from Adirondack Ice: a Cultural and Natural History

You may think Adirondack winters are all about snow. Ice, however, has played just as dramatic a role in determining the northern lives of both people and wildlife. Ice you say? Yes, ice!

The evidence is everywhere. In late nineteenth and early 20th century winters, folks moved about by travelling on the ice. Folks often traveled via iced over lakes and rivers; stagecoaches and sleighs made regular trips across Lake Champlain, carrying paying passengers back and forth between New York and Vermont; bootleggers made late-night runs from Canada to Adirondack towns, crossing the St. Lawrence River to avoid the dangers of traveling main roads; and by 1896, harness races were run across the frozen northern lakes, commanding purses of $600 and more. In today’s dollars, that would be the equivalent of $15,000.

And ice harvesting? It was a major Adirondack industry. Ice was shipped to cities like Chicago and New York where it proved such a valuable commodity that even the infamous Tammany Hall politicians got involved in control of the ice trade.

From the late 1800s until the 1940s, ice harvesting was a significant contributor to the winter economy. Starting in the late 1930s, that significance began to shift toward recreational sports such as speed skating, ice boating and eventually even a National Auger Drilling contest! Today, ice sports have expanded, providing the adventure seeker with a number of wild choices from ice climbing to skiing across the ice attached to a kite to racing cars and motorcycles over the frozen lakes.

Ice is a wintry element which has substantially determined the natural, economic and cultural history of the Adirondacks. While ice industries and competitive sports have brought sorely needed income to the region and ice related recreation has helped build an important tourist economy, there is a downside as well. Living with ice comes at a steep price. Measures taken to counter its destructive power are costly. In terms of structural damage, road maintenance and countless lives lost, the toll has been great and tragic.

Ice comes in many guises. Its crystals, reflecting a rainbow of colors, may sparkle as diamonds on bare-branched trees; or it may stretch black and glass-like across our lakes, a thin lens through which we peek into a hidden aquatic world; yet again, it may charm us with melodies when, gently rocked by river currents, fragile early-season fragments chime together like fairy bells.

But beware! What appears as a sound bridge to the pond’s far side may, in fact, be a honeycombed, semi-frozen mush -- ready to surprise the unwary traveler and drop him through its deceptive depth to a dark watery grave; or that "dry" appearing highway may suddenly dip under an invisible skim of black ice which offers no traction and forgives no brakes.

Questions from tourists remind us how much ice influences our surroundings. Winter visitors are curious about those "garden-sheds" scattered over the lakes, the purpose of a boathouse bubbler, or what a clock is doing perched on a chair in the middle of the ice. Summer guests ask why shoreline tree branches are trimmed to an even height of six feet. What is that scar on the side of the mountain? How did huge boulders get strewn through the forests? The mountains, if they are so new, why do they look so old and worn? What are bogs? What is that zig-zaggy thing crawling along the edge of your roof? Why, in the month of May, is there a pile of ice next to Lake Flower?

Since 2007, I have participated in helping with construction of Saranac Lake’s Annual Winter Carnival Ice Palace. Like so many before me, I have been caught up by the excitement and the enthusiasm of the volunteers who contribute a mighty amount of energy, experience and knowledge to an extraordinary building project. Not until I joined this dedicated crew had I realized how much there is to learn about ice. This got me thinking. I began asking Adirondackers what came to mind when they thought about our wintry frozen waters. The variety of answers was not only surprising but expanded my thinking on the subject. As further research revealed more and more intriguing material, I warmed to the idea of gathering, organizing, and sharing it with others.

The result is this book. Compiled here are some of the stories, records and history related to Adirondack ice. They reveal the wide-spread influence our frozen lakes, rivers, waterfalls and rain wield over the landscape, wildlife, culture and economy of the region.

Just as black ice, feared on roadways but enjoyed on lakes, can be a boon or bust, so too have other forms of ice brought both benefit and disaster to the North Country.

I have divided the book according to the many ways natural ice has influenced northern life, beginning with the formation of the unique Adirondack landscape. May you find as many surprises reading the following pages, as I did while doing the research.