The NYS Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC) has awarded $638 million in grants to municipalities statewide for water infrastructure projects and Town of Indian Lake in Hamilton County was the biggest winner among Adirondack communities. [Read more…] about NYS Awards $8M in Clean Water Project Grants to Adirondack Communities
Hamilton County
Peter Bauer: It’s Time For A Cathead Mountain Amendment
Hamilton County has been trying to expand its emergency communications network for years. The county has dead spots for not only cell service but for its emergency communications system too, especially in the southern part of the county.
The only viable option for the county, given the widely and most commonly used emergency communications equipment in New York State, is to expand its network of line-of-sight towers powered through utility lines, with emergency backups, and are accessible by motor vehicle for servicing. The south end of Hamilton County has limited police and EMT communications service. [Read more…] about Peter Bauer: It’s Time For A Cathead Mountain Amendment
Forest Rangers Make Long Lake, Cattaraugus County Rescues
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Rangers respond to search and rescue incidents throughout New York State. Working with other state agencies, local emergency response organizations and volunteer search and rescue groups, Forest Rangers locate and extract lost, injured or distressed people.
What follows is a report, prepared by DEC, of recent missions carried out by Forest Rangers. [Read more…] about Forest Rangers Make Long Lake, Cattaraugus County Rescues
The Thirteenth Lake Hotel: A History
In the summertime, the parking lot at the end of Thirteenth Lake Road in the town of Johnsburg, Warren County, will be crowded with the cars and trucks of people there to hike, paddle, and camp.
Few of these visitors realize that sixty years ago when they stood on the shore, they would have seen a large, modern-looking hotel sitting on the hillside overlooking the lake. This is the story of that enterprise and those who kept it up and running for over 100 years. [Read more…] about The Thirteenth Lake Hotel: A History
A History of Snowmobile Racing in New York State
In the motor toboggan era – the time before the advent of the modern snowmobiles we know today – motor sleds had been too slow for racing excitement. As a result they remained strictly utilitarian vehicles racing only occasionally for promotional purposes. Motor toboggan and later snowmobile maker Polaris traveled each year at the end of the 1950s to trapper festivals at The Pas, Manitoba where they helped organize ad hoc races.
“We tried to rig them a little bit so we had a zig-zag effect,” David Johnson said, remembering one of the first informal races, “one guy ahead, and then the other, and so on, at a terrific speed of about 20 miles per hour.” In February 1959, Johnson won the first organized men’s race on an oval at The Pas and in 1960, the first cross-country race was held there. [Read more…] about A History of Snowmobile Racing in New York State
Jack Sheppard: Civil War Vet, Panther Hunter, Adirondack Guide & Steamboat Operator
Jack Sheppard came to the Fulton Chain region of the Western Adirondacks after roaming the West as a youth and then served in the Union Army during the Civil War.
These experiences equipped Sheppard with the knowledge, skills, and social network to become a successful guide and enabled him to shift his occupation from guide to innkeeper, to builder, to businessman. He never married or raised a family, but when he left the Adirondacks in 1892 he left behind a long list of devoted friends that reads like a virtual who’s who of Adirondack history. [Read more…] about Jack Sheppard: Civil War Vet, Panther Hunter, Adirondack Guide & Steamboat Operator
Deep In The Adirondack Woods, A Colvin Survey Benchmark Revealed
As a boy growing up in the Battle Hill section of White Plains, NY, I remember my excitement at reading a brass memorial telling me “George Washington slept here.” White Plains was the site of a battle during the American Revolution.
Now as an adult I have had the thrill of learning that Verplanck Colvin surveyed Twitchell Lake and took measurements on the shore where my log cabin stands in Big Moose, NY. That realization launched me on a quest to find a benchmark placed by one of Colvin’s surveyors on an important boundary line nearby. [Read more…] about Deep In The Adirondack Woods, A Colvin Survey Benchmark Revealed
Adirondack Gentrification: Wilderness Disinvestment (Part 4)
Rolling Stone once called Times Square “the sleaziest block in America.” The shoe fit in the early 1980s, when the crossroads of the world was the Skid Row of the east coast.
Today, a building in Times Square will run you somewhere in the vicinity of $600 million, but not long ago the neighborhood met the primary precondition for gentrification: disinvestment, a malady common to many inner city districts at the time.
Deindustrialization was one factor in urban depreciation. Suburbanization, rezoning and public retrenchment were others. All added up to the same sum total of cheap urban space beckoning profitable reinvestment. [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Wilderness Disinvestment (Part 4)
Adirondack Gentrification: Dispossession & Chronic Displacement (Part 2)
The shortage of children that closed the Raquette Lake School a decade ago was not due to a housing deficit. On the contrary, Raquette was chockablock with housing when the school failed, much of it sitting empty for most of the year.
While Raquette boasts some unusual features – some of its structures are accessible only by lake – it shares this same predicament with most other gentrifying Adirondack places, lake-locked or otherwise: plenty of lodging and nowhere to live.
How can any community with so many vacant dwellings suffer from a housing crisis? [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Dispossession & Chronic Displacement (Part 2)
The Devil’s Due: Adirondack Gentrification & Environmental Justice (Part 1: Displacement)
“Just close the fucking thing.”
These words of quiet despair were uttered twenty years ago in the aftermath of a meeting at the Raquette Lake School, whose imminent demise was increasingly apparent to the people of the village. The atmosphere at the Tap Room, the unofficial community center where attendees had decamped to face the inevitable over a beer, was raw.
The man who issued the fatal prognosis relished it neither as a parent nor an alumnus. But the writing was on the wall. Pupils had dwindled to single digits, too few for a play or a baseball team, never mind the district budget for utilities, maintenance, transportation and salaries. With no babies on the horizon, the current crop of children would age out, and there would soon be none left to educate. [Read more…] about The Devil’s Due: Adirondack Gentrification & Environmental Justice (Part 1: Displacement)