The Adirondack Mountains Of New York State

Editor: oldadk

Introduction

The Adirondack Park is made up of over 6 million mostly undeveloped acres in the Adirondack Mountains, with more than 3000 lakes and poinds, 1500 miles of rivers, 2000 miles of hiking trails, over 100 campgrounds, over 40 peaks over 4,000 feet high, and lots of little towns scattered throughout. The Park boundary, called the "Blue Line," includes the eastern boundary of Lake Champlain.

What is unusual about the Adirondack Park is that it is a protected area. There is no "entrance" to the park, like other mountain destinations in other parts of the United States. A patchwork of both private and public land, the Park includes huge tracts of wild back country intersecting with private lands and towns.

The Adirondack Park, a portion of northeastern New York that includes Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Lewis, St. Lawrence, Saratoga, Warren, and Washington counties, was designated in 1882 by the New York State Legislature, which passed laws to ensure publipublic lands would stay wild.

WINTER SPORTS

During the winter, visitors enjoy Alpine and Nordic skiing, snowmobiling, skating, dog sledding and relaxing in front of gigantic stone fireplaces.

Home to 2 Olympics

SUMMER SPORTS

Hike. Canoe. Boat. Fish. Swim. Ride mountain or road bikes. Ride horses. Camp. Ski. Snowmobile. Hunt. And while the Adirondacks are untamed and natural, the region also is home to countless resorts

The hiking trail system in the Adirondacks is the largest in the United States.

from mountain summits to isolated waterfalls to forest glades.

Canoe, kayak, swim and fish

The mountains are often included by geographers in the Appalachian Mountains, but they are geologically more similar to the Laurentian Mountains of Canada.[citation needed] They are bordered on the east by Lake Champlain and Lake George, which separate them from the Green Mountains in Vermont. They are bordered to the south by the Mohawk Valley and to the west by the Tug Hill Plateau, separated by the Black River. This region is south of the St. Lawrence River.

Links

Adirondack Park Agency http://www.apa.state.ny.us/

ECOLOGY

The Adirondacks do not form a connected range, but are an eroded dome of many summits (over 100 peaks, from under 1200 to over 5000 feet in altitude).

Mount Marcy is the highest peak at 5344 ft. There is a special distinction to be a "46-er" -- one who has climbed each of the 46 Adirondack High Peaks over 4,000 feet high.

The mountains consist primarily of metamorphic rocks, mainly gneiss, surrounding a central core of intrusive igneous rocks, most notably anorthosite, in the high peaks region. These crystalline rocks are a lobe of the Precambrian Grenville Basement rock complex and represent the southernmost extent of the Canadian Shield, a cratonic expression of igneous and metamorphic rock 880 million to 1 billion years in age that covers most of eastern and northern Canada and all of Greenland. Although the rocks are ancient, the uplift that formed the Adirondack dome has occurred within the last 5 million years — relatively recent in geologic time — and is ongoing. The dome itself is roughly circular, approximately 160 miles (260 km) in diameter and about one mile (1.6 km) high. The uplift is almost completely surrounded by Palaeozoic strata which lap up on the sides of the underlying basement rocks.

The mountains form the drainage divide between the Hudson watershed and the St. Lawrence River/Great Lakes watershed. On the south and south-west the waters flow either directly into the Hudson, which rises in the center of the group, or else reach it through the Mohawk River. On the north and east the waters reach the St. Lawrence by way of Lakes George and Champlain, and on the west they flow directly into that stream or reach it through Lake Ontario. The tiny Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds, nestled in the heart of the High Peaks area between Mt. Marcy and Skylight, is considered to be the source of the mighty Hudson. The most important streams within the area are the Hudson, Black, Oswegatchie, Grasse, Raquette, Saranac and Au Sable rivers.

