1900 Meekham Map of Raquette Lake, Hamilton County, New York

'Forever Wild'

This is a 1900 H.S. Meekham 'lumbering map' of Raquette Lake and environs in Hamilton County, New York, at the heart of the Adirondacks. It highlights the area as it was becoming renowned for summer camps and illustrates New York State's drive to protect forested land.

A Closer Look

Centered on Raquette Lake, coverage embraces Township 40 from its borders with Townships 39 and 36 to its borders with Townships 5 and 6 and from Township 41 and 5 to Township 35 and Forked Lake. Several locations are labeled around Raquette Lake, including Indian Point, Beaver Bay, Antler's Point, Long Point, South Bay, Bluff Point, and North Bay. Camp Pine Knot is depicted on Long Point. The Raquette Lake Railway is illustrated in the lower left quadrant, along with Durant Station and Post Office. Roads, trails, and towns are also noted. Raquette Lake remains a popular summer camp destination to this day.

A Forestry Map and the 'Forever Wild' Amendment

Created as a forestry plan, spruce land is noted by the dark green, while swamps are highlighted by light green. The plan laid out here, however, was never implemented because the 'Forever Wild' amendment was never successfully repealed. This history begins in the years following the Civil War, when New York State powerbrokers feared that unregulated logging of the Adirondacks could, through erosion, silt up the Erie Canal and end the state's economic advantage.

Thus, a few decades later, the state of New York created a Forest Commission, only the second state to do so, after California. This Forest Commission, however, was covertly connected to the lumber industry and would provide loggers with dodges and other loopholes to get around state law, essentially meaning that the Forest Preserve existed only on paper. This reality forced New Yorkers to find another solution. In 1894, a constitutional convention was held in New York that proposed Article 7 (today Article 14) of the New York State Constitution, which closed every loophole the Forest Commission had found. Amending New York's State Constitution is an incredibly onerous task, requiring the approval of both Assembly and Senate in successive sessions of the legislature and public approval in the next general election. Nonetheless, the 'forever wild' Forest Preserve amendment passed. During this process, attempts were made to amend Article 14 to allow the Forest Commission to placate the loggers while honoring the law. Since 1894, over 2,000 amendments to Article 14 have been introduced in the legislature; of these, only 28 have made it to be voted on by the general public, and only 20 have passed.

Transition to the Camps and Retreats

The map's ostensible emphasis on logging obscures a transition in the region's economy towards seasonal camps and retreats for urbanites. By 1900, Raquette Lake had become one of the most fashionable wilderness destinations in the Adirondacks. Wealthy industrialists and financiers built elaborate summer retreats along its forested shores, seeking an idealized escape from the heat, pollution, and social pressures of New York, Albany, and other eastern cities. It was especially important as the birthplace of the Adirondack Great Camp, a distinctive architectural style combining log construction, native stone, and separate buildings distributed naturally through the landscape. These were not primitive cabins but self-contained estates with guest houses, dining halls, boathouses, servants' quarters, and carefully planned recreational facilities. Their owners and visitors included members of the Huntington, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and Carnegie families.

The development of camps and estates was facilitated by the opening of the 19-mile Raquette Lake Railway, at bottom-left here, in July 1900. Before then, reaching Raquette Lake generally required a complicated combination of railroad travel, stagecoaches, steamboats, and the Marion River Carry (canoe and kayak portage, also replaced by a railroad in 1900). Visitors could now travel from New York City almost directly to the lakeshore, where steamboats carried them onward to hotels, boarding houses, and private camps.

Publication History and Census

This map was compiled by surveyor H.S. Meekham in 1900 and printed by James B. Lyon, the State Printer for New York. It appeared in the 1901 U.S. Department of Agriculture Division of Forestry Report A Forest Working Plan for Township 40. The map is only independently cataloged with the David Rumsey Map Collection at Stanford University and the Adirondack Experience museum.

Source

Hosmer, R. et al, A Forest Working Plan for Township 40, Totten and Crossfield Purchase, Hamilton County, New York State Forest Preserve (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office) 1901.    

Condition

Excellent.

References

Rumsey 12117.000. Adirondack Experience Map 0247.