Assemblywoman Teresa R. Sayward Letter of to DEC Commissioner
Denise M. Sheehan, Mar. 24, 2006
Expressing concern about the controversy over
DEC’s Unit Management Plan
proposed for the Moose River Plains, which has provided access
for all, including hiking, canoeing, hunting, fishing and snowmobiling,
and asking that access not be changed.
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.
Websites
Friends of Hurricane Mountain Fire Tower
address
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In-Depth Information
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 “Buried in the State
Budget: Over $50 Million to buy 75,000 Acres for ‘Forever
Wild’ Adirondack Forest Preserve” - Letter to Members
of the State Legislature, by Carol W. LaGrasse, President, Property
Rights Foundation of America, Inc., March 16, 2011
While the State Legislature fights about where to cut jobs
to meet a huge budget shortfall, hidden in the tentative budget
is $50 million to buy private Adirondack land from The Nature
Conservancy to block it from public access and kick out the hunting
camps: $40 million to acquire over 60,000 acres of prime timberland
formerly owned by Finch Pruyn Co. and relegate it to ‘forever
wild,’ never to be logged again, and over $10 million
is to acquire 15,000 acres in the area of Follensby Pond, with
the same fate.
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- “DEC’s
Insidious Disregard for the People—Comments on DEC Draft
Wilcox Lake Wild Forest UMP”- By Carol W. LaGrasse,
President, Property Rights Foundation of America, March 2, 2007
DEC’s insidious disregard for the people is exemplified
by its treatment of Stony Creek and environs. The proposed Draft
Unit Management Plan for Wilcox Lake Wild Forest should be discarded.
The plan should be re-drawn under new assumptions, with the local
culture, economy, history, and the community included as salient
factors in a plan that respects the local people.
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- “Disabled Apartheid-DEC’s
Betrayal and Discrimination” - By Carol W. LaGrasse,
Hearing Statement on DEC Lake George Wild Forest UMP, Queensbury
Town Hall, December 13, 2006.
DEC has betrayed the visionary effort of the disabled to open
up access to the Forest Preserve to people with disabilities
and people who are not athletic, by virtually closing down the
popular family recreation area on the Hudson River in Warrensburg,
which was established on land acquired from Niagara Mohawk, while
keeping open the most limited facilities exclusively for the
disabled.
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 “Land Acquired
- But Wait, Access Closed” - By Carol W. LaGrasse (Reprinted
from the New York Property Rights Clearinghouse, PRFA,
Summer 2006)
New York State’s announcements when acquiring
vast tracts of private land for the Forest Preserve promise more
access for the public, but over decades, more recently over a
very short time, the campsites and access roads are being closed
and the land is being cut off from hunters and other recreational
users that do not fit the mold approved by extreme environmentalists.
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 “Our
Hike on the Threatened Road to Whitehouse-A Photo Story, April
11, 2006” - by Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, June 2006)
In order to enlarge the Silver Lake Wilderness, the State
Department of Environmental Conservation proposes to deliberately
destroy the West River Road, a town highway leading to the historic
site of Whitehouse on the West Branch of the Sacandaga River
in Wells, N.Y. Two fine steel suspension footbridges will be
deliberately allowed to deteriorate, locally cherished old stone
chimneys at the ghost town will be lost, and large, active campsites
enjoyed since at least 1962, when the State acquired the land,
will be deliberately destroyed. Access to a nineteenth century
cemetery will be cut off.
- “The
Cemetery at Whitehouse” - Photo Story by Carol W. LaGrasse
(PRFA, June 2006)
The DEC’s radical eradication of highways closes
down access to cherished cemeteries, so that descendants and
local people who would like to visit, pay their respects, and
maintain the graveyards are stymied.
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 “The
Campaign to Save Hurricane Mountain Fire Tower” - By
Gretna Longware, Elizabethtown, N.Y.; Speech to the Ninth
Annual Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany,
N.Y. October 22, 2005)
The 80-year-old Hurricane Mountain Fire Tower is the symbol
around which local Adirondack people are rallying to preserve
their cultural heritage. Mrs. Longware is leading a campaign
to stop a State plan to dismantle the tower.
Gretna Longware 1932- 2010
Gretna Longware, who was beloved and admired throughout
the North Country, died on April 22, 2010. She successfully focused
efforts to save historic fire towers by leading a campaign to
save Hurricane Mountain Fire Tower near Elizabethtown where she
lived.
“We won,” she said in a message that
she left Carol LaGrasse after an APA meeting a few days before
her death. “I couldn’t make it. We showed
them that people still have rights in northern New York.”
The fire tower survives her and is still the subject of deliberations
by the DEC and APA about preserving it as a historic site.
She was born Gretna May Lewis in Wadhams on June 1, 1932. Her
rich life was marked by memorable contributions to the community,
including co-authorship of Elizabethtown Bicentennial Book and
campaigning to save the historic Baptist church steeple. She
was recognized for her many years as a Morse code operator, with
her ham radio call number WA2WHE. She is survived by her husband
of 60 years, Melvin C. Longware, whose uncle and great uncle
served as forest rangers at the tower lookout; four daughters
and their families; and one remaining sister.
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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.
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- “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.
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- “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.
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 “Dispossessed”
- By Susan Allen (PRFA, Sept. 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-20th-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.
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