Adirondack

Proposed National ParkNew York
Layered Adirondack ridges fading into haze under a rose-colored sky
All proposed National ParksAdirondackNo active campaign
Location
New York
Current protection
Adirondack Park / NYS Forest Preserve, Whiteface Mountain, Lake Placid Olympic sites
Status
No active campaign
Tier
Tier 1 · National Park
Undiscovered America
Featured in the film and the book

Why should it be a National Park?

The Adirondack Mountains encompass nearly all of northeastern New York State, between Albany and the borders of Vermont and Canada. Roughly six-million-acres of this region are currently managed as Adirondack Park, a state park larger than any National Park in the lower 48 states. Even with its prominent name, vast scale, and the 7-10 million visitors it receives a year, few people outside of the northeast even know what the Adirondacks look like.

Despite Adirondack Park being widely accepted as a well-run preserve, several attempts have been made to establish an Adirondack National Park, including a popular, but ultimately unsuccessful campaign from 1967. In the years following this attempt, the borders of Adirondack Park have continued to grow, but the calls for elevating the park into a National Park have trailed off. While support for a National Park continues to be controversial, the scale and beauty of the mountains coupled with the lack of National Parks in this region, make it a compelling candidate.

The history of National Park Campaigns

The Adirondacks were protected early and at the state level — the Adirondack Park (1892) and the "forever wild" clause (originally Article VII, now Article XIV, adopted 1894) — which made a later federal National Park legally and politically awkward, because federalization would have required extinguishing forever-wild protection on transferred lands. The single serious national-park proposal came in July 1967, when planners working for Laurance S. Rockefeller proposed a 1.72-million-acre Adirondack Mountains National Park in the central Adirondacks. It met near-universal local hostility, was rejected by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, and instead catalyzed the Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks (1968–70) and the Adirondack Park Agency (1971). The idea has been revived only rhetorically since (notably a 2014 Almanack debate).

Distinct National Park attempts
1 (1967)
Other designation attempts
~2–3 (1892 state park establishment; 1971 APA regulatory regime; 2014 discussion — none federal)

Sources

  • Brad Edmondson, A Wild Idea (2021)
  • Frank Graham Jr., The Adirondack Park: A Political History (Knopf, 1978)
  • "A Report on a Proposed Adirondack Mountains National Park" (1967, reprinted in Adirondack Daily Enterprise)
  • Temporary Study Commission, "The Future of the Adirondack Park" (1970)
  • Adirondack Experience / adkhistorycenter.org archives
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  1. 1892 / 1894

    (state baseline). New York created the Adirondack Park (1892) and adopted the "forever wild" constitutional clause (1894). Not a national-park attempt but the legal backdrop that made federal designation require a constitutional amendment. Source: adirondack.net "Forever Wild"; Wikipedia "Adirondack Park."

  2. July 1967

    Adirondack Mountains National Park (federal, NP attempt #1). A study team assembled by Laurance S. Rockefeller (chair of the NYS Council of Parks) released "A Report on a Proposed Adirondack Mountains National Park," proposing ~1,720,000 acres: roughly 1,120,000 acres of existing state Forest Preserve plus ~600,000 acres of private land to be acquired, by condemnation if necessary. The story broke in the Saranac Lake Adirondack Daily Enterprise in late July 1967, which published the report in full. Rationale quote: "There is no wild area of scenic mountains, lakes, streams and forest of comparable quality and magnitude anywhere else in the eastern half of the United States." Sources: Adirondack Explorer ("Celebrating our parks," "A Wild Idea"); Adirondack Life ("Millionaire's Row"); adkhistorycenter.org.

  3. Sept.–Oct. 1967

    local opposition. The Tupper Lake Village Board unanimously passed a resolution calling the proposal "detrimental to the interests of the people of the village of Tupper Lake and, in fact, to the interests of all the people in the Adirondacks." The Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks wired Gov. Rockefeller that New York was "already preserving this unique segment of our country... without placing it under the jurisdiction of the Federal government." The Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) opposed it and lists 1967 among its centennial milestones: "ADK successfully opposes a proposal to create a National Park in Adirondacks, which would have removed 'forever wild' protection from about one-third of the Adirondack Park." Sources: adkhistorycenter.org; adk.org.

  4. Jan. 1968

    rejection. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller declined to pursue the federal park.

  5. Sept. 18, 1968

    Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks appointed (chaired by Harold K. Hochschild); its 1970 report "The Future of the Adirondack Park" made 181 recommendations, #1 being an Adirondack Park Agency. Hochschild: "If the Adirondacks are to be saved, time is of the essence." Source: Adirondack Explorer.

  6. 1971

    Adirondack Park Agency created (private-land land-use control) — the lasting institutional legacy of the episode. Source: Adirondack Explorer; Edmondson, A Wild Idea.

  7. Nov. 2014

    revival as debate. Adirondack Almanack essay ("What Would an Adirondack National Park Look Like?"), spurred by DEC forest ranger Scott van Laer, revisited the concept but concluded a park of Rockefeller's scope "would never be proposed again." Source: adirondackalmanack.com.