Adirondack Mountains

Lore & Background

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 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. The Mohawks themselves referred to the mountains as Tsiiononteskowa, meaning 'big mountains'. The Oneida meanwhile, used the word Latilu·taks, which meant 'they're eating the trees/beaver'.

In Their Own Story

The first humans to live in the Adirondacks were Paleo-Indians who arrived around the 14th millennium BC following the end of 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. 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, the region was considered a 'Dish with One Spoon,' symbolizing shared hunting resources between the groups. European presence in the area began with a battle between Samuel de Champlain and a group of Mohawks, in what 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.

Reader's Guide

The rocks of the Adirondack mountains originated about two billion years ago as 50,000-foot (15,000 m) thick sediments at 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. Rocks and minerals of interest include these: wollastonite, mined near Harrisville; magnetite and hematite, formerly mined at the Benson Mines, Lyon Mountain, Mineville, Tahawus, and Witherbee; graphite, mined near Hague and Ticonderoga; garnet, mined at the Barton Mine, north of Gore Mountain; anorthosite, visible in road cuts on the New York State Route 3 between Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake; marble; zinc; the Balmat-Edwards district on the northwest flank of the massif also in St. Lawrence County was a major zinc ore deposit; titanium, mined at Tahawus. The Adirondacks are thought to be uplifted by a hot spot in the Canadian Shield, in contrast to other mountain ranges in New York which were created in the Alleghenian Orogeny and are a part of the Appalachian chain (not to be confused with the cultural region of Appalachia). About 10 million years ago, the region began to be uplifted. It has been lifted about 7,000 feet (2,000 m) and is continuing at about 0.08 inches (2 mm) 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 30 to 50 miles (50 to 80 km) deep beneath the Adirondack Mountains, which was interpreted to be the upwelling asthenosphere contributing to the uplift.

Did You Know?

• The Adirondack High Peaks are a traditional list of 46 peaks over 4,000 feet (1,200 m).
• The word Adirondack is thought to come from the Mohawk word atirǫ́·taks meaning 'eaters of trees'.
• The Mohawks themselves referred to the mountains as Tsiiononteskowa, meaning 'big mountains'.
• The earliest written use of the name Adirondack was in 1635 by Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, who spelled it Adirondakx.
• The region has over 1,200 miles (1,900 km) of rivers.