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39-644: The Boquet River is 40 miles (64 kilometers) long. Its source is in the Adirondack Mountains , within the Adirondack Park . In 1814, during the War of 1812 , a small battle was fought at the mouth of the river. 44°21′19″N 73°21′21″W  /  44.35533°N 73.35596°W  / 44.35533; -73.35596 This article about a location in Essex County, New York

78-632: A degree in medicine in 1818. He went on to study medicine at Albany, New York . After graduating, he practiced as a doctor in Berkshire County, Massachusetts . In 1824, he assisted Chester Dewey in preparing a geological map of Berkshire County, in which the first attempt was made to classify the rocks of the Taconic area. He eventually attended the Rensselaer School (now Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ) for geology. There, he

117-657: A destination for those wishing to escape the evils of city life. Rising concern over water quality and deforestation led to the creation of the Adirondack Park in 1885. In 1989, part of the Adirondack region was designated by UNESCO as the Champlain-Adirondack Biosphere Reserve . For the more recent human history of the Adirondack region, see Adirondack Park . The rocks of the Adirondack mountains originated about two billion years ago as 50,000 feet (ca. 15,240 m) thick sediments at

156-706: A hot spot in the Canadian Shield in contrast to other mountain ranges in New York which are a part of the Appalachian chain (not to be confused with the cultural region of Appalachia). Around 600 million years ago, as Laurentia drifted away from Baltica (European Craton), the area began to be pulled apart forming the Iapetus Ocean . Faults developed, running north to northeast which formed valleys and deep lakes. Examples visible today include

195-611: A wild region devoid of human connection set up a narrative about wilderness that would persist through the next 200-some years of the region's history. While society's perception of the Adirondacks' value changed, they were always seen as a land of natural resources and physical beauty, not of human history. First the area was an inhospitable tangle, then a lucrative store of lumber. After the American Revolutionary War , New York State gained ownership of most of

234-494: A work entitled American Geology , containing a statement of the principles of science with full illustrations demonstrating the characteristics of American fossils (1855–1857). The overthrust in New York, which places Lower Cambrian rocks in contact with Middle Ordovician rocks, is known as Emmons' line, formerly Logan's line after William Edmond Logan . This segment is named after Emmons and extends from Canada through Vermont , New York, and farther south. It traverses through

273-610: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to a river in New York is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Adirondack Mountains The Adirondack Mountains ( / ˌ æ d ɪ ˈ r ɒ n d æ k / AD -i- RON -dak ) are a massif of mountains in Northeastern New York which form a circular dome approximately 160 miles (260 km) wide and covering about 5,000 square miles (13,000 km ). The region contains more than 100 peaks, including Mount Marcy , which

312-628: Is considered extremely fragile, and was damaged by hikers prior to a 1970s campaign by the Adirondack Mountain Club to preserve it. Ebenezer Emmons Ebenezer Emmons (May 16, 1799 – October 1, 1863), was a pioneering American geologist whose work includes the naming of the Adirondack Mountains in New York as well as a first ascent of Mount Marcy . Emmons was born at Middlefield, Massachusetts , on May 16, 1799, son of Ebenezer and Mary (Mack) Emmons. Emmons entered Williams College at age 16 and graduated with

351-437: Is now Ticonderoga in 1609. The Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues became the first recorded European to travel through the center of the Adirondacks, as the captive of a Mohawk hunting party, in 1642. The early European perception of the Adirondacks was of a vast, inhospitable wilderness. One map of the area from 1771 shows the region as a blank space in the northeastern corner of New York. In 1784, Thomas Pownhall wrote that

390-401: Is the highest point in New York at 5,344 feet (1,629 m). The Adirondack High Peaks , a traditional list of 46 peaks over 4,000 feet (1,200 m), are popular hiking destinations. There are over 200 named lakes with the number of smaller lakes, ponds, and other bodies of water reaching over 3,000. Among the named lakes around the mountains are Lake George , Lake Placid , and Lake Tear of

429-589: Is thought to come from the Mohawk word atirǫ́·taks meaning "eaters of trees". The earliest written use of the name was in 1635 by Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert in his Mohawk to Dutch glossary, found in his Journey into Mohawk Country . He spelled it Adirondakx and said that it stood for Frenchmen, meaning the Algonquians who allied with the French. Another early use of the name, spelled Rontaks ,

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468-707: The Geological Survey of the State of New York, and after a lengthened study, he grouped the local strata (1842) into the Taconic and overlying New York systems. The latter system was subdivided into several groups that were by no means well defined. Emmons had previously described the Potsdam sandstone (1838), and this was placed at the base of the New York system. It is now regarded as Upper Cambrian . In 1844, Emmons obtained fossils in his Taconic system for

507-709: The Last Glacial Period . The earliest migrants arrived from the St. Lawrence River Valley to the north, and settled along the shores of the Champlain Sea . During the Archaic Period (8000–1000 BC) this semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer Laurentian culture inhabited the Adirondacks; evidence of their presence includes a projectile point of red-brown chert found in 2007 at the edge of Tupper Lake. During an interval of roughly 11,000 years following

