Adirondacks

Whiteface Memorial Highway Turns 75

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The Whiteface Veterans Memorial Highway, in Wilmington, N.Y., celebrated its 75th birthday on July 20th. At a cost of $1.2 million, construction of the winding roadway began in 1929 and was a part of the Depression Era public works projects. The highway opened to automobile traffic July 20, 1935 and the official opening ceremony took place later that year, in September.

During the opening ceremony celebration, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was New York’s Governor when ground was broken for the eight-mile long stretch of roadway, dedicated it to the veterans of World War I. In 1985, then-New York Governor Mario Cuomo re-dedicated the highway to all veterans.

Today, from mid-May to early-October, visitors to the area can take a drive or cycle up the five-mile long scenic highway, from the toll booth to the top. Along the way there are scenic lookout points and picnic areas where visitors can stop and enjoy views of the Adirondack region.

Once at the top of the 4,867-foot high Whiteface Mountain, guests can enjoy a 360-degree, panoramic view of the region, spanning hundreds of square miles of wild land reaching out to Vermont and Canada. Guests can also visit the castle, built from native stone, where they will find a gift shop and restaurant. For those who are unable to reach the summit on foot, an elevator is available that will take guests the final 26-stories to the summit’s observation deck.

Admission to the Whiteface Veterans Memorial Highway is $10 for vehicle and driver, $6 for each additional passenger. Bicycles can enjoy the more than 2,300-foot climb for only $5.

Photo: President Franklin D. Roosevelt attends the official opening of the Whiteface highway, Sept. 1935, and dedicates it to all veterans of World War I. Courtesy 1932 and 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympic Museum.

Adirondack History: Have You Seen That Vigilante Man?

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The Wilmington Historical Society will be hosting a program with historian and author Amy Godine entitled &#8220Have You Seen That Vigilante Man?&#8221 to be held on Friday, July 30th at 7 pm at the Wilmington Community Center on Springfield Road in Wilmington.

Night riders, white cappers and vigilante strikes- the darker side of American mob justice was not confined to the Deep South or the Far West. Adirondack history is ablaze with flashes of &#8220frontier justice,&#8221 from farmers giving chase to horse thieves to &#8220townie&#8221 raids on striking immigrant miners to the anti-Catholic rallies of the KKK. Amy Godine’s anecdotal history of Adirondack vigilantism plumbs a regional legacy with deep, enduring roots, and considers what about the North Country made it fertile and forgiving ground for outlaw activity.

Readers of Adirondack Life magazine are acquainted with Amy Godine’s work on social and ethnic history in the Adirondack region. Whether delving into the stories of Spanish road workers, Polish miners, black homesteaders, Jewish peddlers or Chinese immigrants, Godine celebrates the &#8220under-stories&#8221 of so-called &#8220non-elites,&#8221 groups whose contributions to Adirondack history are conventionally ignored. Exhibitions she has curated on vanished Adirondack ethnic enclaves have appeared at the Chapman Historical Museum, the Saratoga History Museum, the Adirondack Museum and the New York State Museum. The recently published 3rd edition of The Adirondack Reader, the anthology Rooted in Rock, and The Adirondack Book, feature her essays- with Elizabeth Folwell, she co-authored Adirondack Odysseys. A former Yaddo, MacDowell, and Hackman Research Fellow, she is also an inaugural Fellow of the New York Academy of History.

The “Have You Seen That Vigilante Man?” program on July 30th is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. For further information, contact Karen Peters at (518) 524-1023 or Merri Peck at (518) 946- 7627.

Photo: Members of Ku Klux Klan march in Washington DC in 1925.

Collection Storage Tours at Adirondack Museum

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Visitors can now get a glimpse of more than 7,000 historic artifacts not currently on exhibit at the Adirondack Museum in a state-of-the-art facility in the hamlet of Blue Mountain Lake by touring the Collections Storage and Study Center each Monday in July and August from 2:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m.

