From the view deck at Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake sparkled like a dazzling sapphire surrounded by emerald forests. I contemplated the distant dusky blue mountains and tried grasp that every bit of the vista spread before me had at one time been covered by a shallow inland sea.

View deck at Adirondaack Museum overlooks Blue Mountain Lake

The Adirondack Mountains began to take their current shape about 10,000 years ago during the last ice age, when lake waters froze into glaciers and exposed the seafloor. Erosion gradually removed the soft sediments, uncovering slightly tilted crustal rock that had been contorted and folded by eons of plate tectonics. Glaciers transformed this exposed Adirondack dome, wearing away bedrock and gouging river valleys as they melted, leaving behind more than 30,000 miles of streams and brooks, 1,500 miles of rivers, and 2,759 lakes and ponds. In a final act of whimsy, the receding glaciers deposited isolated boulders that today dot the mountains like giant marbles cast aside by a long-lost race of giants.

These mountains may be some of the oldest in the world but the human history within them is remarkably young. Though Indians hunted in the Adirondacks they developed no settlements. Even homesteaders heading for the American west skipped over the forbidding, rugged terrain with its brutal winters. Just getting there required a monumental effort; it took a minimum of 15 days to travel by sloop, keelboat and horse from New York City to the Old Forge area. By 1800, there were only 11,000 permanent residents in the area, most of whom worked at 17 sawmills and three iron mines.

Can’t view the above slide show about the Adirondack Museum and The Wild Center? Click here.

I wandered through the Adirondack Museum, learning about the life of the loggers, miners, and naturalists who finally brought the area to the attention to the general public in the mid 1850’s. As stagecoaches, trains, and cars made the Adirondacks more accessible, it became fashionable to spend time in the wilderness. Hotels sprung up, tourists flocked to the area, and wealthy east coast families built elaborate lakefront summer camps. Continue reading →

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