Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks

Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks PDF Author: Jane A. Barlow
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815607748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks is the lively and well documented story of the growth of the lake side community made famous by the incident that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The rich history of the lake unfolds with stories of its early residents, hunters, and guides—Jim Higby, Billy Dutton, Henry Covey, and Bill Dartin—the late 1870s, of the lake's ownership by William Seward Webb, of the construction of the first private camp—Club Camp—in 1878, and the coming of hotels and resorts beginning in 1880 with the construction of Camp Crag. From a time when a telephone number was a simple "8F6" and the "pickle boat" brought supplies to camp, to more recent stories of exuberant waterskiing and motorboat regattas, the book includes a detailed history and descriptions of the camps and resorts on the lake, persons and celebrities who made the lake their year-round or seasonal home—including actress Minnie Maddern Fiske and artist David Milne—natural disasters and political events, recreation, and the work of the Big Moose Property Owners Association. This is the story of Big Moose Lake brought to life by more than 275 family photographs, antique postcards, and previously unpublished memoirs, oral histories, diary entries, and the personal correspondence of the men and women who settled the area and of those who call it home.

Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks

Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks PDF Author: Jane A. Barlow
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815607748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book Here

Book Description
Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks is the lively and well documented story of the growth of the lake side community made famous by the incident that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The rich history of the lake unfolds with stories of its early residents, hunters, and guides—Jim Higby, Billy Dutton, Henry Covey, and Bill Dartin—the late 1870s, of the lake's ownership by William Seward Webb, of the construction of the first private camp—Club Camp—in 1878, and the coming of hotels and resorts beginning in 1880 with the construction of Camp Crag. From a time when a telephone number was a simple "8F6" and the "pickle boat" brought supplies to camp, to more recent stories of exuberant waterskiing and motorboat regattas, the book includes a detailed history and descriptions of the camps and resorts on the lake, persons and celebrities who made the lake their year-round or seasonal home—including actress Minnie Maddern Fiske and artist David Milne—natural disasters and political events, recreation, and the work of the Big Moose Property Owners Association. This is the story of Big Moose Lake brought to life by more than 275 family photographs, antique postcards, and previously unpublished memoirs, oral histories, diary entries, and the personal correspondence of the men and women who settled the area and of those who call it home.

Murder in the Adirondacks

Murder in the Adirondacks PDF Author: Craig Brandon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
"Murder in the Adirondacks is the true story of the Chester Gillette - Grace Brown murder case, which was the basis for Theodore Dreiser's classic novel An American Tragedy and the movie "A Place in the Sun" with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. Although the trial in Herkimer, New York was front page news throughout the nation in 1906 and millions of words have been written about Dreiser's novel, this book is the first complete account of the fascinating facts behind the fiction. Gillette, a former prep school student and railroad brakeman, was the nephew of the owner of a skirt factory in Cortland, New York, where he met Grace Brown, the daughter of a Chenango County farmer. Soon after Grace discovered she was pregnant with Gillette's child in 1906, they left on a trip to the Adirondacks. Grace thought it was to be a wedding trip, but Gillette was planning murder, not matrimony. At Big Moose Lake in Herkimer County, Gillette rented a boat and took Grace to a deserted section of the lake called Punky Bay. She ended up at the bottom of the lake and Gillette escaped to Inlet, where he was arrested three days later. The spectators at Gillette's trial sobbed when the district attorney read Grace's letters, but Gillette sat quietly and chewed gum until it was his turn to testify. Then he said Grace jumped out of the boat and committed suicide. The jury didn't believe him and he was sentenced to die in the electric chair in Auburn. Gillette's mother waged a campaign that led all the way to the governor's mansion in Albany and a last minute attempt to save her son's life. By the 1980s, the fiction had overpowered the facts and many people accepted Dreiser's novel as the true story. This book sets the record straight. Meticulously researched, it relies on the original courtroom testimony and the 1906-1908 newspaper articles. It contains letters, documents and photographs that have never before been made public. Facts about Gillette's early life and his family are revealed here for the first time anywhere. After 80 years, readers can finally find out what really happened at Big Moose Lake in 1906. The true story of Upstate New York's most famous murder case can finally be told."--Back cover

Adirondack Tragedy

Adirondack Tragedy PDF Author: Joseph W. Brownell
Publisher: Nicholas K Burns Pub
ISBN: 9780971306912
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Relive the heart-wrenching story of one of the most famous crimes in New Yorks history; the murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette at Big Moose Lake. Made famous by a media frenzy fueled by the sensational newspaper reporting of 1906, this crime of the century seeped into the American culture. The story of Chester and Grace was the inspiration for Theodore Dreisers novel An American Tragedy and the Hollywood movie A Place in the Sun. Brownell and Enos deliver a fascinating day-by-day account of the events leading to the death of Grace Brown, the media hyped, sensational trial of Chester Gillette, and the cultural immortalization of an Adirondack Tragedy.

Indian Givers

Indian Givers PDF Author: Romey Gallo
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781449000479
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
An account of the events surrounding the Moss Lake Affair, when Canadian Mohawk Native Americans took over the Moss Lake Girls' Camp claiming the land as their own. They occupied the land for three years, negotiating sporadically with the Federal and State government amidst violence and shootings.