The tours are free for museum members- $10 for non-members. Visitors can sign up for a tour on Mondays at the Membership Desk in the Visitor Center. Each tour is limited to thirty people.

The Collections Storage and Study Center holds an amazing array of objects from the Adirondack past. Collections consist of: boats, including power boats, canoes, kayaks, guideboats, and unusual boats- traditional and rustic furniture- hand tools and machinery- large vehicles, including horse-drawn carriages and sleighs, snowmobiles, fire trucks, and a Jitterbug- maple sugaring equipment- ice harvesting tools- as well as agricultural artifacts.

Adirondack Museum Conservator and Collections Manager Doreen Alessi will lead the tours. Alessi cares for more than 100,000 two and three-dimensional artifacts in the collection of the Adirondack Museum. She is a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC).

Photo: Collections Storage and Study Center, Adirondack Museum.

Arto Monaco Historical Society Seeks Volunteers

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The board of the Arto Monaco Historical Society is seeking a small number of qualified volunteers to help coordinate two special projects. The first, will be organizing and documenting collections that will be transferred to the Adirondack Museum and other institutions. The society is seeking well-organized and responsible individuals with museum, library, or related experience who can help coordinate the work of additional volunteers.

The second is restoring and maintaining historic structures and grounds. Members of the society are looking for well-organized and responsible individuals with construction, maintenance, or related experience who can help coordinate the work of additional volunteers.

The work of Arto Monaco in designing the areas theme parks has become a central part of the history of tourism in the Adirondacks. Monaco was a local artist who designed sets for MGM and Warner Brothers, a fake German village in the Arizona desert to train World War II soldiers, and later his own Land of Makebelieve. Monaco died in 2005, but not before the Arto Monaco Historical Society (AMHS) was organized (in 2004) in order to preserve and perpetuate Monaco’s legacy, assemble a collection of his work, and stabilize and restore the Land of Makebelieve which was closed in 1979.

Since they first went into the woods with tools in 2006, volunteers of the AMHS have hacked the now overgrown Land of Makebelieve out of the encroaching forests in hopes of saving what’s left of Monaco’s legacy there from the ravages of nature.

If interested, please contact Anne Mackinnon at [email protected].

Picnic in the Park at the Adirondack Museum

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The Adirondack Museum will celebrate National Picnic Month on July 10, 2010. Activities are planned from 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. All are included in the price of general museum admission. Children twelve years of age and younger will be admitted FREE of charge as part of the festivities.

&#8220Picnic in the Park&#8221 will include displays, tableaux, special presentations, music, a Teddy Bear’s Picnic just for kids, cookbook signings, demonstrations, menus, recipes, hands-on opportunities, and good food, as well as the museum’s new exhibit, &#8220Let’s Eat! Adirondack Food Traditions.&#8221

Visitors are invited to bring their own picnic to enjoy on the grounds or purchase sandwiches, salads, beverages, and desserts in the Cafe. Picnic tables are scattered throughout the campus.

The event will showcase &#8220Great Adirondack Picnics&#8221. Ann S. O’Leary and Susan Rohrey will illustrate how the use of design and menu planning can create two Adirondack picnics. A Winter’s Repast, En Plein Air &#8211 an elegant New Year’s Eve celebration will be set in a lean-to. The Angler’s Compleat Picnic will feature local products in a scene reproduced from a vintage postcard. Both women will be available from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. to speak with visitors, and provide menus and recipes to take home.

To round out the elegant picnic theme, Chef Kevin McCarthy will provide an introduction to wines and offer tips on how to best pair wines with picnic foods. The presentations will be held at 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.

Special presentations will be held in the museum’s Auditorium. Curator Hallie E. Bond will offer &#8220Picnics Past in the Park&#8221 at 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Varrick Chittenden, founder of Traditional Arts of Upstate New York (TAUNY) will present &#8220Good Food Served Right: North Country Food and Foodways&#8221 at 1:30 p.m.

