John Bird Burnham (1869-1939) was a conservationist and entrepreneur who founded the Crater Club off of Whallons Bay on Lake Champlain in 1899. [1]
Born in Newcastle, Delaware, he worked in New York City as editor of Forest and Stream from 1881 to 1887, where he wrote many articles advocating for game protection. In 1898 he bought a home in Willsboro, New York, and turned it into the Highlands Game Preserve. Despite lacking training as an architect or as a builder, he nevertheless designed and built some seventy cabins and cottages, along with club buildings. [2] [3] By 1905, he also established a maple sugar and maple candy business, the Adirondack Mountain Creams factory Essex, New York. [4]
He led a campaign for passage of a federal migratory bird law, the Weeks-McLean Law (passed in 1913) as well as a migratory bird treaty with Canada. [5] Burnham was also a noted adventurer, having traveled the Yukon as a young man, and in his fifties he led an expedition to Siberia to collect specimens of the Marco Polo sheep in 1921.
Keene is a town in central Essex County, New York, United States. It includes the hamlets of Keene, Keene Valley, and St. Huberts, with a total population of 1,105 as of the 2010 census.
The Adirondack Park is a part of New York's Forest Preserve in northeastern New York, United States. The park was established in 1892 for “the free use of all the people for their health and pleasure”, and for watershed protection. The park's boundary roughly corresponds with the Adirondack Mountains. Unlike most state parks, about 52 percent of the land is privately owned inholdings. State lands within the park are known as Forest Preserve. Land use on public and private lands in the park are regulated by the Adirondack Park Agency. This area contains 102 towns and villages, as well as numerous farms, businesses, and an active timber-harvesting industry. The year-round population is 132,000, with 200,000 seasonal residents. The inclusion of human communities makes the park one of the great experiments in conservation in the industrialized world. The Forest Preserve was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963.
The Adirondak Loj is a historic lodge in North Elba, Essex County, New York. It is near Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains. The current facility, located on the shore of Heart Lake, was built in 1927 and is owned and operated by ADK. The Loj property hosts the trailhead of the popular Van Hoevenberg Trail, which leads to Mount Marcy and Algonquin Peak, the two highest points in the state.
Dix Mountain is the sixth highest peak in the High Peaks Region of the Adirondack Park, and is located roughly on the boundary between the towns of North Hudson and Keene in Essex County, New York. The peak was named in 1837 after John Dix (1798–1879), who was the Secretary of State of New York at the time, and later became the state's governor.
Lake Tear of the Clouds is a small tarn located in the town of Keene, in Essex County, New York, United States, on the southwest slope of Mount Marcy, the state's highest point, in the Adirondack Mountains. It is the highest pond in the state. It is often cited as the highest source of the Hudson River, via Feldspar Brook, the Opalescent River and Calamity Brook.
Louis Marshall was an American corporate, constitutional and civil rights lawyer as well as a mediator and Jewish community leader who worked to secure religious, political, and cultural freedom for all minority groups. Among the founders of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), he defended Jewish and minority rights and, though not a Zionist, he supported the Balfour Declaration. He was also a conservationist, and the force behind re-establishing the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, which evolved into today's State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF).
John Thomas Miner, OBE, or "Wild Goose Jack," was a Canadian conservationist called by some the "father" of North American conservationism.
The Cold River is a 14-mile (23 km) river in the Adirondack Mountains in New York, United States. It was one of the first rivers in the state designated as a Wild River, in 1972. The river is located near the conjunction of the county lines of Essex, Franklin and Hamilton Counties.
William Edward Colby was an American lawyer, conservationist, and first Secretary of the Sierra Club.
Tahawus was a village in the Town of Newcomb, Essex County, New York, United States. It is now a ghost town situated in the Adirondack Park. Tahawus is located in Essex County within the unpopulated northern area designated to the town of Newcomb. Tahawus was the site of major mining and iron smelting operations in the 19th century. Although standing as recently as 2005, the last mining facilities have since been demolished and removed.
