History and Facts of the Adirondacks

[backpacker]

Lets make this a section to post and discuss facts and the history of our back yard. The Adirondacks is full of history from the early explores to the wealthy who used it as their playground. I find the following information very interesting. I see it every month in my “Adirondack Explorer”.


The Adirondack Park

PROGNOSIS – Better protected than many other sensitive areas of the country, the Adirondacks is nonetheless subject to unrelenting development pressure that could irreparably degrade the region in the coming decades. The remedy: better land protection through more public acquisitions, conservation easements, and development restrictions.

SIZE – At nearly 6 million acres (about 9,000 square miles), it’s the largest park in the contiguous United States. The Adirondack Park is as big as Vermont – or the size of Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier and Great Smoky Mountains national parks combined.

OWNERSHIP – 2.7 million acres (46 percent) is state-owned Forest Preserve, protected by the state constitution as “forever wild.” One million acres of the forest preserve is further classified as Wilderness and is off-limits to motorized recreation. More than 3 million acres of private lands are devoted mainly to forestry, open-space recreation and agriculture.

POPULATION – The best guess is 150,000 permanent and 150,000 seasonal residents, though nobody knows for sure.

ECONOMY – Traditionally based on forestry, tourism and farming. Government services and real-estate development have assumed growing importance in recent years.

GEOGRAPHY – The western and southern Adirondacks is a gentle landscape of hills, lakes, pounds and steams. In the northeast are the rugged “High Peaks” – 43 mountains over 4,000 feet, including 5,344-foot Mount Marcy, the highest point in New York. The lowest point in the Adirondack Park is Lake Champlain, at 95 feet above sea level.

FLORA & FAUNA – The spruce-fur and beech-birch-maple association reach their crowning glory in Adirondack forests. The fisher, American marten, and spruce grouse are distinctive wildlife. Loons nest on many Adirondack lakes. Bald Eagles, peregrine falcons, ospreys, ravens, beaver and moose have made a comeback. The Eastern coyote is thriving, cougar sightings are increasingly reported, and someday the howl of a wolf may be heard here again.

WATERSHED – The Adirondack Park contains tributaries for five major basins: Lake Champlain and the Hudson, Black, saint Lawrence and Mohawk rivers. Within the Park are 3,000 lakes and ponds and 30,000 miles of rivers, streams and brooks.

RECREATION – The Adirondacks offers some of the finest opportunities in the eastern Unite States for outdoor recreation in an undisturbed natural setting, including canoeing and kayaking of all kinds, camping, picnicking, hiking, winter mountaineering, rock and ice climbing, cycling, hunting, fishing, birding, swimming, down hill and cross-country skiing, ice-skating and snowshoeing. A 100-mile canoe route traverses the park, and a 120-mile hiking trail extends from Northville to Lake Placid.

[Matt]

I've heard that over half of the land in the park is privately owned. Is that true?

[backpacker]

yes a lot of it is privately owned by lumber companies and clubs like the Adirondack Mountain Reserve. but parts of it has easments for public use or acess to peaks.

[backpacker]

The remains of french Louie's homestead can be found along the Northville Lake Placid trail in the West Canada Wilderness area. There is a nice lake a few yards from the site. All that remains is his fire place:





If my memmory is correct the forest rangers also had a cabin in the same spot, you can see the remains of the fire place along with the cabin foundation in this picture.




French Louie was an interresting person and some books have been wrote about him

[Khallera]

I love that in the whole of Hamilton County (Central Addie region) there is not one traffic light!