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Al Smith, John Apperson, FDR & The Fight That Expanded NYS Forests

November 5, 2020 by David Gibson 1 Comment

Paul Schaefer with John AppersonA young wildlands advocate Paul Schaefer was enamored of activist John Apperson from the day he first met him.

It was about 1931. Apperson was an General Electric engineer fighting to protect Lake George and other wild places. As Schaefer said, it was the pure sense of joy that Apperson exuded about conservation in the Adirondacks which galvanized young people looking for a cause.

These were very important years for the Adirondacks, as for the nation. The 1932 national election loomed, as the Great Depression sucked hope and savings from so many. One can imagine the anxiety that gripped the country and the opportunity for hucksters, demagogues, as well as statesmen.

In 1931, New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt was preparing to run for the Presidency, but so was former New York Governor Al Smith. In the New York Legislature, a bill had been passed which seemed right for those hard times. It would encourage the state to purchase more land but also allow “cutting, selling and removing trees, timber, forest products and other materials on any lands within the forest preserve counties but outside of the Adirondack and Catskill Parks.”

This was the so-called Hewitt Reforestation Amendment to the Constitution. It seemed to make sense to Governor Roosevelt and many other conservationists. After all, many lands near the edges of the Adirondacks and Catskill were cut-over, or abandoned farmlands. Reforesting these lands would not only put people to work but also replant a renewable forest resource for the future.

John Apperson recognized the problem. The Adirondack Park was much smaller in those years. Lake George, Great Sacandaga Lake, Schroon Lake and the mountains north of Lake Placid were not in the Park. The Hewitt bill would permit lumbering in those places right against the smaller Blue Line boundary, and exclude them from being acquired as “forever wild” Forest Preserve where lumbering was not permitted.

Apperson had long believed that the Adirondack Park should be enlarged to include all of these lands of which bedrock geology dictated a certain Park unity. Travelers approaching the Park from the southwest and southeast hit the gas pedal as they sense the geological uplift which tells them they are entering the Adirondack region. In 1931, politics intervened to give a very big boost to Apperson’s sense of geological logic.

Growth of the Adirondack ParkAl Smith was not only running for Governor, but he was the Chairman of the New York State Fish, Game and Forest League, a consortium of hundreds of sporting clubs. Just as important, John Apperson had a friend in Al Smith. While Smith was Governor, Apperson had convinced him to acquire substantial lands bordering Lake George as Forest Preserve.

By 1931, Smith had a natural constituency and influence over conservation legislation which Roosevelt lacked. Smith turned up the political heat on Roosevelt. Within a matter of weeks, the Adirondacks became national news. Al Smith attacked Roosevelt for supporting the Hewitt legislation because it would, in Schaefer’s words, “carve up the great potential that was the Adirondack Park.” Behind the scenes, Apperson was working with these sporting clubs to distribute a pamphlet called “Tree Cutting with Your Money,” meaning that the Hewitt bill would allow unrestricted lumbering at the public’s expense.

At the same time, in an attempt to extend the Park to its geological boundaries Apperson approached Al Smith with a new map and a proposal. Apperson’s map showing how the Blue Line should be extended is archived at the Adirondack Research Library at Union College in Schenectady.  Smith teamed with State Senator Ellwood Rabenold and Apperson on legislation that would expand the boundaries of the Adirondack Park to follow Apperson’s lines.

Smith’s criticism of Governor Roosevelt went national, and it stung. Governor Roosevelt saw a “win-win” solution for the State and for his own national political fortunes by backing his own version of the Rabenold bill to expand the borders of the Adirondack Park by roughly 1.5 million acres, while simultaneously backing Hewitt’s legislation to permit lumbering and reforestation outside the Park. The Park expansion bill passed and Roosevelt signed it. The Hewitt amendment to the Constitution received public approval at the polls, resulting in the early State Forests outside of the Adirondack and Catskill Parks, now about 780,000-acres in all.

Apperson apparently kept news of the Park expansion bill under wraps. You could do that in those days! Thus, after the November election Paul writes that he and other opponents of the Hewitt amendment “were crushed by their defeat,” only to “savor the joy” of victory upon learning from Apperson that Gov. Roosevelt had signed the Park expansion bill.

This story was told to me by Paul Schaefer, and included in his article “Four Battles for Adirondack Woods and Waters,” which appeared in the 1992 Park Centennial issue of Adirondac, the journal of the Adirondack Mountain Club.

Photos, from above: Paul Schaefer with John Apperson, c. 1947, the only known photo of the two together by Howard Zahniser, courtesy the Adirondack Research Library of Protect the Adirondacks; and “Growth of the Adirondack Park” from The Adirondack Atlas (Wildlife Conservation Society, 2004).

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Filed Under: Adirondacks & NNY, Capital-Saratoga, History, Hudson Valley - Catskills, Mohawk Valley, Nature, New Exhibits, Recreation, Western NY Tagged With: 1932 Election, Al Smith, Environmental History, Forest Preserve, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Apperson, Lake George, Logging, Paul Schaefer, Political History

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Comments

  1. Ellen Apperson Brown says

    November 18, 2020 at 12:23 PM

    Dave, Thanks for posting this important story. John Apperson’s friendships with both Al Smith and FDR are fascinating! He tried to enlist FDR’s help in persuading the Knapp family to sell their land on the east side of Lake George to the state, in 1929, but it was another 12 years before that finally happened. Al Smith learned to appreciate the value of preserving and protecting the wild forests, and the harm that would be done if the State built a highway around the rim of Tongue Mountain, so that was another one of John Apperson’s success stories. Yet both politicians and would-be governors had to contend with the constant pressure from Robert Moses, who wanted to “develop” roads, closed cabins and other recreation facilities. The complete story has yet to be told.

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