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Read in the Blue Line

The life of William Miner through a scholar’s eye

A Clinton County Museum Day visit in June to Heart’s Delight Farm in Chazy (https://youtu.be/2cGTsU4O79Y) provided some wonderful information and prompted more questions about North Country industrialist and philanthropist, William H. Miner. Former SUNY Plattsburgh President Joseph C. ...

A thorough history of Adirondack photography

The title of Sally Svenson’s third book on history in the region, “Adirondack Photographers 1850-1950,” tells it all. She has somehow managed to compile a list of everyone who toiled behind a camera during transition from the earliest days of photography through the ubiquity of the ...

An appealing portrait of an Adirondack legend

It’s well known that books and periodicals (words, in other words) helped promote the Adirondacks as a vacation destination after the Civil War. But so did pictures. One pioneer, in particular of photography’s uses in persuasion, was Seneca Ray Stoddard of Glens Falls. His principal ...

A tale for climbers and friends

“So begins a tale of one summer, two friends, 46 mountains, and 5 million years.” This succinct explanation of “Forty-Something: An Adirondack Tale” by Michael Keeler, stated on the book’s back cover, is the essence of the tale but there is so much more to discover in this ...

A good reminder of hard times

Not all the mountains in our region are meant for climbing, some are meant for mining. Lawrence P. Gooley’s “Lyon Mountain: The Tragedy of a Mining Town” is the history of such a mountain — a history of industry, immigrant labor, and even baseball. Mountain lions were present during ...

‘Indigenous Continent’ is thoughtful, provocative

Broader historical treatment of Indigenous peoples in North American has been long in coming. A book published in 2022, “Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America,” offers a major step forward in understanding how native peoples have fared in the United States. Interestingly, ...