In addition, Sally Longo, chef and owner of Aunt Sally’s Catering in Glens Falls, N.Y. will offer &#8220Fun Foods for Picnicking with Kids&#8221 in the Mark W. Potter Education Center. &#8220Savory Foods and Snacks&#8221 will begin at 11:30 p.m. &#8220Sweet Treats and Desserts&#8221 will be presented at 3:00 p.m.

Museum visitors can create their own Adirondack picnic fare at home. From 11:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m., regional cookbook authors will sign and sell their work in the Visitor Center. Participants include the Upper Saranac Lake Cookbook with Marsha Stanley- Good Food, Served Right, with Lynn Ekfelt- Northern Comfort with Annette Neilson- Stories, Food, Life with Ellen Rocco and Nancy Battaglia- and Recipes From Camp Trillium with author Louise Gaylord.

Tom Phillips, a Tupper Lake rustic furniture maker, will construct a traditional woven picnic basket in the Education Center from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Visitors will discover displays about &#8220Picnics and Food Safety&#8221 as well as the many uses of maple syrup (recipes provided) with the Uihlein Sugar Maple Research and Extension Field Station staff.

Guided tours of the exhibit &#8220Let’s Eat! Adirondack Food Traditions&#8221 are scheduled for 11:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m., and 3:30 p.m.

Singer, songwriter, and arts educator Peggy Lynn will give a performance of traditional Adirondack folk music under the center-campus tent at 2:00 p.m.

The Museum Store will be open from 9:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., featuring a wide array of North Country-made food products as well as a special &#8220farmer’s market.&#8221

Fur, Fortune, and Empire: A History of American Fur Trade

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&#8220The fur trade was a powerful force in shaping the course of American history from the early 1600s through the late 1800s,&#8221 Eric Jay Dolin writes in his new comprehensive history Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. &#8220Millions of animals were killed for their pelts, which were used according to the dictates of fashion &#8212- and human vanity,&#8221 Dolin writes. &#8220This relentless pursuit of furs left in its wake a dramatic, often tragic tale of clashing cultures, fluctuating fortunes, and bloody wars.&#8221

The fur trade spurred imperial power struggles that eventually led to the expulsions of the Swedes, the Dutch, and the French from North America. Dolin’s history of the American fur trade is a workmanlike retelling of those struggles that sits well on the shelf beside Hiram Martin Chittenden’s 1902 two-volume classic The American Fur Trade of the Far West, and The Fur Trade in Colonial New York, 1686-1776., the only attempt to tell the story of the fur trade in New York. The latter volume, written by Thomas Elliot Norton, leaves no room for the Dutch period or the early national period which saw the fur trade drive American expansion west.

Dolin’s Fur Fortune, and Empire, is not as academic as last year’s Rethinking the Fur Trade: Cultures of Exchange in an Atlantic World by Susan Sleeper-Smith. It’s readable, and entertaining, ranging from Europe, following the westward march of the fur frontier across America, and beyond to China. Dolin shows how trappers, White and Indian, set the stage for the American colonialism to follow and pushed several species to the brink of extinction. Among the characters in this history are those who were killed in their millions- beaver, mink, otter, and buffalo.

Eric Jay Dolin’s focus, as it was with his last book Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, is the intersection of American history and natural history. Readers interested in the history of the New York fur trade will find this book enlightening for it’s connection of the state’s fur business with the larger world as the first third deals with the period before the American Revolution, when New York fur merchants and traders were still a dominate factor. Yet, like last year’s Sleeper-Smith book, Dolin’s newest volume is simply outlines the wider ground on which the still necessary volume on the fur trade in New York might be built.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

Venison and Potato Chips:Native Foodways in the Adirondacks

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During the nineteenth century, a number of Adirondack Indians marketed their skill as hunters, guides, basket makers, doctors, and cooks.

