The Adirondack Park is a unique balance of public preserves and private land, a birthplace of the American wilderness vacation, and a large-scale experiment in humans and nature thriving together (and showing a remarkable ecological recovery).
Reflecting on my own small Adirondack lake community at Twitchell Lake in Herkimer County, social life seems to have passed through at least three phases – among the rugged early sportsmen and women, through the wild “Gilded Age” settlement era, and into our turbulent 20th and 21st centuries. [Read more…] about An Adirondack Social History of Twitchell Lake
Settlement came slowly to the upper Beaver River valley in the west central Adirondacks. John Brown Francis, governor of Rhode Island and grandson of John Brown, the original titleholder, built the first road from Lowville to Number Four in 1822 with the hope of starting a village there. To spur settlement he gave 100 acres each to the first ten families willing to clear the land and establish farms. A number of pioneers moved in, the first of which was a man named Orrin Fenton who arrived in 1826. By 1835 there were about 75 residents. Gradually all attempts at farming failed. By 1864 the settlement of Number Four was nearly deserted. 
This week on “The Historians” podcast, Lynn Herzig describes life in a hamlet on New York’s Tug Hill Plateau over fifty years ago. Herzig is author of Where’d you go? Out! What’d you do? Nothing! Unique memories of growing up in Beaver Falls, NY during the 1950s.