Adirondacks

In Search of the Picturesque at the Adirondack Museum

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Nineteenth century armchair travelers and well-to-do American tourists eagerly read published travel guides and narratives, which often featured paintings reproduced as engravings. These images helped advance an artist’s reputation and marketability, and also shaped travelers’ expectations of the Adirondack wilderness. The Adirondack Museum&#8216-s Chief Curator Laura Rice will lead visitors in search of the picturesque through the museum’s paintings, prints, rare maps, and photographs, many of which have never been exhibited during an illustrated program entitled &#8220In Search of the Picturesque: Landscape and Tourism in the Adirondacks, 1820-1880&#8243- at the Adirondack Museum on Monday, July 6, 2009.

The first offering of the season in the Adirondack 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.

Rice will discuss how guidebook authors reinforced visual messages by using painterly language to describe scenes travelers would encounter along a given route. The visual and descriptive imagery promoted the Adirondacks as a public treasure, contributed to a national understanding of wilderness as evidence of God’s hand in creation, and fostered the development of wilderness as a national icon and reflection of the American character.

The Adirondack Museum introduced a new exhibit in 2009, &#8220A &#8216-Wild, Unsettled Country’: Early Reflections of the Adirondacks,&#8221 that showcases paintings, maps, prints, and photographs illustrating the untamed Adirondack wilderness discovered by early cartographers, artists, and photographers.

Laura Rice joined the staff of the Adirondack Museum in 2003. She had previously served as a Curator, Museum Educator, and Consultant at a number of other museums. Ms. Rice holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania in American Civilization with an emphasis on Museum Studies. She is the author of the award-winning book Maryland History in Prints: 1752 &#8211 1900, a history of the state of Maryland based on selected images in the Maryland Historical Society Print Collection.

Photo: Untitled: Wolf Jaw Mountain, by Horace Wolcott Robbins, Jr., 1863.

In and Around Essex, Architecture Focus at History Center

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The Adirondack History Center Museum will host two events in July that look at the landscape and built environment in Essex County. A reception, slide show and gallery tour by photographer Betsy Tisdale featuring the exhibition, In and Around Essex will be held on July 8th, 2009 at 4:00 p.m. The slide show highlights photographs not included in the exhibition and focuses on changes that have taken place in Essex, NY over the last 30 years. Light refreshments will be served including an array of pies contributed by Essex community members for a taste of hometown Essex. Donations accepted. Please call for reservations.

Celebrating a Landscape of Culture and Ideas: 1609-2009, is the focus of this season at the History Center which is offering its next event on Sunday, July 12 at 4:00pm. A lecture by Ellen Ryan, Community Outreach Director at Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH), features “What can we learn about people and their environment by looking at architecture?” The presentation corresponds with the exhibition currently on display at the museum: Race, Gender, and Class: Architecture and Society in Essex County. Please call for reservations. $10/non-members, $5/members, $2/students.

The museum is located at 7590 Court Street, Elizabethtown (corner of Hand Avenue and Court Street). For more information please contact the museum at 873-6466 or [email protected].

Adirondack Iron Ore Program in Wilmington

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The Wilmington Historical Society will sponsor the program &#8220Adirondack-Champlain Iron: Creator of Boom Towns & Ghost Towns, 1750s-1970s&#8221 with guest speaker John Moravek, Associate Professor of Geography, SUNY Plattsburgh. The program will be held at the Wilmington Community Center on Springfield Road in Wilmington, Essex County, NY on Friday, July 17, at 7 pm. The public is encouraged to attend. Refreshments will be served. For further information, contact Karen Peters at 946-7586 or Merri Peck at 946- 7627.

About the speaker: John Moravek has been on the faculty at SUNY Plattsburgh since arriving in fall semester of 1969. Now an Associate Professor of Geography, he teaches a variety of courses, including Physical Geography, Historical and Cultural Geography of the United States- as well as the History and Cultural Geography of Russia. He has also offered a popular and intensive two-week workshop (a 3-credit course) on the Historical Geography of the Adirondack Region every July for the past 26 years consecutively which he considers a genuine labor of love as an incorrigible &#8220Adirondackophile&#8221. John is also an official Forty-Sixer, having climbed the first 45 mountains solo. His doctoral dissertation, completed in 1976, investigated a number of facets of the history and geography of the Adirondack-Champlain Iron Industry. He has also presented several papers on the topic at professional meetings, with aspirations of writing a book on the topic at some future date. Currently, his publications include a number of Review Essays/Book Critiques on various topics, primarily related to the Adirondack Region.

