Adirondack Landmarks’ Names: One Bad Luck, Two Goodlucks

For folks who hike to Adirondack summits, it’s fairly common to wonder about the names of surrounding peaks and waters. The sentences “What mountain is that?” and “I don’t know” have been paired for decades.

Verplanck Colvin, who in the 1870s famously began surveying the Adirondack region from up high on summits, was no exception. He certainly asked his local guides “What’s the name of that mountain / lake / landmark” well over a thousand times.

When more than one name was offered in reply, Colvin recorded the most unique one in his field books, and an answer of “I don’t know” resulted in his written code of “letters and figures” until a local name — or some inspired new name — surfaced.

Multiple landmarks with common names like “Bald” mountains or “Mud” ponds caused map maker Colvin some dismay but, when no alternative was offered, the local name usually prevailed.

“Wherever the Indians, guides or hunters had names for peaks, even though grotesque, I have adopted them,” he reported. One exception was made in 1873 for a particularly large pond named “Mud” at the headwaters of the Schroon River.

“In order to distinguish it from the numerous other mud ponds,” Colvin wrote, “we have [renamed it] Elk Lake,” and that name has stuck. (His inspiration? A questionable “memory of the stately alcine deer once abundant in the vicinity.”)

The other ponds and lakes named “Mud” have remained so, however, and can still be spotted on maps from across the Adirondacks. They are often nice quiet places. Their waters are generally shallow and still.

Their rich muddy bottoms, however, can be startlingly deep and oozy right up to their shorelines (or, with a misstep, one’s knees), making it almost impossible to cleanly step out of (or worse, back into) a canoe or kayak. Yes, “Mud” is still a perfectly nice and appropriate name for some beautiful Adirondack ponds.

What’s in a Name

Local names give Adirondack landmarks personality. There are multiple Sand, Stony, Grassy, Lillypad, and Clear ponds, plus geometrically named Slim, Long, Half Moon, Round, Square, and Corner ones too. A couple of ponds are named Crystal; one is named Stink. One lake is Rich, another is Poor.

Comparing editions of maps, sometime after 1897 a pond named Big Lucky, northeast of Indian Lake, became Big Bad.

Adirondack rivers, ponds, and lakes are often identified by their wildlife: Big Moose, Little Moose, and just plain Moose (at least ten) plus Bear, Beaver, Duck, Goose, Loon, Mink, Mosquito, Muskrat, Otter, Toad, Trout, and Turtle.

If an Adirondack body of water has Flow or Flowed in its name there is a dam downstream: Cedar River Flow, County Line Flow, Dead Creek Flow, Deer River Flow, Kings Flow, Piercefield Flow, O’Neil Flow, and the more upscale sounding Goodnow Flowage. The historic Flowed Lands, on the Opalescent River, lie north of Calamity Mountain.

The color green merits several mentions in Adirondack naming, but the color blue is even more popular: you can find Azure Mountain, Blue Mountain, and Mount Blue, plus several Blue Hills and Blue Ridges. The name Blueberry is well represented too.

Bucks, Catamounts, and Sugar Loaves

There are more Buck mountains (at least sixteen) than those nicknamed for mountain lions: Catamount, Cat, Catspaw, or Panther (about eleven). Still, there are so many summits named for felines that from several Adirondack overlooks you can see multiples.

From St. Regis Mountain, for instance, Cat Pond, Catamount Mountain and Cat Hill are northwest; another Catamount Mountain and a Panther Peak are southeast; and a Panther Mountain lies southwest. Catamounts also rule the underworld: Panther Gorge, below Marcy and Haystack, was the site of Verplanck Colvin’s “high peaks” area base camp during the 1870s.

There are several smooth oblong mountains named after the early American loaf of sugar, and then progressively less-forested summit names that range from Hedgehog, Ragged, and Brushy to completely Bald.

Spruce mountains slightly outnumber Pine, while either one easily outnumbers mountains named Beech, Oak, or Hardwood —which were the tree species that were primarily lumbered after 1890. (Spruce and pine logs float well, and magnificent specimens growing near rivers were harvested many decades earlier.)

Names that are not descriptive in nature often commemorate people, usually using men’s last names — such as guides Cheney (John) and Sabattis (Mitchel), or women’s first names — hikers Esther (McComb) and Grace (Hudowalski).

Woodsmen and hermits who once enjoyed hundreds of acres to themselves also get their due: Smith’s Lake (now Lake Lila), Jock’s Lake (now Honnedaga Lake), Nick’s Lake, Jenny’s Lake, and many others.

Inexplicably, someone named Tom had at least five landmarks named for them. Long Tom has two; Mad Tom, just one. One is probably more than enough.

Kismet

In the early 1800s a broad mountain originally named Deadman fairly quickly became Man Buried. It was named for an unknown traveler found dead on the nearby Albany Trail which ran northwest to southeast from the hamlet of Russell to roughly the site of Sir William Johnson’s fishing camp “Fish House” (drowned in 1930 by Great Sacandaga Lake).

In his field books and reports Colvin referred to Man Buried Mountain as Mt. Kismet (Turkish for “destiny” or “fate”), but his naming also met a sad fate. Today the mountain’s east peak is called Manbury and the west peak is Little Moose.

Colvin, like state-funded explorers everywhere, also knew how to pay their lasting respects to politicians. Mt. Marcy, Seward Mountain and Mt. Dix were named by NY State Geologists for Governors William L. Marcy, William H. Seward, and John A. Dix respectively.

Colvin continued the tradition with three of his own: Mt. Clinton (for DeWitt Clinton of Little Britain, NY — now named Mt. Marshall for wilderness advocate Robert Marshall), Wright Peak (for Silas Wright of Canton, NY), and Mt. Seymour (for Horatio Seymour, of Pompey, NY).

Colvin also tried changing the names of three popular peaks that were central to his survey, but those efforts failed. He stated historical reasons for trying to rename Bald Mountain on the Fulton Chain of Lakes “Mt. St. Louis,” and for Blue Mountain in the central Adirondacks to become “Mt. Emmons,” but his reason for renaming Pharaoh Mountain “Bluebeard?” That one remains a mystery.

And the names Bad Luck and Good? Bad Luck Mountain is just north of Indian and Francis Lakes. There is a Goodluck Mountain just east of Cedar Lakes, and a Good Luck Mountain and GoodLuck Lake just west of the hamlet of Arietta.

Thatcher Hogan is the author of Mapping the Adirondacks: Colvin, Blake, and the First True Survey of the Great Adirondack Wilderness.

Image: detail from USGS 1903 West Canada Lakes Quadrangle, edited.