On Monday, July 5, 2010 Dr. Marge Bruchac will offer a program entitled &#8220Venison and Potato Chips: Native Foodways in the Adirondacks&#8221 at the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake. Bruchac will focus attention on what might be a lesser-known Native skill &#8211 cooking.

The first offering of the season for the museum’s Monday Evening Lecture series, the presentation will be held in the Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. There is no charge for museum members. Admission is $5.00 for non-members.

Nineteenth century white tourists paid good money to purchase wild game from Native people, to hunt in their territories, to buy medicines and remedies, and to eat in restaurants or lodgings where Indians held sway in the kitchen.

Dr. Bruchac will highlight stories of individuals such as Pete Francis, notorious for hunting wild game and creating French cuisine- George Speck and Katie Wicks, both cooks at Moon’s Lake House and co-inventors of the potato chip- and Emma Camp Mead, proprietress of the Adirondack House, Indian Lake, N.Y., known for setting an exceptionally fine table.

Bruchac contends that these people, and others like them, actively purveyed and shaped the appetite for uniquely American foods steeped in Indigenous foodways.

The Adirondack Museum celebrates food, drink, and the pleasures of eating in the Adirondack Park this year with a new exhibition, &#8220Let’s Eat! Adirondack Food Traditions.&#8221 The exhibit includes a 1915 photograph of Emma Mead as well as her hand-written recipes for &#8220Green Tomato Pickles&#8221 and &#8220Cranberry Puffs.&#8221

Marge Bruchac, PhD, is a preeminent Abenaki historian. A scholar, performer, and historical consultant on the Abenaki and other Northeastern native peoples, Bruchac lectures and performs widely for schools, museums, and historical societies. Her 2006 book for children about the French and Indian War, Malian’s Song, was selected as an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times and was the winner of the American Folklore Society’s Aesop Award.

Photo: Dr. Marge Bruchac

Peter Paine to Receive Adirondack Museum Award

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The Board of Trustees of the Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake has announced the selection of Peter S. Paine, Jr. as the recipient of the 2010 Harold K. Hochschild Award.

The Harold K. Hochschild Award is dedicated to the memory of the museum’s founder, whose passion for the Adirondacks, its people, and environment inspired the creation of the Adirondack Museum. Since 1990 the museum has presented the award to a wide range of intellectual and community leaders throughout the Adirondack Park, highlighting their contributions to the region’s culture and quality of life.

The Adirondack Museum will formally present Peter Paine, Jr. with the Harold K. Hochschild Award on August 19, 2010.

Peter S. Paine, Jr., a retired partner of the international law firm, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, has long served as Chairman of Champlain National Bank in Willsboro, N.Y. He has devoted much of his life to exemplary public service in the Adirondack region. He is Trustee and former Chair of the Adirondack Nature Conservancy, and also served on the New York State Nature Conservancy Board of Trustees.

In addition, he was a founding member and long-time General Counsel of the Lake Champlain Committee and also one of the founding Trustees of what is now Environmental Advocates.

Paine currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the Fort Ticonderoga Association and is also a Trustee of the Adirondack Community Trust.

Peter Paine has played a key role in numerous land conservation projects in the Champlain Valley. These include the preservation as a bird sanctuary of the Four Brother Islands in Lake Champlain, and the addition of the Split Rock Mountain Range to the NYS Forest Preserve.

He was also a major donor to and co-organized the Noblewood Park and Nature Preserve project in the Town of Willsboro with Assemblywoman Teresa R. Sayward, and helped create the Coon Mountain Preserve in Westport. At his instigation, the Paine family donated conservation easements to the Adirondack Nature Conservancy starting in 1978, protecting five miles of shoreline on Lake Champlain and the Boquet River and some 1,000 acres of farmland and forest.

Peter Paine, Jr. served as a member of the Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks (chaired by Harold K. Hochschild) from 1968 to 1970, and as a Commissioner of the Adirondack Park Agency from 1971 to 1995. In that capacity he was the principal draftsman of the Adirondack State Land Master Plan and New York State Wild Scenic and Recreational Rivers Legislation.

