Talk:Adirondack Park

Article name
Since someone pointed out a couple weeks ago that the name of the park is Adirondack Park (no "State"), it seems that we should move this article so it has the proper name. Any objections? --Ahc 04:14, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it's time to go ahead with this move. I'll put it in some time in the next week unless you do first or no one else raises an objection. Ari Epstein 11:50, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be called the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Who calls it Adirondack Park? Whether or not its name is changed, the relationship of this to the Adirondack Forest Preserve National Historic Landmark should be addressed. A huge area, which I presume is the entire Adirondack Park, but which may differ in border definitions, became a National Historic Landmark in 1963. See the nomination form, at 	http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Text/66000891.pdf, or search on "Adirondack" in "New York" at http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov. This should be tied into List of National Historic Landmarks in New York .Don 23:41, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

"Adirondack Park" is the official name given to the region in the New York State Environmental Conservation Law, 9-0101(1) (its legal definition, a metes-and-bounds full of "thence northerly ..." and such which takes about three or four full pages in the statute book. As such, it is what we call it.

I put Registered Historic Places at the bottom and some mentions in the text. That's all it needs; this is a protected-area article and that project's requirements take precedence. Yes, the current park is identical to the NHL. Daniel Case 02:04, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
 * But the NHL mention you added into the first paragraph was later edited out. I've just added mention of 1963 NHL declaration, into the History section of the article where I hope it is not unduly salient, and included reference citation.doncram 20:13, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Doh! could someone please revert this article? I tried to add the NY times reference about the nature conservancy purchase dated june 18, 2007, but seem to have lost the rest of the article and can't figure out what I did wrong. 67.101.40.61 my bad.

Adirondack Park and Forest Preserve are legal designations created by the State of New York. The term Adirondack Park Preserve appears nowhere in any New York State legal document. Its presence elsewhere would be erroneous. Discussion on this topic appears in citations in Adirondack Mountains and those same citations should probably also appear in Adirondack Park. Adirondacker (talk) 16:10, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Acreage statistics
Any idea where the "6.1 million acres" statistic comes from? The APA land-use statistics that I just threw in a reference to (http://www.apa.state.ny.us/gis/colc0303.htm) give the total as just over 5.8 million acres. Dave Greene 08:18, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

````The Wiki entry for Vermont says it's 24,000m2 versus the 11,000m2 cited for Adirondack Park but anyone can easily see from the map that Vermont is larger than the Park. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.189.241.13 (talk) 12:57, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Wiki entry for Vermont currently says that it is 9,600 sq mi vs 9,400 sq mi for the Adirondack Park. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.165.126.103 (talk) 23:32, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

It's a State Park
Please see the recent changes to the intro sentence made by Daniel Case and me (previously as 68.108.77.121) and weigh in. I concede that the Adirondack Park is special, and that it is managed under separate provisions of NY State Law than the bulk of the NY State Park system, i.e. it has it's own regulatory agency, it's codified in the NY State Constitution, it has large tracts of legally protected wilderness, etc. However in the plain English meaning of "state park" it is also a state park. Stating that it is in fact a "state park" doesn't detract from all the other things it is (facts made clear throughout the article), but omitting "state park" leads to erroneously conclusions, especially about the relative size of other state parks and does detract from the truth. Britannica online sees it as a State Park - "The area was sparsely settled when in 1892 the state legislature created Adirondack Park, which has grown over the years to become, at more than 5 million acres (2 million hectares), the largest U.S. state or national park outside of Alaska." The language used in my recent change was basically identical to what was in the article several months ago.Mirboj (talk) 20:09, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * And as I've said elsewhere, just because the Britannica, an encyclopedia compiled by unknown scribes in some British ivory tower and not on the ground near the things they write about, says so doesn't make it so. Daniel Case (talk) 21:42, 24 December 2007 (67.189.241.13 (talk)UTC)Britannica is written and edited in Chicago!


 * Changed intro sentence so that it's neutral on the state park issue, since this is currently a matter of discussion. Mirboj (talk) 06:57, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Additions in progress
Hello, I am in the process of editing and adding to this page using the following resources:

Ballou, William Hosea. "An Adirondack National Park." The American Naturalist 19, no. 6 (1885): 578-582.

Graham, Frank, and Ada Graham. 1978. The Adirondack Park: a political history. New York: Knopf.

Harris, Glenn. 2012. An environmental history of New York's north country: the Adirondack Mountains and the St. Lawrence River Valley : case studies and neglected topics. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press.