Haunted Adirondacks

Haunted Adirondacks PDF Author: Dennis Webster
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1467149608
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Often shrouded in an eerie mist, the Adirondack Mountains are a perfect backdrop to the mysterious and the haunted. Troubled spirits of former patients roam the campus of the historic Dr. Trudeau Tuberculosis Sanitorium just outside Sarnac Lake. The ghost of Grace Brown, tragically murdered by her lover in 1906, drifts over the waters of Big Moose Lake. A long-deceased runaway slave remains a guest at the Stagecoach Inn in Lake Placid. The Sagamore Resort on an island in Lake George has been welcoming vacationers since 1883, and many have never left. Held captive in a remote mansion by her husband until her death, Mary Rhinelander still wanders the burned-out ruins of her earthly confinement. Writer and paranormal investigator Dennis Webster highlights the scariest haunts the Adirondacks can offer.

The Forestport Breaks

The Forestport Breaks PDF Author: Michael Doyle
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815607724
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The Erie Canal was dying. Adirondack sawmills were falling silent. And in the final years of the nineteenth century, the upstate New York town of Forestport was struggling just to survive. Then the canal levees started breaking, and the boom times returned. The Forestport saloons flourished, the town's gamblers rollicked, and the politically connected canal contractors were flush once more. It was all very convenient until Governor Theodore Roosevelt's administration grew suspicious and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency began investigating. They found what a lawman called one of the most gigantic conspiracies ever hatched in New York. In The Forestport Breaks, Michael Doyle illuminates a fresh and fascinating chapter in the colorful history of the Erie Canal. This is the canal's shadowy side, a world of political rot and plotting men, and it extended well beyond one rough and tumble town. The Forestport breaks marked the only time New York officials charged men with conspiring to destroy canal property, but they were also illustrative of the widespread rascality surrounding the canal. For Doyle, there is a story with a personal dimension behind the drama of the canal's historical events. As he uncovered the rise and fall of Forestport, he was also discovering that the trail of culpability led to members in his own family tree.

Beaver River Country

Beaver River Country PDF Author: Edward I. Pitts
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815637189
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Encompassing the lands immediately surrounding the upper reaches of the Beaver River from its headwaters at Lake Lila to Beaver Lake at the settlement of Number Four, Beaver River country is the largest undisturbed tract of forest in the entire northeastern United States. During the nineteenth century it was widely considered to be the very heart of the Adirondacks and was visited by thousands of tourists seeking outdoor recreation. The area boasted a busy railroad station, two grand hotels, an exclusive resort, and an elaborate great camp, as well as dozens of guides camps and sporting clubs. Pitts traces the generations of people who inhabited the region, from the ancestors of the Haudenosaunee, to the early European settlers, to the vacation communities and seasonal visitors. With each generation, Pitts shows how Beaver River country escaped the forces that fragmented and destroyed the wilderness in much of the Northeast. The forest and waters that attracted the early visitors are still there, preserved by a combination of happenstance and dedicated effort. Filled with rare vintage photographs, this book is a vivid portrait of this wild region, revealing how it came to be and why it survives.

Woodswoman

Woodswoman PDF Author: Anne LaBastille
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140153349
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Ecologist Anne LaBastille created the life that many people dream about. When she and her husband divorced, she needed a place to live. Through luck and perseverance, she found the ideal spot: a 20-acre parcel of land in the Adirondack mountains, where she built the cozy, primitive log cabin that became her permanent home. Miles from the nearest town, LaBastille had to depend on her wits, ingenuity, and the help of generous neighbors for her survival. In precise, poetic language, she chronicles her adventures on Black Bear Lake, capturing the power of the landscape, the rhythms of the changing seasons, and the beauty of nature’s many creatures. Most of all, she captures the struggle to balance her need for companionship and love with her desire for independence and solitude. Woodswoman is not simply a book about living in the wilderness, it is a book about living that contains a lesson for us all.

The Adirondack Architecture Guide, Southern-Central Region

The Adirondack Architecture Guide, Southern-Central Region PDF Author: Janet A. Null
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438466684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Finalist for the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Regional category The Adirondack Architecture Guide, Southern-Central Region provides a professional and insightful survey of the built environment of a unique area within New York's Adirondack Park. This book is the first field guide to the architecture of the Park, revealing the ordinary and the extraordinary, the remarkable buildings by prominent designers, as well as the hidden, unexpected gems few know exist. Based on more than seven thousand miles of fieldwork and years of research, the guide comprises more than seven hundred sites traversing the geographic range, socioeconomic strata, and historical span of the region from the late 1700s to the present. Organized according to clearly marked travel routes and fourteen tours on the ground and on the water, it features detailed maps and coordinates for each site, along with many beautiful photographs. Also included are eleven companion essays drawing on the expertise of professionals, local historians, and Adirondack residents that delve into the what, where, and why people built in the Adirondacks.

The Fulton Chain

The Fulton Chain PDF Author: Charles E. Herr
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692745304
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Using his Weekly Adirondack articles as a blueprint, Charles Herr presents the first general history of the Fulton Chain region in almost seventy years. Readers will learn about the beginnings of Old Forge and Inlet, Benjamin Harrison's visits, construction of the Fulton Chain Railroad and Raquette Lake Railway lines, the steamboats, mail boats and pickle boats, as well as the first major hotels of Inlet and Old Forge. Also covered is early town politics and the building of roads.