The High Peaks Wilderness Area, the largest Forest Preserve unit in the U.S. state of New York, is located in three counties and six towns in the Adirondack Park: Harrietstown in Franklin County, North Elba, Keene, North Hudson and Newcomb in Essex County and Long Lake in Hamilton County.
The Crater Club is a seasonal residential enclave on the shore of Lake Champlain approximately one mile south of Essex, New York within the Adirondack Park region. The club was originally developed as a summer retreat by the naturalist and outdoor writer John Bird Burnham in the early 1900s. Currently the Crater Club consists of over 40 homes, a clubhouse, playing fields, four clay tennis courts, and a waterfront featuring a permanent pier and a screened building known as Burnham's Landing. This latter building is also the headquarters of the Split Rock Yacht Club, which maintains a small but active racing fleet of Cape Cod Knockabout sailboats and holds weekly sailboat races during the summer season open to these and other small one-design classes.
Anne LaBastille was an American author, ecologist, and photographer. She was the author of more than a dozen books, including Woodswoman, Beyond Black Bear Lake, and Women of the Wilderness. She also wrote over 150 articles and over 25 scientific papers. She was honored by the World Wildlife Fund and the Explorers Club for her pioneering work in wildlife ecology in the United States and Guatemala. LaBastille also took many wildlife photographs, many of which were published in nature publications.
Esther Mountain is a mountain located in Essex County, New York. The mountain is the northernmost of the High Peaks of the Adirondack Mountains and its 28th highest peak. It was the only High Peak named for a woman until 2014, having been named in honor of Esther McComb, who made the first recorded climb to the summit in 1839, at age 15; at the time she was attempting to climb Whiteface Mountain from the north.
Phelps Mountain is a mountain located in Essex County, New York. The mountain is named after Orson Schofield "Old Mountain" Phelps (1817–1905), who cut the first trail up Mount Marcy and named several of the Adirondack peaks. It is the 32nd highest peak in New York. Phelps Mountain is flanked to the southeast by Table Top Mountain.
Saddleback Mountain is a mountain located in Essex County, New York. The mountain is part of the Great Range of the Adirondack Mountains. The 0.2 mi (0.32 km) long summit ridge has peaks at each end with a pronounced dip between, giving it the profile of a saddle. Saddleback Mtn. is flanked to the southwest by Basin Mountain, and to the east by Gothics.
McKenzie Mountain is a 3,861-foot (1,177 m) mountain in western Essex County in the towns of St. Armand and North Elba in the Adirondack Park, a unit of the Forest Preserve.
Pitchoff Mountain is a 3,600-foot (1,097 m) mountain opposite Cascade Mountain on NY 73 west of Keene Valley in Essex County, New York, in the US. There are two summits; the higher summit is viewless, but the northern summit, at 3,323 feet (1,013 m) offers 360 degree views of the nearby Cascade Lakes, the High Peaks of the Adirondacks, and, in clear weather, the Green Mountains of Vermont. There is a 5.2-mile (8.4 km) hiking trail that starts on Route 73 west of the Cascade Lakes, climbs 2.0 miles (3.2 km) to the blind summit, then traverses the nearly two-mile summit ridge to the northern summit before descending 1.4 miles (2.3 km) to Route 73 east of the Lakes, 2.7 miles (4.3 km) east of the starting point.
Ecotourism in the United States is commonly practiced in protected areas such as national parks and nature reserves. The principles and behaviors of ecotourism are slowly becoming more widespread in the United States; for example, hotels in some regions strive to be more sustainable.
Poke-O-Moonshine Mountain, spelled Pokamoonshine on U.S. Geological Survey maps, and sometimes known as just Poke-O, is a minor peak of the Adirondack Mountains. The name is believed to be a corruption of the Algonquin words pohqui, meaning 'broken', and moosie, meaning 'smooth'. It is located in the town of Chesterfield, New York, United States, on New York state Forest Preserve land, part of the Taylor Pond Wild Forest complex within the Adirondack Park. Due to its location next to the pass through which most travelers from the north enter the range, it has been called the "gateway to the Adirondacks".