546-571: The grabens Lake George and Schroon Lake . By this time the Grenville mountains had been eroded away and the area was covered by a shallow sea. Several thousand feet of sediment accumulated on the sea bed. Trilobites were the principal life-form of the sea bed, and fossil tracks can be seen in the Potsdam sandstone floor of the Paul Smiths Visitor Interpretive Center. About 10 million years ago,

585-422: The 1600s, then by wars with encroaching European settlers, there likely were very few people living in the region by the time Pownhall wrote his description. It is only relatively recently that numerous archaeological finds have definitively shown that Native Americans were indeed very present in the Adirondacks before European contact, hunting, making pottery, and practicing agriculture. The European impression of

624-479: The 20th century failed for numerous reasons, including poaching, vehicle collisions, and conservation incompetence. Nearly 60 percent of the park is covered with northern hardwood forest . Above 2,600 feet (790 meters), conditions are too poor for hardwoods to thrive, and the trees become mixed with or replaced by balsam fir and red spruce . Above 3,500 feet (1,100 meters) black spruce replace red. Higher still, only trees short enough to be covered in snow during

663-622: The Adirondack Mountains, which was interpreted to be the upwelling asthenosphere contributing to the uplift of the mountains. The occurrence of earthquake swarms near the center of the massif at Blue Mountain Lake may be evidence of this. Some of the earthquakes have exceeded 5 on the Richter magnitude scale . Starting about 2.5 million years ago, a cycle of Pleistocene glacial and interglacial periods began which covered

702-466: The Adirondacks their name in 1838. The name "Adirondacks" is an Anglicized version of the Mohawk ratirontaks , meaning "they eat trees", a derogatory name the Mohawks historically applied to neighboring Algonquian tribes due to their practice of eating the buds and bark of trees when food was scarce. Emmons led the first recorded climb of Mount Marcy on August 8, 1837. His party was looking for

741-453: The Clouds . The region has over 1,200 miles (1,900 km) of river. Although the mountains are formed from ancient rocks more than 1 billion years old, geologically, the mountains are relatively young and were created during recent periods of glaciation. Because of this, the Adirondacks have been referred to as "new mountains from old rocks." It is theorized that there is a hotspot beneath

780-742: The Native Americans referred to the area as "the Dismal Wilderness, or the Habitation of Winter," and that the area was "either not much known to them, or, if known, very wisely by them kept from the Knowledge of the Europeans." He clearly had the impression that native people did not live within the Adirondack mountains. Because local Iroquoian and Algonquian tribes had been decimated first by smallpox and measles in

819-493: The area in ice. During the most recent episode, the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered most of northern North America between about 95,000 and c. 20,000 years ago. After this the climate warmed, but it took nearly 10,000 years for a 10,000 feet (ca. 3,048 m) thick layer of ice to completely melt. Evidence of this period includes: Soils in the area are generally thin, sandy, acidic, and infertile, having developed since

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858-503: The bottom of a sea located near the equator . Because of plate tectonics these collided with Laurentia (the precursor of modern North America) in a mountain building episode known as the Grenville orogeny . During this time the sedimentary rock was changed into metamorphic rock . It is these Proterozoic minerals and lithologies that make up the core of the massif. Minerals of interest include: The Adirondacks are uplifted by

897-554: The city of Troy, New York and the Poesten Kill Falls and Gorge. He named the Adirondack Mountains (1838) and Taconic Mountains (1844) and acquainted the public with these regions. A scientific disagreement with New York State Geologist James Hall regarding the age of the rocks in the Taconic System led Emmons to leave New York State. Emmons held that the Taconic System rocks were of Cambrian age, but Hall

936-665: The end of the Last Glacial Period, the climate of the Adirondacks gradually warmed, with the area's tundra being replaced by forests that were now able to grow. During the transition between the Archaic and Woodland (1000 BC – AD 1000) periods, multiple different groups replaced the Laurentian culture—including the Sylvan Lake, River, Middlesex, Point Peninsula, and Owasco cultures. By

975-557: The first time. The species obtained were found to differ from all then-known Palaeozoic fossils and now represent the primordial group. Marcou advocated for the term Taconic to be generally adopted in place of Cambrian. Nevertheless, the Taconic fauna discovered by Emmons proved to include only the lower part of Sedgwick 's Cambrian. Emmons contributed to a series of volumes on the Natural History of New York (1848), writing about agriculture and geological topics. He also issued

1014-799: The glacial retreat. The climate is strongly continental , with high humidity and precipitation year-round. The Adirondacks typically experience pleasantly warm, rainy weather in the summer (June–August), with temperatures in the range of 66–73 °F (19–23 °C), cooler than the rest of New York State due to the higher elevation. Summer evenings in the Adirondacks are chilly, with temperatures ranging on average between 45–54 °F (7–12 °C). Winters (December–March) are long, cold, snowy and harsh, with temperatures ranging from 18 to 23 °F (−8 to −5 °C). Winter nights are frigid, with temperatures between −2 and 4 °F (−19 and −16 °C). Spring (April–May) and fall (September–November) are short transitional seasons. The Adirondack Mountains form

