Qualla: Adirondacks

Adirondacks: Introduction

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mwanner at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The park is bigger than New Hampshire. That fact tends to surprise people who think of New York as a state of cities and suburbs, not wilderness. But the Adirondacks sprawl across the northeastern corner of the state in a vast expanse of mountains, lakes, and forest that has been protected since 1892 - making it the first government-protected park in the contiguous United States. The 46 High Peaks draw climbers. The three thousand lakes draw paddlers. The winter snows drew the Olympics twice, to tiny Lake Placid in 1932 and again in 1980. And the cold, clear mountain air once drew something stranger: tuberculosis patients, seeking cure in an era before antibiotics, building 'cure cottages' with enormous porches where they would sleep outdoors through the brutal mountain winters. Robert Louis Stevenson came here for his lungs, spending the winter of 1887-88 in Saranac Lake writing 'The Master of Ballantrae.' The Adirondacks have always been a place of escape - from illness, from cities, from the ordinary world below.

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Image: Mwanner at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Adirondacks: The Great Camps

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greg Hume, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the late 1800s, the railroad brought New York City's wealthy elite into the Adirondacks, and they built accordingly. The 'Great Camps' were neither camps nor particularly rustic - they were lavish estates of interconnected log buildings, boathouses, private lakes, and enough s...

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Image: Greg Hume | CC BY-SA 3.0

Adirondacks: The Miracle of Lake Placid

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Stilfehler assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. The 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid are remembered for one moment: a group of American college hockey players defeating the Soviet Union's professional team in what would be called the Miracle on Ice. The Soviets had won four consecutive Olympic gold medals. The Americans wer...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Stilfehler assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Adirondacks: The Forty-Sixers

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Tripp, Public domain. The Adirondack High Peaks include 46 summits originally believed to exceed 4,000 feet. Later surveys revealed that four of them actually fall short, but the tradition had been established: to become a 'Forty-Sixer,' you climb all 46. The feat takes most people years, returning se...

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Image: Daniel Tripp | Public domain

Adirondacks: The Water and the Wild

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Case, CC BY-SA 3.0. Three thousand lakes fill the Adirondack valleys. The number includes ponds and reservoirs, but even so: the water is everywhere. Lake George stretches 32 miles through the southeastern Adirondacks, a vacation destination since the railroad arrived. Lake Placid, Lake Champlain, R...

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Image: Daniel Case | CC BY-SA 3.0

Adirondacks: Forever Wild

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mwanner at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Adirondack Forest Preserve exists because of fear. In the late 1800s, unchecked logging was denuding the southern Adirondacks, sending topsoil into the Hudson River and Erie Canal, threatening the waterways that New York's commerce depended upon. The state created the park in...

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Image: Mwanner at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0