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private preserves and that large areas were burned over, partly through the carelessness of railways, partly through the anger of woodsmen. One preserve of fifty thousand acres or so was burned over almost to the last acre, hundreds of forest fire fighters being necessary to save the great "camp." To this day certain private preserve makers visit their estates in the Adirondacks only under circumstances of great-and necessarycaution, even entering in the night, incognito.

The reason for the feeling against the private-preserves was partly the fact that the best hunting, the best fishing, in the Adirondacks was on those preserves. Isolated by fifty miles or more of almost if not quite roadless wilderness, the area taken over by the clubs and individuals was a natural game park even in primeval condition. There were thousands of deer, wagon-loads of trout, right in sight of the train passengers, but protected by trespass signs and armed wardens, who were commonly political associates of the justices of peace before whom the trespassers were taken. Worse yet, the private preserves closed the roads and trails leading across to the known public lands, to which there was no other feasible access. They excluded the people from their own property.

The feeling has largely abated; the condi

tions have changed very mucti, in that many of the preserves do not now exclude the stranger of decent bearing and careful ways; where formerly trails first blazed by woodsmen were fenced and the woods roamer harshly ordered to take the impossible route around outside the lines, now the very boats at the landings are placed at the service of the passer-by, and perchance a good unoccupied lean-to or other camp is to be found hospitably open. Friendliness and mutual good feeling have succeeded the early indignation, mutual recrimination, and angry violence.

hospitably open.

The Adirondack visitors of old, before the day of game preserves-city men, villagers, and woodsmen-had developed a kind of camaraderie, a sort of unwritten woods code, which had lived and changed but little during a hundred years of Adirondack sportsmanship, dating back to the good feeling that existed between Mohawk Valley Dutchmen and Irishmen when they stillhunted Indians and Tories during and after the Revolutionary War. This code, which has never been written, was simply a kind of looking out for the fellow who would come later. In a camp, in a dry place, the man going out would leave kindling and enough wood for the night. He would leave a few matches in a bottle or tin can. He would

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put the ax up where a porcupine would not chew the handle. He left salt dangling from the rafters. He left the dishes clean. No camp was locked. All were welcome.

From a condition where every one was trying to make things easier for every one else to the absolute exclusion, on the plan of the great game parks of Europe, was a change that even the most law-abiding woods frequenter never had contemplated till he bumped into a trespass sign and a burly guard.

Neither the free camps nor the absolute exclusion could prevail. For twenty years a period of readjustment followed the closing of the private preserves. The pressure on the private preserves was so great that at one time bills were introduced in the State Legislature to bond the State to purchase them. This was at the time when the owners of the private preserves stood almost alone in protecting the rights of the public from the forces which demanded logging on the remaining public lands and the right to fill the Adirondack valleys with millponds at State expense for the advantage of owners of water power sites. It was a kind of legislative blackmail threat which failed, and the water power promoters and the log

gers were thwarted in both their schemes; but the power owners have gained a good deal of ground through a Constitutional amendment which will give them any Adirondack valleys or lakes, upon demand, if the public does not watch the legislators, with whom representatives of water companies toil unceasingly along the old lines.

The pressure on the private preserves began to relax when the game in the preserved woods was thinned out. The scarcity of deer resulted from the great forest fires which burned over the lands and from the injudicious logging operations which destroyed the green timber-the evergreen trees-with the result that the deer had no balsam, spruce, and hemlock canopy over them to keep off the winter winds in the great parks. Thousands of deer died of exposure. The survivors escaped to the dwindling areas where the evergreen timber was still untouched. Thus the hunting on the private preserves became less successful than hunting on lands open to the public. The people who tried to make a profit off their wooded estates lost much that was best in their vast woods tracts. Along the railway was developed a summer resort, where base

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1916

THE NEW ADIRONDACKS

ball, golf, tennis, boating, and similar amusements were of more interest and importance than deer and fish. Deer were driven away, streams were overfished, and the result was a new turn in life in the Adirondacks.

