90th Birthday Get Together 2015: A Short History of Paul Smiths

As I have mentioned before, the Adirondack Park is a place of beauty with unique dimensions. Including some 6.1 million acres, it is the largest park in the contiguous United States, and it is a matter of pride among New Yorkers that it is a state park, with a forrest preserve protected as "Forever Wild" by the NY State constitution, "and thus enjoys the highest degree of protection of wild lands in any state." The park easily merits a visit on the virtue of its sheer physical dimensions and beauty alone, to experience the mountains, lakes and streams, as well as the wildlife and vegetation. However, it would be a glaring omission to overlook the human history of the Adirondack Park.

The Adirondacks are a microcosm of the history of the United States. The park bears witness to so many elements of the American journey, from trading animal skins with native peoples, to the preindustrial activities such as logging and mining, to the rise of the "robber barons" in the industrial age, the scars left by the resulting pollution including notably acid rain, to the developing awareness of the need for conservation and protection of the wilderness. If you know where to look, it is easy to explore a cross section of these historical developments while visiting the Adirondacks, the hamlet of Paul Smiths and even White Pine Camp itself.

To properly explore the human history of the park, you would need to go back long before the time of the British Colonies here and learn about the Haudenosaunee, more commonly known as the Iroquois Confederacy, consisting of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk peoples. Early settlers came to trade furs with them, some with the intention to convert them to Christianity.

The European settlers were active in trapping, hunting and fishing in the Park. As the United States came into existence and its economy grew, the natural resources of the park were exploited, including logging for building timber and paper pulp. Mining also played a significant role in the park's history.

Miners in Joker Mine, Photo Credit: Adirondack Museum

These endeavors were intertwined with the rise of the industrial age and the "robber barons" who majestically capitalized on them. The Rockefellers, Vanderbuilts and J.P. Morgan are notable among many of the rich and powerful who staked a claim in the Adirondacks, commissioning the construction of great camps.

Much in the sense that the Adirondacks is a microcosm of American history, the hamlet of Paul Smiths is a microcosm of Adirondack history, and by extension, White Pine Camp is a microcosm of the history of Paul Smiths, named after Apollos (Paul) Smith, the decisive personality who shaped this area, its economy and the utilization of the park.

Map of Paul Smiths plus Osgood Pond and Jones Pond, from google maps

Smith, born August 20, 1825 in Milton VT and died December 15, 1912 in Montreal, Canada, was an inkeeper, a lumber baron, land developer, shrewd businessman and avid outdoorsman. At the age of 16, he left home to work on a canal boat on Lake Champlain and went hunting and fishing in the Adirondacks in his spare time. He gained a reputation as a hunting and fishing guide in the Loon Lake region.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

From his earnings, in 1848 he rented a house on Loon Lake which he ran as a small hotel that was frequented by doctors and lawyers and other wealthy guests. In 1852, he bought 200 acres near Loon Lake for $300 and opened "Hunter's Home," a fairly primitive operation. The ground floor consisted of a large living room, kitchen and a barrel of whiskey with a dipper. Drinks were self-service at four cents each, on the honor system. The upper floor consisted of ten small, simple sleeping quarters. The endeavor was hugely successful, and Smith's clientele, with whom he had developed relationships over the years, suggested that he build a more substantial hotel. Thus was born the Saint Regis House, known better as Paul Smith's Hotel, probably the most famous Adirondack hotel of all time. I highly recommend taking a look at the article on localwiki about the hotel, it includes numerous fascinating pictures.

Paul Smith's Hotel, circa 1892, Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Paul Smith's Hotel was opened in 1858 with seventeen rooms. Over the next three decades, it grew to five hundred rooms along the shoreline of Lower Saint Regis Lake. His clients were among the wealthy elite of the day who in turn wanted to build their own private Adirondack Camps, which furthered Smith's business endeavors even more.

Smith was a real estate developer on a huge scale. He purchased as much land as possible around his hotel, at one point owning up to 40,000 acres. He also knew the art of the deal, selling four acres (some accounts say five acres) in 1896 for $20,000, exactly the same amount he paid for 13,000 acres just a few years earlier. That's about $570,000 in 2014, adjusted for inflation.

Fun fact: how big is 40,000 acres anyway?