Jacoby, Karl. 2001. Crimes against nature: squatters, poachers, thieves, and the hidden history of American conservation. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Perrottet, T. 2013. "Birthplace of the American Vacation Escape to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, a breath of fresh air for harried city dwellers since the Gilded Age". SMITHSONIAN. 44 (1): 68.

Schaefer, Paul. 1989. Defending the wilderness: the Adirondack writings of Paul Schaefer. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Sulavik, Stephen. 2005. Adirondack: of Indians and mountains, 1535-1838. Fleischmanns, N.Y.: Purple Mountain Press.

Terrie, Philip G. 1993. ""Imperishable Freshness": Culture, Conservation, and the Adirondack Park." Forest & Conservation History 37, no. 3: 132-141.

Dwk014 (talk) 06:21, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Outline for edits for this article
The Adirondack Park is a publicly protected, elliptical area encompassing much of the northeastern lobe of Upstate New York, United States. It is the largest park and the largest state-level protected area in the contiguous United States, and the largest National Historic Landmark.

The park covers some 6.1 e6acre, a land area roughly the size of Vermont and greater than the National Parks of Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Great Smoky Mountains combined.

Once a hunting ground for numerous Native American Tribes, after the American Revolution, most of the land that makes up the park today was surrendered to the U.S. Government. The park was later established in 1892 by state legislature and further protected with changes in New York’s constitution to keep the land and lumber of the park free from being leased, sold, or purchased privately or publicly. Although the park is legally protected, controversy exists in terms of what to do with the land, as 60% of the park’s area is privately owned.

This struggle to conserve the land and balance exploitation and conversation originated from philosophies and arguments presented in George Perkins Marsh's work “Man and Nature” that highlight the negative impacts of civilization and man in general. In the late 1800s a drought and heat wave caused New York City residents to leave in record numbers and find escape from the hectic city life in the Adirondacks. This had two main results; one, it raised concern for effects of logging and man's impact on the environment and second it motivated the evaluation of the Adirondacks as a vital freshwater source. These conflicting ideals led to the parks creation, development of tourism, logging regulations, and the furthering both conservation as a political movement and the debate on how the land should be best utilized.

Wiki Work: Peer Review
For Professor Stuhl's History of Ecology class one of the articles I decided to peer review was that of the Adirondack Park. In order to review this article, I used the five elements of a high-quality article, which are separated into five paragraphs below.

The lead section of this article is extensive and covers all of the main ideas presented in the rest of the article. It begins with what the park is and where it is located. The lead section then moves to what the Adirondack’s were originally for the Native American tribes, and how it was surrendered to the U.S. government to transform and protect the land. It ends with how the conflicting ideas of struggle to conserve land and balance exploitation lead to a variety of different things, leading us into the rest of the article. A good lead section gives bits of information alluding to the rest of the article, and this lead section does just that. While I believe this lead section does a good job of including what the article is going to discuss, I believe it could be shortened just a bit to be short, sweet and to the point. Some of the information could be moved into the history section, as the lead section goes into a little bit too much detail.

I believe the structure of this article is clear, seeing that it has many different subheadings that include a great amount of important information. By having a multitude of subheadings, this article is easy to navigate as a reader and easy to find specific information about the Adirondack Park rather than having to sift through an entire article without subsections. In this article there is a photo of the park, maps in which the park is highlighted, and a data table that shows the differences in the park from 1900 to 2000. Also, the article is arranged both chronologically and by topic. There are subsections on its history and what the park is like today, but there are also sections about logging, watershed and rise of conservation, and museums, accessibility and golf courses. One thing I believe the editor could do would be to combine the golf courses, accessibility and museum sections and make a comprehensive recreation section. The park is used for recreation, so I believe adding information about that would be beneficial.

I think this article does a really good job of balancing the history of the park all the way through what the park is today and what has been done to help conserve it over time. Early history is expanded upon in the history section, which shows us how the ideas for the park came about, including information about logging and how deforestation would ultimately decrease economic opportunity, so the rise of conservation came about. When the article moves on to the subsection “Today,” I believe it give s a comprehensive overview of the park today and what has been or is still currently being done to preserve it. This section also describes how it can be a model for planning of other environments in other areas in order to conserve them. One suggestion I have for this article would be to possibly include future efforts that could be taken to keep restoring the environmental degradation that took place, and possibly the reintroduction of more species other than those mentioned in the article back into the park that were lost prior to its conservation.

