Exploiting the Forest Preserve. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The leasing of camp sites has been always a 
favorite project of commissions and committees 
ever since the Adirondack Park was established. 
The idea of possible revenue from this source is 
irresistible. They cannot abide the thought of 
the State having anything left for its old age, 
but want its inheritance turned into cash during 
its irresponsible, youth. 
The men chosen for commissions and com¬ 
mittees are usually not sentimental poets, sociolo¬ 
gists, humanitarians, artists and other vision¬ 
aries, but are good business men and of course 
they can measure results only by the visible dol¬ 
lar. To the man who loves the forest and its 
lakes for their wild beauty they listen with either 
annoyance or good-natured indulgence. The Adi¬ 
rondack Park is not a fool.art gallery, and be¬ 
sides such things are ridiculous wastes of good 
money, anyway. The value of the North Woods 
as a factor in the conservation of the health and 
courage and sanity of twice ten thousand tired 
men is only part of an old dream when imme¬ 
diate cash revenue is in sight. 
In an address before the Legislature the pres- • 
ent commissioner said: “The 8,000,000 people of 
the State of New York could reach this beauti¬ 
ful country from their homes in twelve hours." 
On what plan will he distribute the forest pre¬ 
serve among this population? There are many 
non-residents interested; shall they be excluded? 
If a thousandth part of this possible number 
should wish to camp there at one time—a not 
unlikely event—where will the tents be pitched 
after all the best sites are leased to favored 
ones? How many are able to camp in canoes 
or balloons? Only a rhinoceros could survive a 
summer night back in the swamps. 
Ninety-nine per cent, of the proposed five-acre 
camp site leases will be on the lake shores. 
There is not at the present time any necessity 
for us to hand over the public camping grounds 
to those w T ho wish permanent camps. The shores 
of fifteen of the larger lakes are not public lands 
and the State holds only part of the shores of 
ten more of the largest and of a dozen smaller 
lakes. Over one hundred of the smaller lakes, 
including the best, and twice that number of 
ponds within the Adirondack Park are not 
owned by the State. In the woods, on private 
lands, outside the park lines, are such lakes as 
the Chateaugay with many smaller ones. No one 
need suffer if we wait until half of these are 
occupied before we begin cutting the park into 
building lots. There are a good many busy 
people looking ahead to their two weeks’ camp¬ 
ing in the woods, and there is no present neces¬ 
sity for forcing them to follow a closed circle 
of move-along notices around every Adirondack 
lake. 
If the amendment is allowed, will it not vir¬ 
tually legalize, or at least perpetuate and estab¬ 
lish, possession for those who now control and 
occupy permanent camps built upon land owned 
by the State since the park was established? If 
the commissioners have not the power to dis¬ 
possess present squatters, they naturally will wel¬ 
come some means of legalizing their occupancy 
unless undisturbed possession for a long time 
may have already done so, as perhaps is the case 
on Raquette Lake where game laws have always 
been a joke and State timber has been considered 
free. 
It is very true that the so-called guides and 
many of the older real guides in some sections 
favor the leasing of camp sites, and they also 
favor even more strongly the exclusion of all 
but the rich (themselves excepted) from the 
Adirondack woods. I have discussed this latter 
opinion with some of the very best of them. 
With them it is simply a business proposition. 
SEA LIONS PERFORMING IN THE CIRCUS. 
Since the opening of roads and transportation 
lines, many people now come into the woods who 
do not employ guides. Serving as caretaker of 
several camps at good pay is also an easier way 
to earn money than working as a guide, for 
which service few men are really fitted. 
If the State already owned the larger part of 
the Adirondack Park and did not now overlook 
the presence of private camps on the part it does 
own, there might be reasons for the proposed 
amendment, but the situation to-day does not 
seem to call loudly for it. What special harm 
will come from waiting until at least two-thirds 
of the lands within the park limits are public 
property? 
The horrors that some of the boys in the archi¬ 
tects’ offices devise with wood and paint for 
rural punishment are only surpassed by what the 
amateur builder with leisure and money does 
when he gets loose in the woods. I am sure that 
nearly everyone who has had a chance to com¬ 
pare a wild lake with one about which the camp¬ 
ing “resources are being developed" will vote 
with those of us who think we need an occas¬ 
ional rest from the sights and sounds and smells 
of the settlements, and who pray^ that a few 
small lakes will be left without further exploi¬ 
tation for a little while longer. 
The provision for highways is designed to per¬ 
mit the building at public expense of some of 
the million dollar automobile roads planned by 
a few of our influential citizens to reach their 
Adirondack mansions. One such road, partly 
surveyed a few years ago, would in every prob¬ 
ability have been built had not Mr. Hughes come 
to Albany. A constitutional amendment has not 
been always thought an essential preliminary to 
roads. For the building of one road at least, a 
strip as broad as a street was cut for miles 
through some of the best original forest owned 
by the State, and gulleys were filled in with 
choice logs. Although built by rich men for 
private use, the labor cost was too high and the 
public will now build whatever roads may be de¬ 
sired in the future. 
The argument that will be used for these roads 
is the help in putting out fires. This can hardly 
be denied, but the only fires we have to fight 
start along thoroughfares. I have myself stamped 
out fires started at once in dry leaves by a match 
thrown from a carriage by the half intoxicated 
smoker—such a fire as one man could not have 
stopped two minutes later. Bad fires have started 
in a similar manner. A map showing the lines 
of forest fires will coincide almost exactly 'with 
one showing the routes of travel. A fire lane 
that is traveled does not stop fires, but starts 
them. The only places where fires do not start 
are where there are no roads. 
The “spontaneous combustions" and other ex¬ 
cuses we so often read about never seemed to 
bear such yearly fruit in any part of the once 
broad Appalachian forests until matches came 
into every pocket. And there were countless 
days of fierce storm and blazing sun before man 
appeared and yet we find beds of black coal in¬ 
stead of ashes. 
No one questions the desirability of utilizing 
dead and fallen timber and that from over-ripe, 
unsound and weed trees whenever it is possible 
with safety for the rest. The idea is all right 
and its adoption will be all right some day, but 
unfortunately it is not now. If it had been profit¬ 
able to remove the “dead and down" timber 
alone, it would have disappeared long ago. Not 
until we are able to regulate the destruction of 
live timber that is now, and has been for years, 
disappearing from the Adirondack woods at the 
rate of 1,000 acres for every working day of 
the year, are we likely to have much control 
over lumbermen turned loose in the few for¬ 
bidden spots. Before last year there was not 
authority to even attempt to^ forestall the usual 
devastation from the uncontrollable fires in the 
dry tops following every lumber job. The re¬ 
cent history of Northern Minnesota under the 
“dead and down timber" idea shows how easy 
it is on public land to have all the best trees con¬ 
veniently dead when the lumbermen get ready to 
take them. 
The Legislature is now very good, but it is not 
yet impossible that a tricky one may again sit 
in Albany. The people learned years ago that 
it was not always safe to give unrestricted con¬ 
trol into its hands or even into those' of its sev¬ 
eral committees that in so many pleasant sum¬ 
mers have “inspected" the Adirondack Park. 
Unassailable evidence is not submitted to prove 
