Since the late eighteenth century, the Adirondacks—first characterized as a "Dismal Wilderness" and then a "Sportsman's Paradise"—has challenged cartographers, scientists, sportsmen, travelers, and artists. In a volume that covers nearly three hundred years of artistic achievement, Adirondack Museum curator Caroline M. Welsh includes essays that were originally presented at the 1995 North American Print Conference at the Adirondack Museum. Comprehensive in scope and lavishly illustrated, the book embodies the artistic spectrum from the documentary to the aesthetic. Paintings of Adirondack scenery were frequently reproduced as prints. Lithographs after original paintings disseminated affordable fine art to a broad middle class, exemplifying a pervasive nineteenth-century faith that art. By 1850, this northern expanse became a sanctuary for artists. Inspired by the drama of the landscape, the purity of the light, and the grandeur of its rugged wilderness, artists flocked to the region. From Winslow Homer, Dr. Arpad Gerster, and the French naturalist Jacques Gerard Milbert to Canadian artist David Milne, Adirondack Prints and Printmakers underscores the importance of the wilderness landscape in American art and culture and the role that prints have played to document, promote, and celebrate the Adirondacks.

This work shows how expectations about land use, combined with interactions with nature have defined the Adirondacks. Outlining the disputes for the control of the land, the author introduces the key players from the residents, landholders, to preservationists and developers.

Long considered one of the most respected authorities on the history and geography of the Adirondack region, award-winning author and conservationist Barbara McMartin focuses on the uniqueness of the forty four individual tracts that make up the two-and one-half-million-acre Forest Preserve within the Adirondack Park. In The Adirondack Park, McMartin has aptly likened the various wild forests, wilderness, recreation and primitive areas to a patchwork quilt, with landscapes connecting to jagged boundaries following rivers and narrow valleys. Sidebars of "views and visits" give readers an insider's advantage to making the most of any Adirondack expedition. With a storyteller's ease, McMartin provides a brief history and description of each area. Skillfully combining the results of meticulous research and her life-long passion and advocacy for the Adirondack region, she illuminates the story of how the land parcels were pieced together to become the most sought-after and protected acreage in the east. The book is generously interspersed with maps and vivid geographic descriptions of the forest cover, lakes, mountains, and natural and human history.

Barbara McMartin narrates the history of Adirondack environmental policy in depth, beginning with the 1970 formation of the Adirondack Park Agency, set up to regulate private development and to oversee the planning of public terrain. Although hailed as the most innovative land-use legislation of its time, it ignited a wildfire of controversy, creating a landscape of conflict. Park residents protested. Government stood firm. Over the decades, disparate groups have sought to shape an effective program to protect Adirondack wildland but cannot seem to work together. This is the first comprehensive account of that ongoing drama: a stirring story of the environmental movement, public action, and government failure and success.

Adventures in the Wilderness, Or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks by Harry Fenn, first published in 1869, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.

One hundred full-color photographs illustrate this history and current health of upstate New York's Adirondack Park, the first private-public partnership dedicated to the protection of a U.S. wilderness area. "Here is the first lesson about the Adirondacks, captured in Gary Randorf's magnificent photos. It is not only alpine granite—in fact, of the park's six million acres, only about eighty-five, scattered on top of the tallest mountains, are that gorgeous pseudo-Arctic. Aside from the touristed High Peaks, the Adirondacks comprise millions upon millions of acres of Low Peaks, of beavery draws and bearish woods, of hills and hills and hills, countless drainages and muddy ponds . . . The second point about the Adirondacks, a glory carefully revealed in the words and pictures of this book, is that it represents a second-chance wilderness and, as such, a hope that the damage caused by human beings is not irreversible. It is metaphor as much as place."—from the foreword by Bill McKibben In The Adirondacks: Wild Island of Hope, Gary A. Randorf offers 100 photographs to illustrate this unique, comprehensive history and natural history of the Adirondack Park, the first private-public partnership in the United States dedicated to the protection of a wilderness area. Situated in northeast New York, this regional park of six million acres represents a unique blend of public wildlands intermixed with commercial forests, farms, mines, private parks, prisons, scattered homes, dozens of villages, and a year-round population of 130,000. The ongoing attempts over the last century to make the Adirondacks a park have made this region a "striving ground" for living with the land, rather than outside or above it. Much of the strife is over finding a right relationship to the land, treating it not as a commodity to be exploited but as a community to which all living things belong and upon which all depend. Today, the Adirondacks regional park with its six million acres "represents a second-chance wilderness"—as Bill McKibben writes in his foreword to this book. The concerns of this park are the same concerns that apply to all of America's parks, recreational areas, and wildernesses with the addition of how to maintain the fragile peace between human and natural communities. How that "second-chance" can be realized is the focus of Gary Randorf's text and stunning color photographs.

Adirondack Ventures explores the early man-made features that were introduced into New York States great mountain and lake region. With some 200 rare photographs, this book recounts the memories of those who took part in the development of the Adirondacks, an area that covers one quarter of the state. To open up these millions of acres, pathways and roadways and, later, small airports and railways were constructed. To enhance the use and enjoyment of the wilderness, bikeways and ski slopes, as well as amusement parks and golf courses, were built.