1053-457: The land in the region. Needing money to discharge war debts, the government sold nearly all the original public acreage about 7 million acres for pennies an acre. Lumbermen were welcomed to the interior, with few restraints, resulting in massive deforestation . Later, the wilderness character of the region became popular with the rise of the Romantic movement , and the Adirondacks became

1092-605: The north, northeast; the Appalachian Plateau to the south, southwest; and the Valley and Ridge to the southeast. The entire region lies within Adirondack Park , a New York state protected area of over 6,000,000 acres (2,400,000 ha). The park was established in 1892 by the state legislature to protect the region's natural resources and to provide recreational opportunities for the public. It covers over 20 percent of New York state's land area. The word Adirondack

1131-456: The region began to be uplifted. It has been lifted about 7000 feet (ca. 2,134 meters) and is continuing at about 2 millimeters per year, which is greater than the rate of denudation . The cause of the uplift is unknown, but geologists theorize that it is caused by a hot spot in the Earth's crust . A recent study has revealed a column of seismically slow materials about 50–80 km deep beneath

1170-549: The region was considered a ' Dish with One Spoon ,' symbolizing shared hunting resources between the groups. A group of Algonquian people, known as the Mahicans, also occupied the region, particularly the Hudson River Valley. These were the groups that the first European explorers of the area encountered. European presence in the area began with a battle between Samuel de Champlain and a group of Mohawks, in what

1209-474: The region, but they were not yet considered a place name; an English map from 1761 labels the area simply Deer Hunting Country . In 1838, the mountains were named Adirondacks by Ebenezer Emmons , the State Geologist for the northern New York State Geological District. The first humans to live in the Adirondacks were Paleo-Indians who arrived around the 14th millennium BC following the end of

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1248-522: The region, which causes continued uplift at the rate of 1.5–3 centimetres ( 5 ⁄ 8 – 1 + 1 ⁄ 8  in) annually. The Adirondack mountain range has such unusual characteristics compared to the area around it that it is divided into its own province within the Appalachian Highlands physiographic division. It is bounded by three other provinces: the St. Lawrence (Champlain) on

1287-652: The southernmost part of the Eastern forest-boreal transition ecoregion . They are heavily forested, and contain one of the southernmost distributions of the taiga ecotype in North America. The forests of the Adirondacks include spruce , pine and deciduous trees. Lumbering, once an important industry, has been much restricted by the creation of state forest preserve. The mountains include many wetlands , of which there are three kinds: Breeding birds include northern forest specialists not found anywhere else in

1326-515: The state, such as boreal chickadees , Canada jays , spruce grouse , black-backed woodpeckers , common loons and crossbills . Mammals include raccoons , beavers , river otters , bobcats , moose , black bears , and coyotes . Extirpated or extinct mammals that formerly roamed the Adirondacks include the eastern cougar , eastern elk , wolverine , caribou , eastern wolf , and the Canada lynx . Attempted reintroductions of elk and lynx in

1365-518: The time of the Owasco culture c.  1 AD , maize and beans were being cultivated in the uplands of the Adirondacks. The first Iroquoian peoples, the Mohawk (or Kanyengehaga) and the Oneida (or Oneyotdehaga), arrived in the Adirondack region between 4,000 and 1,200 years ago. Both groups claimed the Adirondack Mountains as hunting grounds. According to Haudenosaunee historian Rick Hill,

1404-434: The winter can survive. A small area on the highest peaks exists above the tree line and has an alpine climate . These areas are covered by plants which occupied a large lowland tundra following the most recent period of glaciation. The amount of area covered by this ecosystem changes from year to year due to local climate changes, and has been estimated to only cover between 65–85 acres (26–34 hectares). The alpine ecosystem

1443-560: Was convinced that they were Ordovician in age. (Emmons was ultimately found to be correct.) As a result of the dispute, Emmons was banned from the practice of geology in the state of New York and sued Hall for slander and libel. In 1851, after losing the lawsuit, Emmons was hired by the state of North Carolina for the newly created position of State Geologist. He continued in that position until his death in 1863, at his plantation in Brunswick County, North Carolina . Emmons gave

1482-508: Was in 1729 by French missionary Joseph-François Lafitau . He explained that the word was used by the Iroquois as a derogatory term for groups of Algonquians who did not practice agriculture and therefore sometimes had to eat tree bark to survive harsh winters. The Mohawks had no written language, so Europeans used various phonetic spellings of the word, including Achkokx , Rondaxe , and Adirondax. Such words were strongly associated with

1521-442: Was inspired by professor Amos Eaton , and graduated in the first class in 1826. While giving much of his time to natural science at Williams College , he also became a professor in chemistry and later obstetrics at Albany Medical College . Emmons was designated by Jules Marcou as the founder of American Paleozoic stratigraphy , and the first discoverer of the primordial fauna in any country. In 1836, he became attached to

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