The region was once covered, with the exception of the higher summits, by the Laurentian glacier, whose erosion, while perhaps having little effect on the larger features of the country, has greatly modified it in detail, producing lakes and ponds, whose number is said to exceed 1300, and causing many falls and rapids in the streams. Among the larger lakes are Lake George, The Fulton Chain, the Upper and Lower Saranac, Big and Little Tupper, Schroon, Placid, Long, Raquette and Blue Mountain. The region known as the Adirondack Wilderness, or the Great North Woods, embraces between 5000 and 6000 square miles (13,000 km² and 16,000 km²) of mountain, lake, plateau and forest.

HISTORICAL INFO

Mining was once a significant industry in the Adirondacks. The region is rich in magnetic iron ores, which were mined for many years. Other mineral products are graphite, garnet used as an abrasive, pyrite wollastonite and zinc ore. There is also a great quantity of titanium, which was mined extensively.

The meaning of the word "Adirondacks" is "they eat bark," a derogatory name which the Mohawk Native American Indians applied to neighboring Algonquian tribes, because when food was scarce they would eat the inside of the whit pine bark.

Although the climate during the winter months can be severe, with absolute temperatures sometimes falling below −30 °F (−35 °C) pre wind chill, a number of sanitariums were located there in the early 1900s because of the positive effect the air had on tuberculosis patients. The heavily forested region is the most southerly distribution of the boreal forest or taiga in the North American continent. The forests of the Adirondacks include spruce, pine and broad-leafed trees. Lumbering, once an important industry, has been much restricted since the establishment of the State Park in 1892.

Hunting and fishing are allowed in the Adirondack Park, although in many places there are strict regulations. Because of these regulations, the large tourist population has not overfished the area, and as such, the brooks, rivers, ponds and lakes are well stocked with trout and black bass. In Adirondack Park, approximately 260 species of birds have been recorded, of which over 170 breed here. Because of its unique taiga habitat, the park has many breeding birds not found in most areas of New York and other mid-Atlantic states, such as Boreal Chickadees, Gray Jays, Bicknell's Thrushes, Spruce Grouse, Philadelphia Vireos, Rusty Blackbirds, American Three-toed Woodpeckers, Black-backed Woodpeckers, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Bay-breasted Warblers, Mourning Warblers, Common Loons and the crossbills.

At the head of Lake Placid stands Whiteface Mountain, from whose summit one of the finest views of the Adirondacks can be obtained. Two miles (3 km) southeast of this lake, at North Elba, is the old farm of the abolitionist John Brown, which contains his grave and is frequented by visitors. Lake Placid outflow is a major contributor to the Au Sable River, which for a part of its course flows through a rocky chasm 100 feet to 175 feet (30 m to 53 m) deep and rarely more than 30 ft (10 m) wide. At the head of the Ausable Chasm are the Rainbow Falls, where the stream makes a vertical leap of 70 ft (20 m).

Another impressive feature of the Adirondacks is Indian Pass, a gorge about between Algonquin and Wallface Mountains. The latter is a majestic cliff rising several hundred feet from the pass. Keene Valley, in the center of the High Peaks, is another picturesque region, presenting a pleasing combination of peaceful valley and rugged hills.

HERITAGE

Algonquian and Mohawk Indians used the Adirondacks for hunting and travel, but they had no settlements in the area. Samuel de Champlain sailed up the Saint Lawrence and Rivière des Iroquois near what would become Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain in 1609, and thus may have been the first European to encounter the Adirondacks. Jesuit missionaries and French trappers were among the first Europeans to visit the region, as early as 1642.

Part of the French and Indian War (1754-1763) was played out on the edge of the Adirondacks. The British built Fort William Henry on the south end of Lake George in 1755; the French countered by building Fort Carillon on the north end, which was renamed Fort Ticonderoga after it was captured by the British. In 1757, French General Montcalm, captured Fort William Henry.

Adirondack guides and their SportsAt the end of the 18th century rich iron deposits were discovered in the Champlain Valley, precipitating land clearing, settlement and mining in that area, and the building of furnaces and forges. A growing demand for timber pushed loggers deeper into the wilderness. Millions of pine, spruce, and hemlock logs were cut and floated down the area's many rivers to mills built on the edges. Logging continued slowly but steadily into the interior of the mountains throughout the 19th century and farm communities developed in many of the river valleys.

