Adirondacks

The Adirondack Park is a publicly protected, elliptical area encompassing much of the northeastern lobe of Upstate New York. It is the largest park and the largest state-level protected area in the contiguous United States, and the largest National Historic Landmark. The park covers some 6.1 million acres (2.5×106 ha), a land area roughly the size of Vermont and greater than the National Parks of Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Great Smoky Mountains combined.

The Adirondack Park boundary, commonly referred to as the ‘Blue Line,’ contains the entire Adirondack Mountain range, as well as some surrounding areas, all within the state of New York. The park includes all of Hamilton and Essex counties, as well as considerable portions of Clinton, Franklin, Fulton, Herkimer, St. Lawrence, and Warren counties and small portions of Lewis, Oneida, Saratoga, and Washington counties as well. (The Clinton County towns of Altona and Dannemora, despite being entirely within the park boundary, are specifically excluded from the park by statute, due to the large prison facilities in both towns.)

Not all of the land within the park is owned by the state, although new sections are frequently purchased or donated. State land comprises 2.7 million acres (1.1×106 ha), about 45% of the park’s area, including the highest peaks in New York State, as well as Mount Marcy, the highest elevation in the state. About 1 million acres (400,000 ha) of this is classified as wilderness, with most of the remainder managed under the somewhat less stringent wild forest classification. Villages and hamlets comprise less than 1% of the area of the park; the remaining area of more than 3 million acres (1.2×106 ha) is privately held but is generally sparsely developed.[3] There is often no clear demarcation between state, private, and wilderness lands in the park. Signs marking the Adirondack Park boundary can be found on most of the major roads in the region, but there are no entrance gates and no admission fee.

On the idea of an Adirondack Mountains National Park – – The Adirondack Almanack

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On the idea of an Adirondack Mountains National Park – – The Adirondack Almanack

The plan for a national park within the central portion of the Adirondack Park was released by the Office of the Governor and proposed as consisting of 1.12 million acres owned by the state as part of the Forest Preserve and 600,000 adjoining acres owned by timber companies and other private landowners to be acquired over time for the national park. The approximate boundaries of the proposed national park would be Saranac Lakes/ Lake Placid/High Peaks to the north, the I-87 Northway to the east, Indian Lake to the south, and Fourth Lake/Stillwater Reservoir to the west. The Laurance Rockefeller plan excluded from federal acquisition Lake Placid and four other villages, Saranac Lake, Blue Mountain Lake, Inlet, and Indian Lake, all envisioned to become the principal commercial service centers for the national

Communities face garbage double bind | Adirondack Explorer

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Talking trash: Communities face garbage double bind | Adirondack Explorer

The Adirondack Park’s 6 million acres of pristine waters, mountain peaks and forestlands were not always the main attraction for all vacationers.

Some came for the dumps.

In the 1960s and ’70s, nearly every town in the Adirondack Park had its own dump or landfill. With lax regulations, black bears would descend on these open-air pits and feast on garbage. Tourists and residents descended, too. They lugged cameras, set up lawn chairs and took the family out for a night of wildlife viewing—some of the bears close enough to touch.

“It was a big attraction on a Saturday morning,” said Kevin Hajos, superintendent of public works for Warren County. Hajos used to go with his grandparents to watch the bears at the North Creek landfill.

That was before Gov. George Pataki and his administration decided in the 1990s that the Adirondack Park was not the place for trash.

For the last couple of decades, New Yorkers have spent millions of dollars keeping dumps out of the public-private park. Annual subsidies have helped the two counties that are wholly within the Adirondacks to truck their garbage elsewhere. But those subsidies are now in doubt, and some observers question the practicality of continuing to haul out all of the garbage that tens of thousands of residents and millions of visitors generate each year. The uncertainty could dump a financial load on park residents as local officials figure out how to tackle garbage in the future.