Posts Tagged ‘Johnsburg’

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

The Return of “Echoes in These Mountains,” book release & signing set for Dec. 10

echoes in the mountains book

Echoes in These Mountains was my first award-winning book. Published in 2008, it tells the stories behind 55 historic sites in the Township of Johnsburg, Warren County. The book was well received and the original run of 1,500 copies sold out years ago. With folks asking for up to $114 for a used copy “signed by the author” (eBay emphasis, the original retail price was $16.95), I decided it was time
for a second edition. I used the opportunity to fix some typos, but also to expand the original manuscript with additional historic photographs and added new research and analysis.

The expanded second edition, now totaling 512 pages, will be officially released at a special program on December 10 at the Town of Johnsburg Library [located on] Main Street [in] North Creek, NY. The new edition includes additional documentation of a French & Indian War warpath that passed through the area including pictures of a Revolutionary-Era “cannon” found unearthed along a local dirt road years ago, cannon balls of different diameters found in a garden in Bakers Mills by a local resident and a Revolutionary War French bayonet found near the east shore of Loon Lake.

» Continue Reading.


Tuesday, October 25, 2022

The Place I Live: Johnsburg

north creek aerial

When we travel I tell folks we live in UPSTATE NY – not NYC. Explain we live on a dirt road 7 miles from the general store – which burned down 10 years ago and has not been re-built.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Above is a picture son Adam took recently from the summit of Crane Mt. (In Johnsburg, where we were married June 1971) looking west. See the house just to the left of the center of the photograph with the green roof? Not ours… you can’t see ours. Ours, although two story and 36’x50’, is buried under the cluster of orange trees an inch or two to the right.

House 85 ft set back from the dirt road – but you can’t see that either. Buried under the trees.

Main body of water is Garnet Lake; 70% of which is NYS “Forever Wild.” Water to the upper left is not a river; Lixard Pond is surrounded by wild lands. 50 miles of “forever wilds” borders our 27 acre “backyard.”

Editor’s note: Thanks to Glenn for sharing this. Let’s see if we can turn this into a series! Share what you love about your part of the Adirondacks. What makes it special? Send your “The Place I Live” commentary to Melissa Hart: editor@adirondackalmanack.com.


Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Community Fund for the Gore Mountain Region grants $25,000 to 22 local organizations

NORTH CREEK — The Community Fund for the Gore Mountain Region (CFGMR) has awarded over $25,000 in grants to 22 organizations serving the towns of Chester, Horicon, Johnsburg, Minerva and Schroon.

 

A component fund of Adirondack Foundation, CFGMR was established in 2005 and awards grants annually to community organizations in the greater Gore Mountain region in support of community beautification, historic preservation, culture and the arts, education, recreation and programs for youth, seniors and veterans. The fund has awarded more than $235,000 in grants since inception.

 

“Our list of grant recipients this year shows the tremendous scope of organizations working to enhance the communities of the Gore Mountain region,” said Mindy Preuninger of the CFGMR committee. “From supporting programs for kids and youth to historic preservation and community revitalization, the Community Fund for the Gore Mountain Region is committed to supporting the people and organizations who work tirelessly to give back.”

» Continue Reading.


Sunday, March 13, 2022

Challenges of Researching Local History: The Grist Mill at Cooper’s Falls

Cooper's Falls

Tracking down documentation of historic sites can be a real challenge, especially so here in the Adirondacks when the historic site may be little known or perhaps the site even lost in enveloping forest growth.

Some time ago I was approached by friend Evelyn Greene. Evelyn is a daughter of the famous Adirondack environmentalist, Paul Schaefer, and is a great explorer of the local woods. Evelyn told me about an abutment near a picturesque waterfall on the North Creek stream, about 3.6 miles upstream of where the steam enters the Hudson River at the village of North Creek. She wondered if I knew anything about it and wondered if there had ever been a mill there. Despite all my research on 55 historic sites in the Town of Johnsburg for my first book, Echoes in These Mountains, I replied I knew nothing about it.

» Continue Reading.


Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Logging Classes Planned in Johnsburg

mike burns from professional forestry servicesCornell Cooperative Extension is set to offer two Game of Logging courses in October.

On October 24th the Game of Logging Level 1 course will focus on introducing the participant to open face felling and to develop techniques to safely fall a tree. Topics include: personal protective equipment, chainsaw safety features, chainsaw reactive forces, bore cutting, pre-planning the fell, and understanding hinge wood strength. » Continue Reading.


Saturday, May 11, 2019

Ed Zahniser: Part of Your Barn Is on Me

Big John Dalaba spoke of his land as himself. A few years before he died in 1951, he and my father Howard Zahniser stood looking out at the view of Crane Mountain from our cabin that his daughter Pansy and husband Harold Allen built on the part of the family farm Big John and his wife Hester had deeded to them as a wedding gift in 1938.

A corner of the cowshed built onto Pansy and Harold’s barn still sat on the Dalaba farm, not on the gifted part, which my father and mother Howard and Alice Zahniser had bought in 1946. Harold and Pansy then sought to move downhill to a larger, flatter farm with far better road access for the long, cold, snowy winters. » Continue Reading.


Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Local Broadband Symposium Planned for North Creek

DSL service in Adirondack Park The Town of Johnsburg is set to host a Broadband Symposium on March 15th at 6:30 pm in The Tannery Pond Community Center, to review the results since February 2018 of the new NY Broadband Program in Warren County.

