FORES!' AND STREAM 
461 
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Picture on the Left Shows Scientific Lumbering—Center Picture Illustrates How Heavy Forest Growth c , .. . 
Lumbering Was Allowed in the Adirondack* Every Tree Shown in Picture buThe^g^ W^td 1"° 
-If Ope 
People Of New York Must Fight To Save Adirondacks 
The Proposals Now Pending Before The Constitutional Convention, if Adopted, Mean That The Last of The 
State’s Great Playground is Doomed Forever 
T HERE are pending before the New York 
Constitutional Convention proposals to 
cut over the lands owned by the people 
of New York in order to supply certain poli¬ 
ticians who own lumber mills with raw mate¬ 
rial. This is a plain statement of the condi¬ 
tion that confronts the public. 
The idea, as advanced, is to cut and carry 
away the “dead and down timber.” This is an 
old fraud of an argument which has long been 
used by the advocates of getting public rights 
at bargain rates. Anyone who knows anything 
about the woods, especially the interests advanc¬ 
ing this argument, knows that it would cost 
more to remove the dead and down timber than 
it would be worth, and that after its removal 
the timber would be of poor quality, at best. 
So we have a propaganda based in the first 
place on a contemptible subterfuge of an argu¬ 
ment and proposal. The real demand of the 
gang which is after Adirondack state and timber 
is that they can be permitted to take the 
live, green timber of the Adirondacks and put 
it through the mills. 
These interests have shown on their own lands 
what they are after. I will cite the upper West 
Canada creek valley as an illustration of what 
happens, when logging is conducted on woods 
lands without restriction, and there would be no 
real restriction on state lands. 
Twenty-five years ago the West Canada was 
a black-water stream, with a deep flow of water, 
so cold that only for a brief period during the 
summer months did the fish go onto the cold 
beds. Year after year, the water poured down 
in deep flood, but a mill located at Hinkley was 
remodeled so that it would take spruce, balsam 
and hemlock of any size and kind. 
A cut of several million feet annually began, 
and for years this was kept up. The lands of 
the Adirondack League, the great Ballou hold- 
By Raymond S. Spears. 
ings, a large acreage of state lands (timber thefts) 
and lands in small acreages (from fifty to a 
thousand or two acres) were cut over. 
On Mill creek, Indian River, Jock’s lake out¬ 
let, Black creek—on all the watersheds much 
green timber was cut away. I suppose that more 
than thirty per cent, of the actual stand of tim¬ 
ber was cut down, in the course of years. Every 
one knows that the swamps hold the water back 
—the swamps of green timber, of spruce (knoll 
country), balsams, and hemlocks (points and 
rocky ridges). 
In the hardwood, the ground dries out rapidly. 
In natural conditions in the Adirondacks, fires 
Contrast Open Character Of Cut-Over Forest 
With Center Picture Above. 
start and run in the hard woods long before 
they begin in the swamps. But now there were 
no longer any swamps in many of the places 
where the snow had lingered long after it was 
gone from the ridge flanks. 
The swamps dried up literally. Streams that 
were never dry in the old days—the “beautiful 
cold-spring brooks” dried up. Even hardwood 
cutting dried up these brooks. There are at 
least three brooks in three miles on the north 
side of the West Canada that dried up after the 
hard and soft wood was cut. One of the larg¬ 
est and finest of the West Canada brooks, Conk¬ 
lin brook, was reduced to a thread of water be*- 
cause of operations on Maple ridge and nearby 
swamps over toward Little Black creek. 
Higher water in the spring—lower water in the 
summer. Anyone can see what happened to the 
West Canada. It is no longer a black water 
stream in the summer. It is a white water 
stream. The water which used to flow undefiled 
over the clean, pure-colored stones and boulders 
is now hazy and it leaves a scum deposit on the 
stones, and it is so warm for so many months 
that the seiners skin the cold beds at the mouths 
of the few remaining brooks and boiling springs 
on the stream bottom. One can walk across 
the stream dry shod where there was formerly a 
torrent. 
I understand that the State authorities have 
recognized the fact of the deterioration of this 
famous brook trout stream. There has been 
erected at Hinkley a huge dam—90 feet high— 
and the flow has been stocked with brown trout, 
instead of with brook trout, as I was told the 
other day up in that neighborhood. 
Here is a stream that logging operations have 
ruined compared to its former condition. It is 
a stream draining old choppings and old burn¬ 
ings and old clearings—land that should be in 
