January 2001:
“Church in Land Between the Lakes Recreational Area Restored as Memorial to Sanctuaries Demolished by National Park Service.”

See Also

Additional Resources

French-Canadian Residents Ousted from Their Land in Indian Lake - Historian’s report, posted March 2005, originally attached to New York State’s 1987 management plan for Siamese Ponds area.
The “Report of the Town and County Historian of the Area Known as ‘Little Canada’in the Town of Indian Lake” by Ted Aber, Historian, January 25, 1982, tells how the French-Canadian residents were, “without exception, ousted from their land” when it was sold to New York State. In 1987, the APA Siamese Pond “Wilderness” designation threatened access to the cemetery and abandoned settlement on historic John Pond Road. The State closed the old road anyway.

“The Passing of Old Gilboa” - By V. D. Mattice, Kingston, N. Y., September 1921
A poem by a former resident, poignantly recalling the obliteration of the village of Gilboa in the Schoharie Valley, submerged for another reservoir for New York City.

In-Depth Information

“The Yukon Cleansing” - Book Review: A Land Gone Lonesome, By Dan O’Neill, Counterpoint, a Member of Perseus Books Group, 2006
Review by Susan Allen, Reprinted from the New York Property Rights Clearinghouse (Vol. 11, No. 3, Summer 2007, PRFA)
After the ANILCA settlement divided Alaska’s wild country among native, state and federal holdings, the National Park Service controlled vast federal landholdings. The Park Service told the people living on the wild lands that they could go on with their accustomed “subsistence lifestyle” as hunters, trappers, placer miners, and the like, but the agency cut off access and instituted regulations and an insurmountable permit application process, which made it impossible for the people to live in the wilds anymore. Old cabins were burned, only to be rebuilt by the Park Service as historic reconstructions.

“A Hike to Little Canada on John’s Pond Road” - By Carol W. LaGrasse, PRFA, May 1, 2005

Photo Gallery

Our walk to a small graveyard along an old Indian Lake town road barricaded by New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to enlarge the Adirondack Forest Preserve wilderness shocked us with the realization that DEC is eradicating roads, trails, and history.

“Essex County Judge Saves Old Road Through Forest Preserve” - By Carol W. LaGrasse, PRFA, April 27, 2005
Overturning the conviction of James McCulley for driving his snowmobile on Old Mountain Road in the Adirondack Forest Preserve in the North Elba, Judge Andrew Halloran ruled that the road, established by the Legislature in 1810, could not be closed by the Department of Environmental Conservation’s regulations.

“Group Campaigns to Save Hurricane Mountain Fire Tower” - By Carol W. LaGrasse PRFA, April 21, 2005
Loyalty to the 80-year old local landmark in Essex County is fueling a battle led by Elizabethtown resident Gretna Longware against the DEC’s proposed reclassification of the area to “wilderness,” apparently at the behest of influential environmentalists.

“Dispossessed” - By Susan Allen (PRFA, September 2004)
Book Reviews: Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It by Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove and Mists of the Couchsacrage: Rescue from State Land by Alden L. Dumas
Dr. Mindy Fullilove’s Root Shock captures the mid-20^th-century horror of loss of home in her documentation of urban renewal. The story Mists of the Couchsacrage by Alden L. Dumas is haunted by the banished hunting camps destroyed by New York State’s insatiable lust for wilderness, which it creates by eliminating the rural culture.

“Adirondack Agency Puts Final Stranglehold on 18,896 Acres”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse (Property Rights Foundation of America, January 2005)
The Adirondack Park Agency’s September 2004 permit for a final division of the Long Pond property in St. Lawrence County, N.Y., tightened the noose on the already desiccated future of a tract that was once the site, in 1972, of the “Horizon” development proposal, which environmentalists had then exploited to rush the APA act into law.

APA Commission Photo Gallery

Long Pond Tract Photo Gallery

“Smart Growth Shows Its Ugly Side” Kay McClanahan, Eastover, South Carolina (Reprinted by permission of author)
South Carolina landowners face off against Richland County’s “Town and Country Land Use Plan” and the National Park Service’s expansion of Congaree Swamp National Monument to a National Park. Many Black farmers are descendents of freed slaves who purchased their land after the Civil War.

“Lawsuit Challenges New York State’s Largest Land Acquisition-110,000 acres in Conservation Easements and 29,000 acres Fee Simple Acquired From Champion International-The State Failed to Abide by its Own Rules” - from Positions on Property, Vol. 5, No. 1, July 2000

“A Perception of Cultural Preservation” — By Carol W. LaGrasse, Reprinted from Positions on Property, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan. 1995, PRFA)

Buffalo National River Map & Sitton Cemetery Photo Gallery

The National Park Service’s practice in twentieth century parks such as Buffalo National River in the Ozarks, Shenandoah National Park, and Great Smokie Mountains National Park is to include cemeteries in “wilderness” areas and prevent their upkeep, prevent people from visiting cemeteries by prohibiting motor vehicle use by mourners and descendants, and to compound the visitation difficulty by allowing roads and paths to deteriorate.

In-Depth Information