History, Natural History & the Arts
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
Grants for five historic roadside markers have been awarded to the Town of Long Lake. Funded by a grant from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation, the signs commemorate the Raquette Lake Rail Bed, Raquette Lake Hotel, Raquette Lake Train Station and the Raquette Lake General Store and Supply.
A sign in Long Lake will commemorate W.W. Durant’s Buttercup Steamboat which was deliberately sunk in 1885 and recovered in 1959. [Read more…] about Long Lake Receives Grant for 5 Historic Markers
Farrand Benedict, surveyor and professor of mathematics and engineering at the University of Vermont in Burlington, wrote a proposal for a canal across the Adirondacks in 1846.
His plan was to use the Black River Canal with its connection to the Erie Canal at Rome and build a railroad from Boonville, on the Black River Canal, to Old Forge. He was then going to utilize the Fulton Chain of Lakes, Raquette Lake, Long Lake, the Raquette River and the Saranac Lakes with various lock systems, dams, and inclines to the Saranac River for canal boat traffic. [Read more…] about An Abandoned Canal Hides Deep In The Adirondack Woods
A 0.3-mile trail has been completed in the Cedarlands Conservation Easement Tract, located in the town of Long Lake, Hamilton County.
The trail connects the public parking lot with a canoe put-in on the northeast shore of Mud Pond, providing a shorter route to the pond and easier access to three primitive campsites established on the easement earlier this year. [Read more…] about New Mud Pond Trail in Cedarlands Conservation Easement
The 2020 Great Adirondack Garage Sale is set for this coming weekend, August 7th, 8th, and 9th. In the past, the event was traditionally held on Memorial Day weekend, but due to safety concerns, it was pushed back to August for this year.
The 11th annual event consists of residents selling their items along a 150-mile trail stretching from Tupper Lake to Speculator, and Old Forge to Newcomb in the Adirondack Park. [Read more…] about Great Adirondack Garage Sale This Weekend
The family of recently deceased Saratoga civic and philanthropic leader Marylou Whitney announced today that the 36,000-acre Whitney Park lands in the center of the Adirondack Park are for sale.
John Hendrickson, the husband of Marylou Whitney, stated in the Wall Street Journal that his asking price is $180 million. Whitney Park is located in the Town of Long Lake, in Hamilton County and is one of the largest privately held contiguous tracts of land in the 6.1 million-acre Adirondack Park. [Read more…] about 36,000 Acres of Adirondack Park for Sale
Over the years I have put my canoe into Adirondack waters at the Lows Lake Lower Dam (Bog River Dam, 1907) and paddled the meandering Bog River Flow upstream to Hitchins Pond. From there you can carry around the Lows Lake Dam (Upper Dam, 1903*) and out on to Lows Lake.
Occasionally a day paddle and a short hike around Hitchins Pond is in order. I often walk the old Maple Valley Railroad bed, part of the Horse Shoe Forestry Company established by Abbot Augustus “Gus” Low in 1900. If you know where to look, there are rail sidings where A. A. Low’s maple sugarhouses once stood. [Read more…] about Adirondack Wildfire: The Destruction of Long Lake West
Charles Bryan, in The Raquette, River of the Forest (1964), argued that Long Lake played a major role in the development of the Adirondack Guideboat.
That legacy got a local revival recently, when Long Lake resident Colleen Smith re-launched a guideboat on Long Lake built there by her grandfather George W. Smith in the early 1900s. [Read more…] about An Adirondack Guideboat Returns to Long Lake