100 years from Haystack to Nye

In the heyday of 19th century sport in the Adirondacks the classic image of recreation in our region involved boats. This was the era of Murray’s Fools, the tourist boom precipitated by W. H. H. Murray’s best-selling “Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks” (1869). Campers camped, hunters hunted, and anglers fished on and around water. Guides rowed their guideboats, while clients cast their flies. Or they shot white-tailed deer chased to water by hounds or hypnotized by jacklights along lake or river shores. In mass-produced lithography, sold coast to coast by Currier and Ives, the popular image of Adirondack recreation overwhelmingly focused on water.

A few people made their way up Marcy and others of the peaks accessible (at that time, barely) from Newcomb, Keene Valley, and Lake