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As the great glacier that once covered most of the surface of New York State retreated towards the end of the Pleistoncene Epoch, Lake Champlain’s outlet to the north remained blocked. Champlain Valley remained mostly underwater until present day drainways emerged, and the land returned to their current elevations.
Water levels dropped in the valley and the Ausable River was building a delta at Wickham Marsh… until something caused the Ausable to abandon its delta for another at Ausable Point. What caused the Ausable River to divert its Wickham Marsh delta?
Stream Piracy (or stream capture) is a common event, where a river or a stream is diverted into the channel of a nearby river. They are kept under control by feats of engineering. In the case of the Mississippi River, the Old River Control structure. “a mammoth floodgate system costing hundreds of millions of dollars for construction, operation, and maintenance that keeps the Mississippi on its course to New Orleans.”
Read the full story, written by Gary Henry, a Stream Restoration Associate of the Ausable River Association, by following this link to Ausableriver.org
Historic Saranac Lake (HSL) is launching a new project, titled: “Pandemic Past and Present.” This project will take place on their Cure Porch on Wheels, and is funded by the 2021 Corridor of Commerce Interpretive Theme Grant from the Champlain Valley National Hertiage Partnership.
In June 1971, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed legislation creating the Adirondack Park Agency, and the modern era of Adirondack history began. All private land in the Park was zoned according to how densely it could be developed, and the state-owned Forest Preserve was divided into various categories, with Wilderness Areas designated as the most tightly regulated. No one was happy with the new agency. Local government and business interests predicted economic catastrophe, while conservationists felt the new regime didn’t adequately protect the Park.
In recognition of Valentine’s Day, here are some stories that speak to love in the Adirondacks, from the Almanack archive:
Fort Ticonderoga was one out of 18 institutions to be awarded a grant of $88,227 by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant supports a two-week NEH Summer Institute for teachers come July 2021, titled: “For the Common Defense: Subjects, Citizens, and America’s Military Origins, 1609-1815.”
North Country Live, a series of live webinars created over the summer in order to offer insight into topics such as wellness, personal finance, and Adirondack history, will be returning this fall with a focus on Indigenous Voices of the Adirondacks. Through three online programs, the North Country Live Fall Series will bring to light the history and traditions of the Mohawk Tribe at Akwesasne, and the challenges they have faced amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The programs are free, but require participants to 
Denuding the Adirondack Woods.
In recent months, as the coronavirus jumped from bats to people and spread around the globe, the world suddenly seems much smaller. The situation reminds us of our connectedness to the animal world and to each other. Such an awareness of nature is deeply rooted in the Adirondack traditions of hunting and fishing.
Today, the planet is taking a crash course on the limitations of modern medicine and the complications of human disease. It is a good time to look back and see what Saranac Lake’s history might teach us about public health.
Due to their delayed 2020 summer opening, Fort Ticonderoga is launching a virtual campus.
On June 26, 1776, John Adams wrote to Abigail words appropriate for our present circumstances:
From five years ago:
General inquiries about the Adirondack Almanack should be directed to editor
Remembering an Adirondack archaeologist
He had pulled that prank on so many students. Some of them would drop the “polished turd” and yell “ew,” the archaeologist told me. In case I was about to do the same, he assured me that there was no harm in holding it now. He slipped it back into a labeled sandwich baggy.
A few months later, he would put the most beautiful blue, 18th century glass cufflinks in my hands, freshly dug from the site of an officer’s hut. It was one of his most exciting finds before he died at the end of last year.
Whenever you met Starbuck, something amazing was always going to happen.
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