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When the earliest Adirondack maps were drawn, Gore Mountain’s true summit could not be clearly identified. As colonial surveyor Verplanck Colvin put it “the highest point always seemed to disappear in the intricate group of peaks of which the mountain was composed.”
As the area around the mountain was increasingly surveyed, a “gore” developed between two large tracts of land, Hyde’s Patent, and the southeast line of the Totten & Crossfield Purchase. It was in or near this gore – a surveyor’s term indicating an unmapped triangular or tapered area between two surveyed areas that does not connect (or close) along a common line – that the mountain sat.
The Southeastern Adirondacks actually had several gores on old maps as new tracts of land were laid out that didn’t quite connect with others. There was another gore south of Schroon Lake, part of a Brant Lake Tract misalignment.
Gore Mountain is actually four, now well developed, peaks. Gore, Bear, Burnt Ridge, and Little Gore together make up the largest amount of skiable terrain in New York State. North Creek, at the base of Gore Mountain, was home to one of the first commercial ski areas, and ski patrols, in the United States.
The famous ski trains that shaped the early development of skiing at Gore Mountain were inspired by organizer Vincent Schaefer’s trip to the 1932 Lake Placid Winter Games. Today, Gore Mountain is managed by the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA), which also manages Gore, Whiteface, and Belleayre Mountains, and the Lake Placid Olympic venues. Several of Gore Mountain’s season passes and ticketing products are valid at ORDA’s three ski areas.
Gore Mountain Ski Area recently launched a new logo, that features the four peaks. They have also commited to what they believe is the largest solar array dedicated to a ski resort in the country, the renovation of four lodges, and an overhaul of the snowmaking system.
This season, Gore will introduce new RFID direct-to-lift gates and a competition-level freestyle cross course.
Illustrations: Above, a map showing early Adirondack patents and gores (courtesy Adirondack Atlas); middle, a ski train at the Delware & Hudson Railroad’s North Creek Depot in 1935 (Courtesy The Adirondack Branch); and below, Gore Mountain Ski Area’s new logo.
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The article failed to mention that the term “gore” originated in the textile trade to describe a long, narrow triangular piece of cloth that could not be used for any other purpose.
I did not know that.
And so far as I have ever been able to ascertain, no one knows for sure why the Jessups laid out their “55 mile line of trees” in 1772 at a 30-degree angle off of North, thus creating a plethora of gores at the nebulously-fixed Totten Crossfield northern line. But that odd choice – or accident of history, perhaps – certainly left a confused legacy, including the above described gore.
I’ve always wondered if any Adk historians out there have discovered the Jessups’ reasoning. I have a guess, but it’s a guess with no foundation.
In lady’s fashion, the gored skirt took advantage of those pieces of cloth.