The area wasn't formally named the Adirondacks until 1837; an English map from 1761 labels it simply "Deer Hunting Country." Another early map is merely labeled "uninhabitable."

One consequence of the American Civil War was that many people who might otherwise never have left their home town got to see a great deal of the country; as a result, interest in outdoor life and adventure travel became commonplace. Although sportsmen had always shown some interest in the Adirondacks, the publication of William H. H. Murray's Adventures in the Wilderness; Or Camp-Life in the Adirondacks in 1869 started a flood of tourists to the area, leading to a rash of hotel building and the development of stage coach lines. Thomas Clark Durant, who had helped to build the Union Pacific railroad, acquired a large tract of central Adirondack land and built a railroad from fashionable Saratoga Springs to North Creek. By 1875 there were more than two hundred hotels in the Adirondacks, some of them with several hundred rooms; the most famous was Paul Smith's Hotel. About this time, the "Great Camps" of the Adirondacks evolved near Raquette Lake, where William West Durant, son of Thomas C. Durant, built luxurious compounds. Two of them, Camp Pine Knot and Camp Sagamore, both near Raquette Lake, have been designated as National Historic Landmarks, as has Santanoni Preserve, near Newcomb, NY. Camps Sagamore and Santanoni are open to the public seasonally.

An Adirondack guide and his SportRomanticism had also played a part in popularizing the area, as mountains previously seen as dreaded and forbidding were celebrated by the Romantics. Part of James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 The Last of the Mohicans: A narrative of 1757 is set in the Adirondacks. Frederic Remington canoed the Oswegatchie River, and William James Stillman, painter and journalist, spent the summer of 1857 painting near Raquette Lake. The next year he returned with a group of friends to a spot on Follensby Pond that became known as the Philosophers Camp. The group included James Russell Lowell, Louis Agassiz, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s brother John.

In 1873 Verplanck Colvin developed a report urging the creation of a state forest preserve covering the entire Adirondack region, based on the need to preserve the watershed as a water source for the Erie Canal, which was vital to New York's economy at the time. In 1883 he was appointed superintendent of the New York state land survey, and in 1885 the Adirondack Forest Preserve was created, followed in 1892 by the Adirondack Park. When it became clear that the forces seeking to log and develop the Adirondacks would soon reverse the two measures through lobbying, environmentalists sought to amend the State Constitution. In 1894, Article XIV of the New York State Constitution was adopted, which reads in part:

The lands of the State...shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold, or exchanged, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.

The restrictions on development and lumbering embodied in Article XIV have withstood many challenges from timber interests, hydropower projects, and large scale tourism development interests. Further, the language of the article, and decades of legal experience in its defense, are widely recognized as having laid the foundation for the U.S. National Wilderness Act of 1964.

Environmental advocacy organizations like The Adirondack Council are critical to ensuring the Park's ecological integrity and wild character today.

References
Isachsen, Yngvar W. (Editor) (2000), The Geology of New York: A Simplified Account. New York State Museum Press. See also The Andirondack Mountains: New Mountains From Old Rocks

Sources
Graham, Jr., F., The Adirondack Park: A Political History. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984. Donaldson, A. L., A History of the Adirondacks, 2 vols., Mamaroneck, NY: Harbor Hill Books, 1989; reprint of 1921 edition. Haynes, Wesley. "Adirondack Camps National Historic Landmark Theme Study." McKibben, B. (1995), Hope, Human and Wild: true stories of living lightly on the earth. Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, Massachusetts. Schaeffer, P. (1989), Defending the Wilderness: the Adirondack Writings of Paul Schaefer. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Schneider, P. (1997), The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness. Henry Hold and Co., Inc., New York, N.Y. Terrie, P.G. (1994), Forever Wild: A Cultural History of Wilderness in the Adirondacks. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Terrie, P.G. (1997), Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks. The Adirondack Museum/Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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