Adirondack Explorations

Book excerpt: Verplanck Colvin worked twenty-eight years as the superintendent of the Topographical Survey of the Adirondack Mountains, one of the last great frontiers of the East. This collection of essays - compiled by preeminent conservationist Paul Schaefer - reveals Colvin's many perspectives on the Adirondacks. His writings reflect on outdoorsman's appreciation of the wilderness, with a poet's unerring sense for its beauty. One of Colvin's best-known contributions involved sharpening surveying techniques, thus making property boundaries cleared and taxes fairer. And as an early advocate for the preservation of the Adirondacks, he became a force behind passage of the Forever Wild statute of 1885 and the the establishment of the Park itself in 1892.