Adirondack Mountains - The land, Geology, Spelling, Tourism and Recreation, History, Sources

Mountain range largely in NE New York State, USA; rises to 1629 m/5344 ft at Mt Marcy; named after an American Indian tribe; source of the Hudson and Ausable Rivers; locations such as L Placid are noted winter resorts; largest state park in USA.

The Adirondack mountain range is a group of mountains in the northeastern part of New York that runs through Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Lewis, St. Lawrence, Saratoga, Warren, and Washington counties.

The mountains are often included by geographers in the Appalachian Mountains, but they are geologically more similar to the Laurentian Mountains of Canada. They are bordered on the east by Lake Champlain and Lake George, which separate them from the Green Mountains in Vermont.

The land

The park

A large portion of the Adirondack range is encompassed within the six million acres (24,000 km²) of Adirondack State Park, which includes a constitutionally-protected Forest Preserve of approximately 2.3 million acres (9,300 km²). About 40% of the land is owned by the state, with 60% private inholdings, heavily regulated by the Adirondack Park Agency. http://www.apa.state.ny.us/ The Adirondack Park contains thousands of streams, brooks and lakes, most famously Lake Placid, adjacent to the village of Lake Placid, two-time site of the Olympic Winter Games.

The mountains

Unlike the Appalachians, the Adirondacks have their own wood, known as Adirondack Wood. The Adirondacks do not form a connected range, but consist of many summits, isolated or in groups, arranged with little apparent order. McIntyre), 5114 ft (1559 m), Haystack 4960 ft (1512 m), Skylight 4926 ft (1501 m), Whiteface 4871 ft (1485 m), Dix 4857 ft (1480 m), and Giant 4627 ft (1410 m).

The High Peaks

Forty-six of the tallest mountains are considered "the 46" peaks over 4000 ft (1219 m), thanks to a survey done around the start of the 20th century.

There are many fans of the Adirondack Mountains who make an effort to climb all of the original 46 mountains (and most go on to climb MacNaughton as well), and there is a Forty Sixers club for those who have successfully reached each of these peaks.

Geology

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. 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 mountains form the drainage divide between the Hudson watershed and the St. Lawrence River/Great Lakes watershed. 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 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 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.

Mining was once a significant industry in the Adirondacks.

Spelling

The mountains are sometimes known as the Adirondaks, without a "c", or even the Dax. Some of the place names in the vicinity of Lake Placid have peculiar phonetic spellings attributed to Melville Dewey, who was a principal influence in developing that town and the Lake Placid Club. The Adirondak Loj, a popular hostel and trailhead run by the Adirondack Mountain Club in the high peaks region, is one example.

More interesting is the alleged meaning of the word "Adirondacks." Various Adirondack hiking books note that "Adirondacks" is a derogatory term used by the Iroquois to describe their neighbors, the Algonquins. The word Adirondack is a derivation of the Iroquois word for "bark-eater." The Ha-De-Ron-Dah Wilderness area in the western Adirondacks is an attempt at a more accurate spelling of the original Native word.

A slightly different version of the derivation of "Adirondacks" is that the Mohawk Indians, one of the six tribes of the Iroquois Nation, found fault with the mountain-dwelling Algonquins, given the paucity of food in the Adirondacks, due to thin soils which limited crop growing, and steep terrain, which made hunting difficult.

Tourism and Recreation

The mountain peaks are usually rounded and easily scaled. The resorts most frequented are in and around Lake Placid, Lake George, Saranac Lake, Schroon Lake and St. Regis Lake.

Hunting and fishing are allowed in the Adirondack Park, although in many places there are strict regulations. At the head of Lake Placid stands Whiteface Mountain, from whose summit one of the finest views of the Adirondacks can be obtained. 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.

Another impressive feature of the Adirondacks is Indian Pass, a gorge about eleven miles (18 km) long between Mt.

Although the climate during the winter months is very severe, with absolute temperatures often falling into the −30 °F (−35 °C) range (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.

July 4th, 2006 marked the dedication and opening celebration of the Wild Center/Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks.

History

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.

Part of the French and Indian War (1754-1763) was played out on the edge of the Adirondacks.

At 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.

The area wasn't formally named the Adirondacks until 1837;

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; Although sportsmen had always shown some interest in the Adirondacks, the publication of William H. 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;

Romanticism 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.

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 1885 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 1892, 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.

Sources

Graham, Jr., F., The Adirondack Park: A Political History. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984. (1989), Defending the Wilderness: the Adirondack Writings of Paul Schaefer. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. (1997), The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness. Henry Hold and Co., Inc., New York, N.Y. (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.