Battles of the North Country: Wilderness Politics and Recreational Development in the Adirondack State Park, 1920–1980 by Jonathan D. Anzalone

Abstract

Reviewed by: Battles of the North Country: Wilderness Politics and Recreational Development in the Adirondack State Park, 1920–1980 by Jonathan D. Anzalone Clarence Jefferson Hall Jr. (bio) Battles of the North Country: Wilderness Politics and Recreational Development in the Adirondack State Park, 1920–1980 By Jonathan D. Anzalone. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2018. 292 pages, 8 halftones, 2 maps, 6" x 9". $92.68 cloth, $32.95 paper, $32.95 ebook. Preparations for the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid included excruciating debates surrounding the potential environmental risks and economic rewards of hosting the Winter Games a second time. When questioned by a reporter about his views on the subject, one village resident responded, "I would like to see the environment stay as it is, but I would rather see food for my family on the table" (179). This seemingly passing comment underscored a point of tension that conditioned the planning and construction of recreational facilities in and near New York's "Forever Wild" Forest Preserve in the Adirondack State Park for much of the twentieth century. However, as Jonathan Anzalone has uncovered in his terrific book, more often than not, environmental regulators, businesspeople, year-round residents, second-home owners, and tourists agreed that economic development and environmental protection were not mutually exclusive. Rather, as Anzalone demonstrates, nearly everyone with a stake in the future of the Adirondack Park between 1920 and 1980 considered the building of modern recreational infrastructure to be a key component of environmental conservation in New York's North Country. As such, Jonathan Anzalone has extended the timeline of conservation history past its traditional Progressive Era boundaries to encompass wide-ranging developments in the twentieth century that would have baffled people like John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt. Battles of the North Country analyzes how New York State reconciled the construction of modern recreational infrastructure on public lands in the Adirondack Park with the legal protections afforded the Forest Preserve under Article XIV (the "Forever Wild" provision) of the state constitution. In richly detailed accounts of seven major building projects—athletic facilities for the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, state [End Page 406] campground modernization, the highway and ski centers at Whiteface Mountain, the Adirondack Northway (Interstate 87), and planned second-home developments—Anzalone shows how state leaders' utilitarian interpretation of "Forever Wild" permitted revolutionary transformations seemingly at odds with the strictures enshrined in Article XIV. Eager to accommodate restless urban populations yearning for time in the great outdoors, conservation leaders argued that as the property of all New Yorkers, the Forest Preserve had to be made useful. Anzalone writes, "Building campsites, mountain roads, and other recreational facilities, [conservation officials] believed, promoted healthful exercise, economic growth, and rational use of resources" (5). But how did the state construct roads, ski lifts, restrooms, freshwater systems, and other modern infrastructure inside the Forest Preserve without violating the constitution? Anzalone reveals how state lawmakers and voters repeatedly obliged conservation leaders' requests to amend the constitution and override—some might say undermine—Article XIV. Sometimes, however, conservation officials skirted both the constitution and established legal frameworks to achieve their recreational objectives. Analyzing preparations at Whiteface Mountain for the downhill skiing competition at the 1980 Olympics, Anzalone writes, "The DEC [Department of Environmental Conservation] … angered conservationists when it widened ski trails on Whiteface to two hundred feet … even though the state constitution limited trail width to eighty feet" (197). With both the vitality of a growing state population and the economic survival of a rapidly deindustrializing North Country on the line, "Forever Wild" could never mean "Forever." By demonstrating the significant role public officials—as opposed to private developers—played in modernizing lands many assumed off limits to construction, Anzalone challenges readers to reconsider American conservation as less an experiment in environmental protection and more an exercise in state-sponsored economic development. Exhaustively researched and drawing on a deep evidentiary base, including government reports, personal correspondence, interviews, and local and national periodicals, Battles of the North Country situates outdoor recreation as a component whose importance to the history of conservation ranks equally with efforts to regulate extractive industries and wildlife populations. Its accessible, often entertaining prose...