The Greening of Al Smith
Quick! Name a public servant who changed the shape and spirit of the Adirondacks. Pretty easy, right? There’s Verplanck Colvin, the superintendent of the Adirondack Survey who got the whole ball o’ balsam rolling. Teddy Roosevelt put aside more public land than all his predecessors combined, and his nephew Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps built trails and campgrounds, battled soil erosion and planted trees. As for Governor Nelson Rockefeller, his imprint was mightier than Bigfoot’s. Rocky secured $300 million for land purchases, and fathered the Adirondack Park Agency, Department of Environmental Conservation and Office of Parks and Recreation.
Al Smith, on the other hand—it’s not a name that springs to mind. These others grew up loving the deep woods, an affection quickened by their patrician patrimony. TR made a boyhood study of Adirondack birds and got it published while he was still at Harvard. Al Smith left school in the eighth grade when his father died, and if he ever kept a bird list,