In my opinion, this article presents many facts and historical events or dates rather than opinionated sections. It provides all of the positives concerning the park, but it also provides fears from residents of the park area in the development process. That presents a balance between positives and negatives in this article, which are addressed for the reader to learn. I believe this article is more informational and accurate than that of opinion, but I do believe by adding more about the negatives and positives of implementing this park, the article could be enhanced and extended.

At the bottom of the article there are many references, notes and external links. There are many links to authoritative publications, which I believe insinuate that this article is high quality, or at least on its way. There are links to a multitude of organizations on the Adirondacks, and for wildlife centers. These seem to be informational websites with useful information about the wildlife and nature making up the Adirondack Park. I believe the reference section of the article, which shows the sources used for the information of the article, is a definite strength of the article. These are reliable sources making for a high-quality article.

Hope this helps!

Eak016 (talk) 16:17, 14 April 2014 (UTC)Emily Kookogey

Wiki Work Peer Review #2
I too am reviewing the article for the History of Ecology Course. After reading this article as well as the talk comments it is clear that there has been significant work and updates done to this article. That work is not lost as the overall summary of information and layout of the article is quite nice. I enjoyed the lead section as well as the subsections in the the body of the work.

In the Early History section it would be helpful perhaps if there were links to Native American tribes that were mentioned. In addition the ample cited sources give the article a great deal of validity but the last sentence in this Early History section appears to lack a source. Is it the same source as the previous sentence that gives the information that the price per acre was 8 cents?

The Park Creation section is great in that it summarizes Perkins work as well as others in a concise way. In the first sentence I was going to change it but I am not sure if it should say “The thinking that lead to the creation...” or “The thinking that helped lead to the creation”. As it stands now it is just a bit difficult to read. Also, I removed the link to the Northwoods Walton Club because there is not currently a Wikipedia article dedicated to this yet.

In the Today section I just added a link to the Wikipedia article on “fauna”. I fear the language was not colloquial enough to stand alone. It will also be great to get some traffic to other pages! In addition while it is very well written perhaps a link to a resource for the technical information in the third paragraph would help strengthen the validity of the article.

The rest of the article seems to be great and I particularly like the pictures chosen to enhance the article. In my opinion there could be more information on the conflict between positives and negatives to having this park. It was controversial from my limited research, and if there were more negatives and positives it could make the article even stronger in terms of bias.

I hope all of this helps! Great job so far! JessicaCmaguire (talk) 00:09, 15 April 2014 (UTC)JessicaCmaguire

Additional Peer-Review
I am also contributing my feedback for this article as an assignment for my History of Ecology course. After reading my classmates’ suggestions about the five main points of the article, I definitely agree with the comments they made about the successful points and about aspects to improve upon.

For the lead section, I commend the overall summary of Adirondack Park, as it definitely gives an overview of the topic to individuals hoping to quickly learn more by browsing for an introduction of the National Park. The lead section is a sufficient length that fairly contributes information to introduce each section of the article. I would, however, suggest adding a sentence or two about the recent developments of the park, as is noted in the final sections of the article. The first two sentences of the third paragraph in the lead section seemed a little wordy, so I would also recommend re-reading them and potentially splitting up the sentences to make them read more clearly.

The structure of the article is very clear and is set-up in a way that is coherent and makes sense to the reader. Each section of the history is very clear and in logical order. The current applications and recent developments directly followed, which I think is a very useful technique. I would suggest explaining further how and why the museums, accessibility, and golf courses are important to explain in the article. If the article somehow explained how they are significant, it would make the final sections more coherent because the sections now seem random, which could lead readers to question why the sections were included.

The main aspects of the topic are balanced well, as the history, development, and current applications of Adirondack Park are noted, though additional information could be useful in the Recent Developments section.

The coverage of the article is definitely neutral and stated in a clear, fair manner. There is no sense of a bias that would make Adirondack Park seem portrayed in neither an overwhelmingly positive nor negative way. The article does not read like a persuasive essay, which shows the neutrality of the facts stated.