William F. Fox, Father of NY Forest Rangers

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Last week the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) held a ceremony to honor William F. Fox, the &#8220father&#8221 of the state’s modern-day forest rangers, on the 100th anniversary of his death. Fox was born in 1840 in Ballston Spa, Saratoga County, and graduated from Union College in Schenectady in 1860. He served in the Civil War as Captain, Major and then Lieutenant Colonel in the 107th New York Volunteers and later wrote a number of books on both the Civil War and forestry. Fox’s 1902 History of the Lumber Industry in the State of New York, written under the auspicious of Gifford Pinchot, is considered the first authoritative work on the logging industry in New York.

Fox became New York’s &#8220Superintendent of Forests&#8221 in 1891. He quickly came to the conclusion that the then-current fire patrol system &#8212- which used &#8220fire wardens&#8221 (firefighters who only worked when there were fire emergencies) and local ad hoc firefighters &#8212- couldn’t handle the job of forest protection. He wanted a paid staff &#8211 a new &#8220forest guard&#8221 service &#8212- to cover the Adirondacks and Catskills.

Fox wrote a report to state leaders outlining how he’d organize the patrols: each ranger assigned to a township seven-miles square, residing in a log cabin built near the center of the township &#8212- but in the woods, not a village. This forest guard &#8220would keep a sharp watch on any skulker who might be a possible incendiary.&#8221 In sum, Fox said he wanted to shift the emphasis from reacting after fires started to patrolling the woods before.

Despite Fox’s advocacy, the state Legislature did not act immediately. Meanwhile, towns became reluctant to enlist local firefighters because of costs. Then came massive fires in 1903 (500,000 acres burned in the Adirondacks) and 1908 (605 fires over 368,000 acres across the state), finally prompting elected officials to take action. In 1909, Gov. Charles E. Hughes signed legislation that brought sweeping changes to the Forest, Fish and Game law that included the creation of a fire patrol service in Adirondacks and Catskills. Fox died shortly thereafter at age 69.

Further legislation followed, replacing the &#8220Forest, Fish and Game Commission&#8221 with a &#8220Conservation Commission&#8221 and creating the title &#8220forest ranger&#8221 in 1912. Though he didn’t live to see his vision fully carried out, Fox is still credited with being the father of the forest rangers. One hundred years later, the DEC, which evolved from the Conservation Commission, today employs a statewide force of 134 uniformed Forest Rangers. Their mission of protecting the state’s natural resources remains consistent with Colonel Fox’s vision.

The ceremony was held at Fox’s graveside at the Village Cemetery in Ballston Spa, Saratoga County.

This story was cross posted at Adirondack Almanack, the leading online journal of Adirondack culture, history, politics, and the environment.

Adirondack Architectural Heritage Awards Seeks Nominations

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The deadline for nominations from the general public for the 2009 Adirondack Architectural Heritage Awards program is June 30th. Adirondack Architectural Heritage seeks nominations for projects that recognize exemplary historic preservation work throughout the Adirondack Park including examples of sensitive restoration, rehabilitation, and demonstrated long-term stewardship. Past winners have included projects as diverse as a 19th Century Irishtown school restoration, stewardship of Santa’s Workshop, restoration of the circa 1906 Stark Hardware Building in Saranac Lake, restoration of the Twin Pines boathouse on Loon Lake (circa early 1900s) and relighting of the Split Rock lighthouse, in Essex on Lake Champlain.

For more information about our awards program and to obtain a nomination form, contact Ellen Ryan, Community Outreach Director, Adirondack Architectural Heritage, 1790 Main Street, Suite 37, Keeseville, New York 12944, 518-834-9328 or visit their website at www.aarch.org.

Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH) is the nonprofit historic preservation organization for New York State’s Adirondack Park. AARCH was formed in 1990 with a mission to promote better public understanding, appreciation and stewardship of the Adirondack’s unique and diverse architectural heritage. This legacy includes not only the nationally recognized &#8220Great Camps&#8221 and other rustic buildings but also the many other structures that embody the whole range of human experience in the region. These other structures include: a wide variety of homes and farmsteads- the churches, commercial buildings, town halls and libraries that make up most Adirondack settlements- bridges, railroad buildings, lighthouses and other transportation related structures- and industrial sites related to the region’s important iron, wood, quarrying and tanning industries. AARCH website, maintains a list of endangered properties in the Adirondacks.

Adirondack Museum Offers More Quilt Exhibits

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The Adirondack Museum has launched a new online exhibit, &#8220Common Threads: 150 Year of Adirondack Quilts and Comforters&#8221 that will share quilts and Adirondack quilting history. The online exhibit includes quilts, text, and historic photographs and is a companion piece to a special exhibition, also named &#8220Common Threads&#8221 that will open to the public at the Blue Mountain Lake museum on May 22, 2009.