When the railway was run through the wilderness heart, scores of hotels and resort localities were ruined. If one could compile a chart of the fires that destroyed Adirondack hotels and the dates of those fires, he would have in the significant lines and localities a story of the privation of the outlying districts. Direct charges of incendiarism were made in two or three cases.

The railway simply concentrated the increasing travel to the Adirondacks along its course. It robbed the places which must be reached by long and tiresome stage routes. The use of the Adirondacks was still " spotty," confined to comparatively small areas.

People who were familiar with the Adirondacks could see that the wilderness lines were retreating before the pressure of the coming crowds. The area of occupation was constantly growing greater, but there were many inwood communities which still retained the old-fashioned backwoods atmosphere; where the boys gathered around the stove in the post-office on winter nights to tell

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hunting stories and play checkers; where the little school-house churches held the winter socials and donations; where the little hotels contrived to bring from fifty to a hundred couples together at "parties" at which all "allemanded left" to the strident music of fiddles in platform and hall dances. Wilmurt, Speculator, Morehousville, Noblesborough, Indian Lake, Jesup's, Stratford, Grant, Northwood, Enos, North Lake-the list of names familiar to old Adirondack visitors is long.

At these little towns and at certain farms and camps gathered every year little parties who fished the streams, hunted the woods, and enjoyed deep seclusion from the outside world. The inhabitants were quaint and stayat-homes. They sold eggs for ten cents a dozen, because there were no markets near them. They served "mountain mutton," and the boarders winked knowingly at one another. The people were unspoiled-from one kind of view-point. In the spring, as soon as the ice went out, one could see gangs of loggers of pure American stock running harvests of logs down the streams, wild men whose recklessness gave Forestport, Hinckley, Corinth, Lyons Falls, and scores of other river towns traditions long to be remembered. For a long time conditions in the Adiron

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THE NEW ADIRONDACKS

TYPES OF "ADIRONDACKERS WHO DEFY THE GAME WARDEN

dacks changed but slowly. One can trace the story of the woods country through the State's efforts to utilize the four million acres of mountain country. In the old days-as late as the '30s-land grants were made to people who promised to develop the mountains and make rich farms of them. Then came railway projects for opening up the country and bringing down mine and forest products to the factories and mills. Then the era of timber-stealing set in, when the spruce and hemlock tempted the fortuneseekers. Verplanck Colvin surveyed the Adirondacks in the '70s, and pointed out where the best lands were to be had, where the densest growths of spruce were; and such was the success of those who took his hints that in 1884 the State forbade the transfer of State lands in the Adirondacks into private hands. That but excited the cupidity of many, and about 1896 a decided check had been put upon the land-grabbers. Twelve years later the timber thieves received their great check when two little game protectors were sent to jail. A little later, for the first time, effective game protection began to be established in the woods. One by one the violations petered

out.

Until 1910, say, old conditions remained in the Adirondacks, except that the area of green timber, of trees available for floating down the streams, grew steadily smaller. The size of the burnings in the woods increased. The number of summer visitors, increased

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slowly. But the woods were used only in spots, as regards the great ultimate destiny of the Adirondack woods. Here and there were people to whom the woods were a park where they could picnic all summer long. The establishment of the great Fulton Chain, Raquette Lake, Saranac Lake, and Lake Placid resorts, under modern railway communication conditions, and the semi-public club preserves, led to the "week-end" use of the Adirondacks. Up to the year 1905 trains were almost too slow for any one to "run up to the woods" for a mere over-Sunday stay. A few years later the practice was common during the summer.

It was the automobile which again unsettled the customs which followed the readjustments due to the private preserve era. The first effect of the automobile was to play havoc with the hotels in the region. The hotels used to count on having whole families for months at a time. They booked their patrons for certain two, four, six week stays in suites. Transients could not find place in many of the hotels.

The all-summer, the weekly and monthly rate patrons bought automobiles; and when they ran in on their old friend the hotelkeeper, who used to be a guide when he was young, they remained only overnight. Thousands of Adirondack hotel patrons did not return to the hotel at all-roads too bad for their new car, and all that kind of thing, was the trouble. The hotel industry in the Adirondacks was shaken up as it had not been

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