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
What is now New York State saw multitudes of American settlers moving inland from the Atlantic seaboard, especially those 
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Right out of college as a Civil Engineer, Frank Tweedy spent four seasons as part of 
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Many of the lakes in John Brown’s Tract had guides who took their sporting parties to their own fishing or hunting camps north and south of the Beaver River. This is how lakes like Hitchcock, Beach, and Salmon got their names. 
“Melancholy Occurrence” was a fairly common expression for a tragic event in the middle of the 19th century. A search of historic newspapers revealed the phrase was used some 250 times from 1820 to 1870. Several of these were murder cases, such as the son of the Spanish Consul being stabbed through the heart with a cane sword by an angry neighbor. But most were unexpected events such as a fatal strike by lightening, a young fire victim, or a drowning. 
Ever wonder how one of the hundreds of lakes and ponds in the Adirondack Mountains got its name? Around Brown’s Tract, there are lakes named from nature such as Loon, Beaver, Trout, Gull, Bear, and Moose. There are also a dozen or more lakes named for noted guides or people who lived in or frequented the area during the Sporting Era (1860 to 1890), including Mosier, Francis, Hitchcock, Beach, Tuttle, Thayer, Smith, Salmon, and Wood. 
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. 
From its founding in 1893, and over the next 30 years, the Beaver River Club was the destination of many of the visitors to the Stillwater area.