Paine received a North Country Citation from St. Lawrence University, Canton, N.Y. in 1974, the Ordre National du Merite from the Republic of France in 1984, and the Howard M. Zahniser Award for the Preservation of Wilderness in New York (shared with Peter A.A.Berle) in 2004.

A resident of Willsboro, N.Y., Paine is a hunter, fisherman, horseman and wilderness expedition leader.

Rocking Another Boat at the Adirondack Museum

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There is a new boat on the small pond at the Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York. It is a Bisby Scow and will be used to provide a genuine &#8220on the water&#8221 experience for thousands of museum visitors this summer.

The new boat is a reproduction of one in the museum’s extensive collection. Although &#8220Adirondack&#8221 in design and history, this Bisby scow started life far from the North Country. The hand-made boat is the work of young boat builders from the Bronx, participants in Rocking the Boat, a non-profit youth development organization.

On Saturday, May 22, 2010, the boat building crew, accompanied by adult builders and faculty, delivered, christened, and launched the Bisby Scow on the museum pond. This is the second boat created by Rocking the Boat expressly for the Adirondack Museum. The first, a replica of an Adirondack logging bateau, was launched in 2007.

Rocking the Boat is a traditional wooden boat building and environmental education program based in the southwest Bronx, New York City. Through an alternative multi-faceted hands-on approach to education and youth development, Rocking the Boat addresses the need for inner city youth to achieve practical and tangible goals, relevant to both everyday life and future aspirations. The program was founded in 1995.

Young people enrolled in the program have built well more than twenty boats over the time, and Rocking the Boat is recognized as one of the most dynamic after school and summer programs in New York City. For more information, visit www.rockingtheboat.org.

Museum Curator Hallie Bond, who coordinated the project, says that a member of the Bisby Club designed the original Bisby Scow in 1888. The craft was intended for all-purpose every day use and few exist today. The Bisby Scow in the collection of the Adirondack Museum &#8211 a rare survivor &#8212- dates from the 1920s: the name of the builder is unknown.

The Adirondack Museum has the second largest collection of inland wooden watercraft in the United States. Many extraordinary examples are on display in the popular exhibit &#8220Boats and Boating in the Adirondacks, 1850 &#8211 1950.&#8221

Photo: Young boat builders from the Rocking the Boat project with their new boat, christened Naomi II.

Adk Museum Gets Support for Kid Zone Exhibit

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The Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake is the recipient of a grant in the amount of $10,000 from NBT Bank, Lake Placid, N.Y. The funding will be paid in two installments and will support a new exhibit, &#8220Woods and Waters Kid Zone,&#8221 scheduled to open in May 2011.

&#8220Woods & Waters Kid Zone&#8221 will celebrate the outdoors through creative play. The exhibition will be designed to engage the museum’s youngest visitors and connect children with the history of outdoor recreation in the Adirondacks.

Immersive exhibit environments will evoke familiar North Country scenes in all seasons &#8211 a campsite, trout stream, wooded trail, snowy path, and a cozy backwoods cabin &#8211 all brought to life with the scents, sounds, and textures of the natural world.

&#8220Woods & Waters Kid Zone&#8221 will be a permanent exhibit, reflecting the museum’s dedication to presenting history in new and exciting ways. The exhibition will meet the needs of families, create imaginative play areas for children, and lay the foundation for a lifelong love of the Adirondacks.

The Adirondack Museum tells stories of the people &#8211 past and present &#8212- who have lived, worked, and played in the unique place that is the Adirondacks Park. History is in our nature. The museum is supported in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. For information about all that the museum has to offer, please call (518) 352-7311, or visit www.adirondackmuseum.org.

Photo: Left to right: Camilla Palumbo, Vice President and Branch Manager, NBT Bank, Lake Placid, N.Y.- Laura Rice, the Adirondack Museum’s Chief Curator- and Micaela Hall, the museum’s Public Program Manager and Educator.