publisher Dan McClelland wrote a new foreword for the 2009 edition.

Here’s a short bio of Simmons from the publisher:

Simmons used more than four decades of experience at the editorial helm of the Tupper Lake Free Press to write “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock.” A 1926 graduate of the Tupper Lake High School and 1930 graduate of Syracuse University, he was hired as the Tupper Lake Free Press editor in 1932. He retired as full-time editor in 1979 and continued writing and editing until his death on April 4, 1995. He was also the Tupper Lake historian for many years.