A Collaborative History

Crowdsourcing the Past

Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

Warren County’s First People

In this ArcGIS StoryMap we’re developing, we go back to the end of the Ice Age and the arrival of mastadons and Paleo-Indians. And we sit down with Skidmore College anthropologists Susan Bender and Siobhan Hart to explore “persistent places” and “locations of exchange.”

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

A Salute to Wayne LaMothe

Wayne LaMothe started at the Warren County Department of Planning and Community Development as an intern. Upon his retirement last week as County Planner and department director, he was recognized for 42 years of service.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

Warren County's Deployment of GPS-Triggered Storytelling

Visitors to Warren County soon will be able to download onto their phones an app developed by the Warren County Planning Department that offers GPS-triggered audio tours. Learn more Thursday, September 28 at Crandall Library’s Folklife Center.

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John Sasso John Sasso

How Hackensack Mountain Got Its Name

In John Sasso’s exploration of Warrensburg’s rocky peak, we learn about the Munsees, a Lenape sub-tribe who once lived on the upper Delaware River and other regions of southern New York.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

A Conversation with Glenn Pearsall

When Glenn Pearsall noticed that a signed copy of “Echoes in These Mountains” was going for $114 on eBay, he decided it was time to produce an expanded second edition. We’re converting these stories into easy-to-access spatial media.

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Allison Comstock Allison Comstock

Stories of Underground ‘Railroads’

For freedom-seekers escaping through Albany before and during the Civil War, the safest and most trafficked route was through the Adirondacks, says Jacqueline Madison, President of the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association. Many helped along the way.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

How Skiing Came to North Creek

The FISU World University Games are generating the same kind of excitement that inspired young people after the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics to start building ski trails on Gore Mountain's old logging roads. As the 90th anniversary of the “Snow Train” approaches, we tell this story.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

An 'Environmental Ethic'

Howard Zahniser wrote 66 drafts of the National Wilderness Preservation Act and fought for eight years to win its passage in 1964. His son, Ed Zahniser, was 10 years old when Democrat Hubert Humphrey first introduced the bill in the Senate on June 7, 1956.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

A Sense of Place

One of the goals of the First Wilderness Heritage Corridor is to instill in the communities in the western part of Warren County the same sense of place experienced by residents and visitors to Lake George. We invited four experts to share their perspectives on finding roots in the land.

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May Braaten, Skidmore '24 May Braaten, Skidmore '24

Commemorating Cabin Country

As a natural resources planner for the Department of Environmental Conservation, Kirstin Seleen is responsible for managing a quarter-million acres of state Forest Preserve, an area that has played a special role in the nation’s environmental history. She’s exploring ways to tell that story.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

New York’s Story in Wilderness Conservation

PART II. Continuing our conversation with David Gibson at the Beaver House, we explore Paul Schaefer’s relationships with key figures in New York's wilderness conservation movement, including his brothers Vincent and Carl. And we ask why New York’s story in wilderness conservation isn’t better known.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

New York’s Story in Wilderness Conservation

PART I. As managing partner of Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve, David Gibson helps to lead the same organization that Paul Schaefer founded in 1945. He’s also a co-owner of the Beaver House, the cabin Schaefer built on the edge of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness in 1960.

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Noah Chirnomas Noah Chirnomas

A Conversation with Ellen Apperson Brown

John Apperson is a key person in the through line we’re drawing from the enactment of the “Forever Wild” clause of the New York State Constitution in 1895 and the Wilderness Act of 1964. No one knows his story better than Ellen Apperson Brown, his grand niece. So we spent an hour with her in Zoom. These are highlights of the proceedings.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

Ancient Windows of the Earth

Our series on The Schaefers of Cabin Country continues, featuring conversations with Jim Schaefer and Greg Schaefer on the art of Adirondack rock-slicing pioneered by Vince Schaefer, their father and uncle.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

At Hanging Spear Falls

In 1946, Paul Schaefer took Howard Zahniser on a two-day hike through the High Peaks to Hanging Spear Falls. It launched a series of events that two decades later would give us the Wilderness Act of 1964.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

A Collaborative History

The Warren County Department of Planning and Community Development has teamed with the Warren County Historian, the Warren County Historical Society and Cliff & Redfield Interactive to produce A Collaborative History of the First Wilderness.

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Dan Forbush Dan Forbush

Rediscovering the First Wilderness

This is the route Thomas C. Durant followed when, starting in Saratoga Springs in 1864, he chiseled through the dense forest a 60-mile railroad that for the first time brought vacationers to the interior of the Adirondacks.

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