The exhibit will include more than forty quilts: historic pieces from the Adirondack Museum’s textile collection, as well as contemporary quilts, comforters, and pieced wall hangings on loan from quilters in communities throughout the region. Demonstrations of handwork will accompany the exhibit throughout the summer. According to an Adirondack Museum announcement:

The Adirondack region has supported an active pieced-textile tradition for over a century and a half. From bedcovers, plain or fancy, meant to keep families warm through long Adirondack winters, to stunning art quilts of the twenty-first century, the quilts and comforters of the North Country mirror national trends and also tell a unique story of life in the mountains. &#8220Common Threads: 150 Years of Adirondack Quilts and Comforters&#8221 explores the themes of women’s work, domestic life, social networks in a rural area, generational continuity among women, and women’s artistic response to life in the Adirondacks.

&#8220Common Threads&#8221 will include a family-friendly discovery area where kids can explore pattern and design, try simple stitching on child-sized quilt frames, or enjoy illustrated quilt-themed children’s books. The Adirondack Museum has also developed a special &#8220Toddler Tour&#8221 of the quilt exhibit &#8220that will lead the smallest visitors on a fun (and fast) search for color, shapes, and animals among the quilts on display.&#8221

Museum Curator Hallie Bond will offer an illustrated Monday Evening Lecture on July, 27, 2009 entitled &#8220Common Threads &#8211 Adirondack Quilts Tell Their Stories.&#8221 The program will begin at 7:30 p.m. and will be held in the Auditorium.

The Adirondack Fabric and Fiber Arts Festival will be held on September 12, 2009. A celebration of traditional and contemporary fiber arts, the Festival will include demonstrations, a juried artisan’s market, and hands-on activities. In addition, folksinger, song writer Peggy Lynn will offer a special musical presentation, &#8220A Stitch in Time: Songs Celebrating the Art and Heritage of Quilting.&#8221

Outstanding New York Newspaper Source Now Online

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The Library of Congress has launched the beta version of a new online searchable newspaper collection, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/. The site currently contains newspapers from 1880 to 1910 (more are coming) plus a directory for newspapers published in the United States since 1690 (a look there turns up over 11,000 New York newspapers). Results from Essex County include 85 newspapers once published there.

Research Buzz has all the tips on searching, but suffice it to say that along with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle online, and Northern New York Library Network’s vast online collection of Northern New York newspapers, online New York history research just got a whole lot better. The Library of Congress site includes papers that have heretofore been unavailable for free. These include New York City / National papers The Evening World, Horace Greeley’s The New York Tribune, and the The Sun, plus other major dailies from across the nation.

I took a look at some one of my favorite historical topics, the Adirondacks. The collection includes reports from Adirondack travelers, social notes from local resorts, and hundreds of advertisements like the one above by the Delaware & Hudson Railroad from 1908. Genealogists are going to find a lot of great stuff here, as well as political historians, and folks interested in the creation of the Adirondack Park, the 1903 and 1908 fires, and a lot more like a long report on the 1900 New York Sportsman Show, including the Adirondack Guide exhibit photo shown here.

Lake Placid Sliding Sports Museum Proposed

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At the 1932 & 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympic Museum Board of Directors’ April meeting, newest member Joe Clain donated $1,000 to kick-off the creation of an International Sliding Sports Museum in Lake Placid. Clain made the donation on behalf of his father Gus Clain and the Linney Family in the hopes that other prominent families in the history of sliding sports will come forward and meet the challenge.

Angus (Gus) Clain was the brakeman for the four-man sled piloted by Robert Linney, which qualified at the 1939 trials in Lake Placid for the 1940 Olympic Winter Games. Because of WWII, the Games were not contested in 1940 or 1944. The family of Gus Clain previously created and donated a very rare exhibit consisting of the sweater and jacket issued to the 1940 Olympic Bobsled team, and which is on permanent display in the Olympic Museum.

The Sliding Sports Museum at Mt. Van Hoevenberg will be an annex to the already existing Olympic Museum – located within the Olympic Center – and as such will come under the same chartering agency, the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York on behalf of the State Education Department. The future museum will share the same 501(c) 3 not-for-profit status making all donations eligible for a tax deduction.

“The next logical step is to create an advisory board of interested community members who share the same passion for preserving, displaying and educating future generations on the rich history of sliding sports in this area,” said Olympic Museum Director Liz De Fazio in a press release issued this week.

For more information on the proposed International Sliding Museum, or to make a donation, contact De Fazio at (518) 523-1655, ext. 226 or [email protected].

New Additions to Online Newspaper Archive

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Additional content from two newspapers has been added to the Northern New York Historical Newspapers site at http://news.nnyln.net. The Plattsburgh “Press-Republican” coverage has been expanded to 1998, with a starting date of 1942. The newspaper’s own indexed archive takes over with 1999. The Saranac Lake “Adirondack Daily Enterprise” has been expanded to 2007, with a starting date of 1948. It can be searched by itself or as part of the Franklin County group search.

