The Adirondacks in Northern New York covers approximately 5,000 square miles. Widely known for its natural beauty, recreation opportunities and tourism, it may surprise many of those travelers to learn that the Adirondacks’ trails and amenities are intrinsically connected to New York’s carceral history.
In A Prison In the Woods: Environment and Incarceration in New York’s North Country (Univ. of Mass. Press, 2020), Clarence Jefferson Hall Jr. traces the planning, construction, and operation of penitentiaries in five Adirondack communities – Dannemora, Ray Brook, Gabriels, Lyon Mountain, and Tupper Lake – between 1840 and the early 2010s to show the intersections between the environment and mass incarceration.
Hall’s own personal history adds an interesting aspect to his narrative. His father worked for the New York prison system from 1973 to 1998, mostly at the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. He states that “the rhythms of the prison system became natural to our family, just as they did for so many other families in towns and villages across the Adirondacks.” [Read more…] about Prison In the Woods: Environment & Incarceration in Northern NY
This is the second article in a 5-part series that looks at amendments to Article 14, Section 1, the famed forever wild provision, of the State Constitution. This article looks the Mt. Van Hoevenberg Olympic Winter Sports Complex in the Adirondack Park, managed by the Olympic Regional Development Authority. The first piece looked at the 
This episode of A New York Minute in History recalls the “Miracle on Ice,” when the U.S. Men’s Hockey team upset the Soviet Union in the 1980 
North Country native Melvil Dewey was obsessed with order from the time he was young. At the age of 5, he would alphabetize the spices in his mother’s pantry. He was preoccupied with numbers, lists, rules and efficiency.
Lake Placid is one of only three cities world-wide to have hosted two Olympic Winter Games, 1932 and 1980. Since then, it has played host to annual World Cup events and other large-scale sporting competitions.
Forty years ago this February, the Adirondack village of Lake Placid hosted the 13th 