The Stephenson Mountain range ambles northeast from the hamlet of Wilmington until the 3,500-foot peaks finally peter out six miles west of Au Sable Forks, their rugged flanks deflating into more reasonable grades cupping a grassy, oval valley that, through the mid-1900s, had seen nothing more remarkable than a moo-cow.
Then Ruth Newberry arrived. The Adirondacks had seen forces of nature before, but nothing like Ruth.
In the 1940s, Ruth and her husband, C. T. Newberry Jr., a graduate of Northwood School, in Lake Placid, bought the 2,000-acre East Kilns Farm at the foot of the Stephensons, a jewel of a property with rolling pastures guarded by looming crags. Money was no object. C. T. Sr. and his brother J. J. Newberry had earned a fortune through their ubiquitous five-and-dime stores, and C. T. Jr. was carrying on the family business.
C. T. loved the Adirondacks, and Ruth—who had been born in Buenos Aires, lived in a dozen different countries, and helped facilitate Black rule in the Bahamas where she maintained a second home—loved it because he did. But while C. T. was off opening more department stores downstate, Ruth was creating her own empire, an equestrian compound that for better than 20 years competed on the world stage, winning international competitions and