The presentations will focus on customers connected, new customer connections being made, and future plans by Frontier Communications, Slic Network Solutions, and HughesNet. » Continue Reading.


Monday, February 11, 2019

Voting Workshop Planned For North Creek

Town of Johnsburg Library illustrationThe Town of Johnsburg Library has announced an upcoming Civil Liberties Workshop, set for Thursday, February 28 from 6 to 7 pm.

Wendy L. Johnston, Assistant Professor of Political Science at SUNY Adirondack will speak on the importance of voting, changes to New York State’s voter registration requirements, and tools citizens can use to help inform their vote. » Continue Reading.


Friday, December 21, 2018

Featured Hike: Crane Mountain, Johnsburg

crane mountain trailCrane Mountain is part of the Wilcox Lake Wild Forest and is considered a jewel of the southern Adirondacks. It is the highest peak in the region, offering expansive views and a spectacular open ridgeline.

The 1.75-mile Crane Mountain Trail begins at the parking lot at the end of Ski Hi Road. It travels nearly due north up a very steep section of the mountain and includes two ladders, one of which is 30 feet against a steep rock wall. » Continue Reading.


Saturday, August 25, 2018

Poetry: At Sodom Community Church

At Sodom (NY) Community Church

“Restoration can follow”
says the preacher of our litanies of loss.
His name is Oliver, no ordinary guy.
Of the gift of tongues he will allow
an incident in Desert Storm, glossed
by Holy Spirit wind. A Bedouin came by
by camel with a child needing–needing
what!? “One of our Assemblies of God boys
prayed that someone understand.
And God said ‘Why don’t you?'” Heeding
which he did, reducing Babel’s noise
to apprehend the need at hand.
At hand today: Oliver’s stated theme:
“Except the Lord build, we build in vain”
–from Ezra’s ancient Hebrew book.
Grief and loss can blossom as a fruited plain
and compost be more and sweeter than it seem.
Lift another rock; take another look.


Tuesday, August 21, 2018

Charges On Illegal ATV Trail At Crane Mountain

No ATV sign courtesy Flickr user Peter BlanchardNYS Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Ranger Arthur Perryman reported that he received information indicating an illegal all-terrain vehicle (ATV) trail was being constructed from privately owned lands onto New York State Adirondack Forest Preserve lands in the Town of Johnsburg. » Continue Reading.


Thursday, August 9, 2018

A Partnership For Wilderness, 1946-2018

In July 1946, Howard and Alice Zahniser drove with their children to the Adirondacks for the first time. Howard had started work as the first executive of The Wilderness Society in Washington D.C. the year prior. Howard would begin drafting the federal Wilderness Act of 1964 (66 drafts in all) from a cabin he acquired in the Adirondacks.

Howard kept a journal of his first trip to the Adirondack Park.  The rest of us know about it thanks to his son Ed Zahniser’s small book, Where Wilderness Preservation Began – Adirondack Writings of Howard Zahniser (Ed Zahniser, Editor., North Country Books, 1992). For 72 years the extended Zahniser family, now including the fourth generation, has returned to the same place in the Adirondacks. This August I held a cook-out to welcome them back. » Continue Reading.


Saturday, May 5, 2018

Mateskared: The Zahniser Cabin in Johnsburg

In the mid-1990s Harold Allen reminisced about my father Howard Zahniser: “He bought the place, and he never had seen it,” Harold said. “Paul Schaefer was the one who told him about it.”

Pansy and I were sitting at their kitchen table. Her parents, John and Hester Dalaba, named their girls for plants—Pansy, Daisy, Blossom, Fern, and Carnata — and their boys for trees — Oliver and Linden.  Harold, Pansy’s husband, sat in his favorite easy chair, next to the door to their closed-in front porch. “We even tried to give it away,” Harold said of their first attempts to sell what became Mateskared to our family, “because we didn’t want to pay the taxes on it.” They paid $3 school tax and $8 land tax. Harold knew exactly what they paid, because he was the collector for school taxes then. “Here now school and land taxes are $2,000 a year,” Harold said of their present home just down the hill from Mateskared. » Continue Reading.


Saturday, April 22, 2017

Collaboration Yields Dividends At Tannery Pond Center

tannery pondWhat follows is an essay by the Board of Trustees of  the Tannery Pond Center, located on Main Street in North Creek.

Enhanced collaboration between the Town of Johnsburg (TOJ) and the non-profit Tannery Pond Center (TPC) organization has brought this region the wonderful opportunity of having more varied and more frequent entertainment, educational programs, and other events scheduled at the Tannery Pond Community Center (TPCC) for the benefit of the residents of, and visitors to, this region.

In this special partnership between the TOJ and the TPC, the TPC raises money (currently about $65,000 a year) to bring an amazing variety of musicians, lecturers, and other entertainers to the Center and manages the operations; while the TOJ, which owns the facility, maintains the building and funds a part-time employee whose primary charge is scheduling. Over 500 events, meetings and activities were held in the building in 2016, with only a handful of days in which no one occupied any space. » Continue Reading.


Monday, November 28, 2016

A Master Trail Builder; A Vision For North Creek

route-28

To really understand this story, you have to bear in mind two distinctive things about North Creek.

One, it butts up against the mountains much tighter than most Adirondack communities. Start on the path that runs beside Town Hall (within sight of the Hudson), and within minutes you’re climbing steeply up Gore Mountain, entering one of the largest wilderness complexes in the Park. » Continue Reading.



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