50 times the size of Central Park in NY City
3 times the land area of Manhattan
1/5 the size of Berlin
a little more than 1/2 the size of Munich
87% the size of Nuremberg
1 3/4 times the size of the land area of Rochester, NY
roughly 162 square km / 62.5 square miles
roughly the size of the country of Liechtenstein (there are 30 countries and dependencies in the world that are smaller than Liechtenstein)

To put it into the context of the Adirondack park, Smith's holdings amounted to roughly 0,66% of the total area of the 6,100,000 acre park. By the way, there are 99 countries and dependencies in the world (out of 249 in total) that have a total area smaller than that of the Adirondack Park, including Belize, Slovenia and Israel. Bosnia and Herzegovina is slightly more than twice the size of the Adirondack Park.

Many of the most famous Great Camps of the Adirondacks were built on land purchased from Smith and constructed with wood from his mills.

One of the Boathouses of Camp Topridge, on Upper St. Regis Lake, Photo Credit: Wikipedia

One of Smith's many clients was Archibald S. White, a prominent New York banker, and his wife Olive. The Whites purchased 35 acres on what is now known as Osgood Pond, and in 1908, the construction of White Pine Camp began, joining the ranks of the Adirondack Great Camps.

The Old Boathouse at White Pine Camp

Smith's business ventures were highly diversified. Some of his operations were typical of what one would expect in the Adirondacks: logging, developing and operating a saw mill, stores and shops. However, his operations were much more wide ranging. He also built an electric railroad to make the seven mile connection to the Mohawk and Malone Railway. Another technological development was the creation of the area's first electric company, with several hydroelectric plants. He also built roads, developed electric boats, installed telegraph lines and a stock ticker which was wired directly to the New York Stock Exchange. Later, he even set up a telephone system. Some of the activities of Apollos (Paul) Smith may remind those of us working at a particular "electrification company" here in Germany of another historical inventor and industrialist who lived during the same era.

Paul Smith's Electric Light and Power and Railroad Company
building in Saranac Lake, which now serves as the village offices
Photo Credit: localwiki

After Smith's death in 1912, his son Phelps Smith continued to operate the hotel until it burned down in 1930. When his son died, the funds in his will were provided to start Paul Smith's College, which offers degrees which are steeped in the tradition of what Apollos (Paul) Smith developed during his lifetime:

The history of White Pine Camp, is intertwined both in Smith's personal history and his legacy. In 1948, then owners Edith Stern & Adele Levy, daughters of Sears-Roebuck's Julius Rosenwald, donated the camp to Paul Smith's College. It was during this time, 1948 - 1983, that the camp fell into a state of disrepair through heavy use and years of abandonment from 1976 to 1983.

In 1983, Warren Stephen purchased the property and was able to stabilize some of the buildings. Ten years later, Howard Kirschenbaum purchased the camp and did extensive work to restore and overhaul it. Since 1997, White Pine Camp is operated as a LLC, with nearly 40 owners, many of whom take very much a hands-on approach to preserving and developing their camp. Reborn as a place of natural beauty as well as historic and architectural significance, the camp is strongly committed to being a place of living history. More details about the history of White Pine Camp can be found on their website.

Portions of the above sections were paraphrased from the localwiki article about Apollos (Paul) Smith, the description of White Pine Camp's history on the White Pine Camp website, and the book The Adirondacks, A History of America's First Wilderness, 1997, by Paul Schneider (available at amazon. com and amazon.de).

How to Experience Adirondack history and the legacy of

Apollos (Paul) Smith during your next trip to the Adirondacks

If you are traveling from the East, take the Lake Champlain Ferry. You will be retracing Paul Smith's personal history.
If you take the Charlotte to Essex connection on the ferry, make sure to have a look around the town of Essex on Lake Champlain. You can find a more detailed description of this historic town, with links to further resources in an earlier entry on this blog.
Visit the Six Nations Indian Museum in Onchiota NY (google map link). The museum is family owned: Mohawk of Akwesasne.
Visit Paul Smith's College, and while you are there, stop in at The St. Regis Cafe (lunch weekdays, dinner Wednesdays) or for dinner at The Palm Restaurant (Fridays and Saturdays, reservations required)
Take a walk on one of the trails and visit the Butterfly House at the Paul Smith's College Visitor Interpretive Center (VIC). Both the College and the VIC are very close to White Pine Camp.
Take the Historic Camp Tour, a Nature Walk with Ed Kanze, and book your accommodations at White Pine Camp. The historic tours and nature walks are open to the general public.
Visit the Adirondack Museum. It is the single best resource on the human history of the park and one of my all time favorite museums.