‘Synonymous’ with ADK

The best time to have been an Adirondack tourist was perhaps in the latter part of the 19th century, when hotels were going up, wholesale swaths of forest had yet to be mowed down and anyone with a canoe and a Wallace guidebook was basically free to wander wherever mood and muscle would allow.

With the turn of the 20th century came mechanized logging, and the industry’s captains began buying up great tracts of forestland that for the next hundred years would be taken out of public view.

The history was not lost on Neil Woodworth years ago, as he dipped his paddle in waters that had been closed to the public since the days of the Lombard steam-powered log tractor. It was a seminal moment in the 30 years that Woodworth spent with the Adirondack Mountain Club, as he inventoried lands for potential acquisition by the state.

Woodworth, who stepped down as the ADK’s executive director