Occapant5 of 3tate Land5. 



THE occupation of land in the Forest Preserve presents one of the most per- 

 plexing and complicated questions with which this Commission has to deal. 

 The buildings which, in one place and another, constitute these occupancies 

 range all the way from the most primitive shanty to costly and beautiful summer 

 homes. With few exceptions, they were all erected before the present Commission 

 was organized. The few that were built since — four in number — were erected hastily, 

 and without the consent or knowledge of the Commission. 



There are 98 of these cottages, log cabins, shanties, and farm houses on the State 

 lands in the Adirondack Preserve. The greater part of them were erected before the 

 State came into possession of the ground, the owners of the buildings having received 

 permissi(.)n to build from the persons who owned the land at that time, but who subse- 

 quently lost their title to these forest tracts through some tax sale. 



In Essex county, near the Boreas River, are eleven families living on farms in the 

 Preserve who bought land of a prominent Glens Falls lumberman, taking a contract 

 in each case instead of a deed. They had made one or two payments on their con- 

 tracts, when this land owner, failing in business and getting in arrears for taxes, lost 

 his lands at a tax sale, and the occupants found that, through no fault of theirs, their 

 homesteads and farms had passed into the possession of the State of New York. 



When the State made its purchase of 75,000 acres of forest land from Dr. Wm. S. 

 Webb, in 1896, there were some occupants on the property thus transferred, one of 

 whom had been in possession of his cabin on Salmon Lake before Dr. Webb acquired 

 that territory ; another had built a small hotel on Beaver River, with the permission 

 of Dr. Webb — a stopping-place which has proved a great accommodation to the travel- 

 ers, hunters and fishermen who frequent that region. 



On the Lake George islands there are some cottages which were already there in 

 1885, when the law establishing the Forest Preserve and Forest Commission was first 

 enacted. These cottagers erected their buildings under written permission of the 

 Board of Land Commissioners,* who appointed these persons "custodians" of their 

 respective islands. Subsequently, in order that these people might occup)' their 



* The Board of Land Commissioners is composed of the Lieutenant-Governor, Secretary of 

 State, Comptroller, Attorney-General, State Treasurer, State Engineer and Surveyor, and the 

 Speaker of the Assembly. Prior to the establishment of the Forest Commission, in 1885, this Board 

 had control of the public lands. 



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