Finally, the references used are quality sources that give readers an opportunity to find additional information, should they choose. There was a footnote, however, in the Accessibility section that did not have a source attached, but instead said “[citation needed]”, which is something to look into for the future. Overall, I found the article well put together and definitely coherent. Great job contributing to the article, it is clear that you put in a lot of work and research! Ced015 (talk) 01:32, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Further comments on content
Hi User: Dwk014! Very well done on this article so far! The expansion is impressive, and, as your peers have noted, you have organized the material in such a way to make for easy reading (which is hard writing!) I do hope you'll respond to the helpful comments you've received about structure and the two-sides of the issue of creating the park, among other suggestions. I think your use of Jacoby's 2001 book Crimes Against Nature can help in that realm. I wanted to follow up with you on some other sources you listed in the bibliography and which seemed useful in your annotations, but did not exactly appear in the text. You found Glen Harris' 2012 book An environmental history of New York's north country but I don't see it cited here. Is there perhaps some information from Harris' work that could be added to more recent environmental issues within the Park? Also, while you have found really rich material from which to document the content you've added, be sure to offer full citations of the references so readers and editors can further build on your work. Keep up the great work, and looking forward to more! --Enstandrew (talk) 18:41, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

A few fixes
I propose to do a few edits to this article and I'd like to know if anyone has any input: --Cornellier (talk) 12:47, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
 * fix the references which aren't formatted properly. They are separated into refs and notes.
 * general copy edit
 * update the intro; I don't think it captures what is notable about the park, namely that it is fairly unique in being a heterogenous mix of wild land and lands with human activity varying from towns to campgrounds.
 * try to make the article work better with the much longer article on the Adirondack Mountains

Scope of this article
There already is an extensive article on the Adirondack Mountains. Some topics are better covered there. A possible structure could be:
 * human history (up to the founding of the park)
 * The Park (summary with ref back to this article)
 * etymology
 * Geography

On the other hand the park article could be structured as: Does this make sense? Might be a good idea to keep these things separate to avoid duplication. I wonder if the two articles should not simply be merged. --Cornellier (talk) 10:52, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Geology and physiography, climate
 * Ecology, flora and fauna
 * Geography (summary with links back to Adirondack Mountains)
 * History in terms of creation of the park, and in the broader context of the conservation movement
 * Conservation
 * Park management / Legal jurisdiction (contains towns, private lands, different from other state parks etc.)
 * Recreation & sports / Visiting the park / tourism

Why was the largest park fact removed from the lede?
reference to the park's comparative size as largest was removed in 2015 without explanation — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.133.106 (talk) 02:49, 9 March 2019 (UTC)


 * The explanation is on this page, two comments up. "the park's comparative size" is not in the article body because it's not what characterizes the park and is arguably WP:TRIVIA. If it's not in the article body it can't be in the lead. Per MOS:LEAD the lead should "be a concise overview of the article's topic ... and summarize the most important points". It's kind of a dubious factoid anyway since over half of the park is privately-owned. --Cornellier (talk) 13:29, 9 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi Cornellier...thanks for taking the time to reply. Could you expand on your "two comments up" explanation, I looked, but don't see what's on point.  Also, I looked at the two WP guidelines you mention, but they don't appear to justify the removal.  Could it have been deleted by accident? Mirboj (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 21:22, 16 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Hi, oops sorry for the delay, I missed this. To answer your question, above under "A few fixes", you'll find "update the intro; I don't think it captures what is notable about the park, namely that it is fairly unique in being a heterogenous mix of wild land and lands with human activity varying from towns to campgrounds." --Cornellier (talk) 04:38, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Birds a mess
I went into the Conservation section and changed the birds section. Previously it listed just birds of prey, one of which what didn't even breed in the state. I used the NYS Dec Breeding Bird Atlas (https://www.dec.ny.gov/cfmx/extapps/bba/) to update this section to include both raptors and passerines. I'll note that the birds I selected form just a small group of the park's many breeding birds, but should highlight the ones that rely on the habitat that makes the park ecologically interesting. let me know if you have any feedback. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:1280:953F:5853:332E:876B:7F7A (talk) 16:51, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Merge Adirondack Park Agency
Recommending that the verifiable material from Adirondack Park Agency be merged here. Much of it, especially the History section, is redundant with what is already included in this article. -Apocheir (talk) 16:14, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak support int21h (talk · contribs · email) 16:16, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Support trim and merge as the agency isn't independent of the park, notability wise. Star   Mississippi  18:58, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per Star Mississippi. --Cornellier (talk) 04:36, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Merge Adirondack Park Agency visitor interpretive centers
Adirondack Park Agency visitor interpretive centers would also be a possible merge, with largely the same rationale. A lot of the current text there reads like ads for the centers. -Apocheir (talk) 19:45, 28 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Support because it seems more befitting a section. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 00:19, 12 May 2022 (UTC)