(Lake Placid, NY, 10/18/22) – John Brown Farm State Historic Site was added to the National Underground Railroad “Network to Freedom,” state officials announced. John Brown had a lifelong connection to the Underground Railroad, through his assistance of freedom seekers and his work in the abolitionist circuit alongside self-liberated people. Owen Brown, John’s father and ardent abolitionist, played a role in Hudson, Ohio’s Underground Railroad community when John Brown was a child.
Ticonderoga, NY – The Ticonderoga Historical Society will celebrate the Halloween season with a free program entitled “Haunted Hancock” on Friday, October 21 at 7 p.m. at the Hancock House located at 6 Moses Circle in Ticonderoga.
“We will be taking a look at the dark and unexplained side of history,” said program presenter Diane O’Connor. “The supernatural is woven throughout history in a powerful way.”
On October 6, Senator Dan Stec (R,C-Queensbury) joined several state and regional representatives and John Brown Lives! Executive Director Martha Swan at a press conference and check presentation on the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid. John Brown Lives!, which runs programs year-round dedicated to preserving and advancing the legacy and mission of the famed abolitionist, received a $26,500 check from Parks and Trails New York to advance its strategic planning initiatives.
Out west the summer of 2022 will long be remembered as the year of fire, but the Adirondacks also has a history of fire.
The years 1903 and 1908 were two great fire years in the Adirondacks. An article titled “Years of Fire” in the March/April 1981 Adirondack Life notes that “During both years the northeast suffered from drought. Due to sloppy logging, the woods were filled with piles of slash, the discarded tops, and limbs of trees. The railroads, which crossed the Adirondacks in the 1890s, failed to equip their wood and coal burning locomotives with spark arrestors. Although mandated by state law the penalties for violating the equipment law were so insignificant the railroads ignored them, and fires started all up and down the rail lines.”
While researching an article on the Gilchrist bridge, I was asked about a river feature on the Hudson River, river left, just north ( up-river ) of the Washburn Eddy, or approximately 2 miles south of the Riparius Bridge. To some the feature appeared as a “C” shaped “dug way” that could have allowed water from the river to “circulate” (be diverted) into the “C’. To do what ? Might this be a “channel” for water to be diverted into a hydroelectric powerhouse ? A review of property / tax maps indicate that there was, across the river, an adjacent small piece of property approximately the same shape and size. After some deed history research I may have found a possible explanation. There was proposed (in 1911), several storage dams or containment dams with small power plants with penstocks or water pressure tunnels, planned along the Upper Hudson River in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. This led to my exploration of these various proposed dams.
September 19, 2022 — Lake Placid, NY — As ADK (Adirondack Mountain Club) celebrates its centennial anniversary, the organization has launched an online oral history project called ADK Voices in partnership with Our Story Bridge. Told from the perspective of ADK supporters, the project details the organization’s rich history and notable impact on New York’s public lands and waters.
All are invited to attend the Adirondack 102 Club’s annual gathering which is scheduled for Friday, October 7 at noon at The Ole Barn in Inlet. Local author, Charles Herr, will serve as this year’s guest speaker. The get-together is open to the public, as the Adirondack 102 Club is self-described as “a friendly group that is loosely organized.” Anyone in the Inlet/Fulton Chain area who would like to attend is welcome, however all guests must register for the gathering and pay in advance.
By Roger Kessel
In the historical and continuing conflict between preserving the natural beauty of the Adirondack Park and fostering economic development, members of the hospitality industry are not infrequently depicted as the bad guys—the black hats willing to forego preservation of the wilderness in a selfish quest for profit. The reality is much more complicated and, based on my experience, the reverse is true. Let me explain.
The Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH) Annual Meeting and Preservation Awards event will be held on Saturday, September 17 from 3 to 5 p.m. at the recently-rehabilitated Sandy Hill Arts Center in Hudson Falls, NY.
The 9th Annual Fire Tower Lighting event is scheduled for Saturday, September 3 from 9 to 9:30 p.m. and will include several fire towers in the Adirondacks and Catskills. On the evening of the event, volunteers will light fire tower cabs with high-powered lights, and invite people to visit locations where they could look up, see the light on the horizon, and pay homage to fire observers who would stand watch in the towers, protecting the community and surrounding forest.
Established in 2014, this statewide event is the brain child of Doug Hamilton of the Red Hill Fire Tower Committee, and is meant to showcase the history of fire towers around the state. They were erected in the early 20th century, as fires ravaged hundreds of thousands of square miles of wild forest.
Adirondack History Museum staff are pleased to host a Fires of the High Peaks Lecture by Sharp Swan on the evening of Thursday, September 1 at 7 p.m. The start of the 20th Century saw massive forest fires throughout the Adirondack region. Between 1903 and 1913, about 862,000 acres of forest burned.
By Hallie Bond, Town of Long Lake Historian
The Adirondack Canoe Classic, known to many of us as The 90-Miler, is coming up! On September 10, we can stand on the bridge over Long Lake and cheer on those brave souls who are paddling or rowing all the way from Old Forge to Saranac Lake. They will be traveling an ancient route, one that has seen the full range of propulsion options, from human to the gasoline engine. The death this summer of Tom Helms, proprietor for nearly half a century of Helms Aero Service, reminds us that in one Long Lake family we can see most of this evolution happening on this lake over the past 160 years.
LAKE PLACID, NY — On August 20, John Brown Lives! (JBL!) launched its “Freedom Story Project” website — www.freedomstoryproject.org — during the first-ever Adirondack Family Book Festival at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site.
Martha Swan, Executive Director of John Brown Lives!, said, “This website includes the first of many three- to five-minute personal accounts of the activism and engagement of ordinary people working for justice and for human and civil rights, not only here at home, but around the world.”
As the Adirondacks celebrates the 50th anniversary of the nation’s Clean Water Act (1972-2022), I thought to thumb through a set of old reports to find out what the nonprofit advocate Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks was doing or thinking about at the origins of the Clean Water Act during 1972.
So much of a groundbreaking environmental nature was happening in 1972 that shared the spotlight with the national Clean Water Act. Here is a small sampling from the Association’s 1972 report, authored by its president at the time Arthur Crocker, and by its vice president Paul Schaefer:
Marty Podskoch will give a PowerPoint and storytelling presentation on his book, Adirondack Fire Towers: Their History and Lore, The Northern District, on Thursday, August 18th at 7 PM at the Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown. The book contains information and photographs about the fire towers in the northern part of the Adirondack Park that include St. Lawrence, Franklin, Clinton, and Essex counties.
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