The increased content of these two newspapers join over 40 titles with a total of more than 1,620,000 pages on the NNY Historical Newspapers site. The site is provided free of charge to the public by the Northern New York Library Network (NNYLN) in Potsdam.

While it is always fun and interesting to search decades back in the older newspapers, the more recent years make it easy to go back and check facts or clear up if something was remembered correctly.

For instance, with a few clicks through the Plattsburgh paper readers can be reminded of the “Champlain hires engineers for flood mitigation” story from Sept. 11, 1998 which read, “With $46,000 promised from Clinton County, the Champlain Village Board voted recently to hire Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratories to build a flood-mitigation system in the Great Chazy River.”

Those going through the Saranac Lake paper can see the December 27, 2007 edition reported the following: “The Mountaineer’s 12th annual Adirondack International Mountaineering Festival is coming up on the weekend of Jan. 11, and there are still openings in some of the ice climbing, avalanche and snowshoeing clinics.”

The Northern New York Historical Newspapers website averages well over one million searches every month.

Adirondack Museum To Open For Season May 22nd

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The Adirondack Museum will open for its 52nd season on Friday, May 22, 2009. The Adirondack Museum once again extends an invitation to year-round residents of the Adirondack Park to visit free of charge in May, June, and October. Through this annual gift to close friends and neighbors, the museum welcomes visitors from all corners of the Park. Proof of residency is required.

The Adirondack Museum is open daily from May 22 through October 18, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. Friday, September 4 and Friday, September 18 are exceptions to the schedule, as the museum will be closed to prepare for special events. All paid admissions are valid for a second visit within a one-week period.

On Saturday, May 23 the Museum Store will host a book signing from 3:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. as part of the opening weekend festivities. Elizabeth Folwell, Creative Director of Adirondack Life will sign copies of her new book Short Carries &#8211 Essays from Adirondack Life. Betsy Folwell joined the staff of Adirondack Life in 1989. Since then she has written scores of articles and essays on the politics, nature, history and culture of the six million acres Adirondack Park. She has won eight writing awards from the International Regional Magazine Association.

The twenty-two exhibits, historic buildings, outstanding collections, lovely gardens, and pristine views that are the Adirondack Museum tell stories of life, work, and play in the Adirondack Park of northern New York State.

&#8220Common Threads: 150 Years of Adirondack Quilts & Comforters&#8221 is one of two exhibits to debut in 2009. The exceptionally beautiful exhibition will include historic quilts from the Adirondack Museum’s textile collection, as well as contemporary quilts, comforters, and pieced wall hangings on loan from quilters in communities throughout the region. The exhibit illustrates a vibrant pieced-textile tradition nurtured by the Adirondack region for over a century and a half. From bedcovers, plain or fancy, meant to keep families warm through long Adirondack winters, to stunning art quilts of the twenty-first century, the quilts and comforters of the North Country mirror national trends and also tell a unique story of life in the mountains.

The second new exhibit, &#8220A &#8216-Wild, Unsettled Country’: Early Reflections of the Adirondacks&#8221 will include paintings, maps, prints, and photographs that illuminate the untamed Adirondack wilderness discovered by early cartographers, artists, and photographers. The exhibit will showcase more than forty paintings from the museum’s exceptional collection, including works by Thomas Cole, John Frederick Kensett, William Havell, and James David Smillie. Also featured are fifty of the engravings and lithographs of Adirondack landscape paintings that brought these images to a wider audience and provided many Americans with their first glimpse of the &#8220howling wilds&#8221 that were the Adirondack Mountains. A dozen rare and significant maps from the collection of the museum’s research library demonstrate the growth of knowledge about the Adirondacks.

&#8220A &#8216-Wild Unsettled Country’&#8221 will feature photographs sold as tourist souvenirs and to &#8220armchair travelers.&#8221 The first photographic landscape studies made in the Adirondacks by William James Stillman in 1859 have never been exhibited before. Photos by Seneca Ray Stoddard will also be included. The exhibit will include special labels and text just for kids in addition to the traditional presentation. The Adirondack Museum encourages parents and children to explore and discover together.

The Adirondack Museum’s 2009 Photobelt exhibition will feature rarely-seen images from the extensive postcard collection. &#8220Wish Your Were Here&#8221 will showcase Adirondack views of hotels, campsites, tally-ho rides, scenery, boat trips, restaurants, and roadside attractions &#8211 sent home to friends and relatives from 1900 to 1960. Postcards have always been treasured souvenirs and the perfect way to say, &#8220Wish you were here!&#8221

Five newly acquired boats will be displayed in the exhibition &#8220Boats and Boating in the Adirondacks.&#8221 These include a very rare 1918 Moxley launch, a Hickman Sea Sled (forerunner of the Boston Whaler), a Grumman canoe, a Theodore Hanmer guideboat, a Grant Raider, and a 1910 William Vassar guideboat.