

























One of the few wilderness strong- 
holds left to us in the eastern United 
States is the Adirondack Mountains. 
Having only a normally high altitude, 
the climate of the region is admirably 
adapted to promote the growth of a 
large variety of trees. 
NDEED, it is this very variety of 
tree growth that makes the Adiron- 
dacks so fascinating. Spruce, pine, 
balsam, hemlock and tamarack frater- 
nize with maple, beech, birch and pop- 
lar. There are thousands of acres, 
moreover, from which the soft timber 
has been removed, that retain by this 
reason their arboreal richness. 
But nothing of course can equal the 
charm of the natural mixed stand where 
conifers and deciduous trees stand side 
by side, the conifers remaining isolated 
on the higher ranges only, or in low 
Swampy country. 
EEN from an eminence, the Adiron- 
' dacks unroll beneath one’s feet in a 
sea of enchanting verdure. Surrounded 
like an island by cultivated lands, it 
rises apart, a kingdom of trees, an 
oasis of loveliness, a tempered moun- 
tain wilderness watered abundantly 
With spacious lakes and_ sparkling 
brooks, and rivers of slow current and 
mber tint. Owing to its topography, 
it is most perfectly adapted to the 
needs of the average camper. It is 
not too harsh or rugged in its natural 
features. It is a wilderness tamed, 
but a wilderness nevertheless, accessi- 
‘ 
r 

ble to all who are hungry for the 
woods and for solitude. 
FEW months spent in the Adiron- 
dacks every year, even a few 
weeks, have the power to revive jaded 
nerves, clear tired brains, build fresh 
muscle and inoculate with vigor and 
energy. The air is like champagne, ex- 
hilarating, blood-making, and the coun- 
try itself, so gracious to the eye, so rest- 
ful to the heart, yields us something to 
be measured not alone in health of body 
but in health of mind. 
Now, the forests and waters of the 
Adirondacks, like all splendid posses- 
sions in nature, have an infinitude of 
enemies. That commercialism, ruth- 
less, greedy and, alas, too often unscru- 
pulous commercialism, heads the list of 
these enemies is an indisputable fact. 
T has smelt out the riches of the re- 
gion; it is going to devour it if it 
possibly can. Not only have its claws 
already stripped the land of the best 
of its timber, and thus laid it open to 
the ravages of fire; but not content 
with this it has lately turned its atten- 
tion to the flooding of the forest, with 
the evident idea of converting it ulti- 
mately into a vast power plant. 
To serve as an illustration, the 
Beaver River dam operations offer a 
fair sample of forest destruction for 
purely commercial purposes. 
In 1923 some seventy-five hundred 
acres of the country around Beaver 
River, which lies in the central portion 
of the Adirondacks, and has long been 
A funeral pyre of hardwoods, the burnt offering to the great god Commercialism. 
famed for its good hunting and excel- 
lent trout streams, became the prop- 
erty of certain interests desiring to 
establish in this locality an extensive 
storage reservoir to be used in gener- 
ating power for pulp mills on the 
Moose and Black Rivers. 
HE complete annihilation of sev- 
enty-five hundred acres of forest- 
land may seem but a small affair to 
those more or less disinterested in for- 
est preservation. But go on repeating 
such operations in different places—go 
on damming and cutting and flooding, 
and see what the result will be. Com- 
mercialism is doing the same thing out 
west, as has been pointed out in many 
able articles on the subject, chief 
among which was one recently pub- 
lished in the Saturday Evening Post 
by Struthers Burt, a powerful plea for 
conservation based on some astound- 
ing facts. And the Beaver River dam 
project is simply a repetition of the 
blind and selfish policy. Before the 
public knew anything about it, the 
work was well under way, and some 
thousand Jumbermen busy at the task 
of denudation. 
1 Rees question arises in the mind of 
every person interested in the 
preservation of the Adirondacks not 
only as a game park. but as a play- 
ground for the people, is the Beaver 
River dam really being built for purely 
economic reasons in the matter of 
power generation, or is it partly an ex- 
(Continued on page 639) 
583 
