Adirondack history is filled with strange connections. The largest private landowner in Schroon Lake history is linked to Warren Harding’s German spy mistress and to Pale Male, the famous hawk whose aerie in New York City overlooks Central Park.

​​Wilhelm Pickhardt (1834 -1895) once owned all the land on Schroon’s east shore from the head of the lake down to Starbuckville. He planned to combine Schroon and Paradox Lakes to create a super lake that would give tourists a thrilling trip from Lake George to Lake Champlain.

Pickhardt, who made his fortune manufacturing dyes, brought his family to Schroon Lake in the early 1870’s as guests at the fashionable Leland House hotel. He fell in love with the Adirondacks, which reminded him of his native Bavaria. First, he bought the Stock Farm north of the village where today’s Schroon Lake Marina is located, including the race track whose remains are still visible. Partnering with Thurman Leland of the hotel family, Pickhardt bred trotter racehorses. He named the property the Millbrook Stock Farm for the stream that runs through the hamlet of Adirondack to Schroon Lake.

Then in the 1880s and early 1890s Pickhardt purchased, one tract at a time, the entire east shore of Schroon Lake and much of the Schroon River. That means he owned all the land from Lockwood Bay and the Schroon Lake Marina at the head of the lake south through Adirondack hamlet, thence to the foot of the lake and down the Schroon River to Starbuckville north of Chestertown. His holdings extended deep into the woods; in northern Warren County he owned all of Mill Brook from the lake back to its source in Pharaoh Lake. And he owned the lost hamlet of Gregoryville on the old road between Adirondack hamlet and Crane Pond. In all, he bought 25,000 acres in Essex and Warren Counties, a tract some 13 miles long and, in some places, 5 miles deep.

In 1862 Pickhardt married Beresford Strong, from an aristocratic British family. They had five children, Sydney, Adrian, Ione, Julian and Emile. The family spent summers in Schroon Lake, first at the Leland House and later at their own home north of the village. Beresford Pickhardt became a leader of Schroon’s summer social set, and entertained at teas and concerts in her home. 

Pickhardt and Kutrof in New York City imported dye stuffs, colors and chemicals. In 1878 the firm became the American agent for the Badische Aniline & Soda Fabrik, a German corporation and the largest producer of aniline dyes in Europe. Pickhardt also tried his hand at inventing, obtaining patents for various household devices.

​The Pickhardt family’s life in New York City was grand and eccentric. In 1880 Wilhelm bought land on Fifth Avenue at 74th Street, and set out to build an elegant mansion. He hired the noted architect Henry G. Harrison to design his new home. But the resulting structure was not a success. Pickhardt changed the design many times, even as the mansion was being built. Fifteen years after construction began the four-story Renaissance Revival building was completed, but Pickhardt remained dissatisfied.

The Pickhardts never lived in the mansion, nor did anyone else. The $50,000 organ was never played; the furniture never used. Ultimately the mansion was torn down, and a 20-story apartment building was constructed in 1917. The structure, called 927 Fifth Avenue, is a home to millionaires. It gained notoriety in the 1990’s when a red-tailed hawk named Pale Male built its nest on a balcony facing Central Park. The building’s management destroyed the nest but the fury of bird watchers in the park forced them to restore its “cradle.” Red-tailed hawks continue to nest there.

Pickhardt’s goal for the southeast Adirondacks was to create a scenic water route that would take tourists from Lake George to Lake Champlain. This would require building an enormous dam at Starbuckville with the aim of making the Schroon River navigable and raising the water level of Schroon and Paradox Lakes by four feet to create one large body of water. The two lakes are almost the same level, and the paradox occurs in the Spring when the creek that connects them swells up with overflow from the Schroon River, and the water is pushed backwards into Paradox Lake.  

The plan was for tourists to take a narrow-gauge railroad from Lake George to Starbuckville. There they would board a steamboat to make the 28-mile trip up the Schroon River and Schroon Lake, on to the east end of the former Paradox Lake, and thence go by rail to Crown Point on Lake Champlain.

The New York Times, in reporting the proposal in 1883, wrote that Pickhardt had already “greatly improved Schroon Village.” He had no interest in lumbering, but he encouraged the various tanneries that flourished on the shores of his property, including the large one known as “The Pit” in South Horicon. Seneca Ray Stoddard must have missed the Times article because he wrote in his 1889 guidebook: “Almost the entire east shore north of Mill Brook, extending back and including Lake Pharaoh, is owned by William (sic) Pickhardt of New York. His intentions in relation to the estate are known — to himself.”

Interestingly, another effort to dam the Schroon River and raise the level of Schroon and Paradox Lakes occurred in 1910-1916. Severe flooding of the Hudson and the perceived need for cheaper electricity led Glens Falls businessmen to propose a dam at Tumblehead Falls below Chestertown. Schroon’s leaders, with the help of influential summer visitors, stopped the project. Construction of the Sacandaga Dam and Reservoir in 1930 handled the problem of flooding.

Up until the 1960’s, old timers around Schroon Lake still called the land on the east shore of the Narrows
“Pickhardt’s Point.” That’s where Pickhardt planned to build a castle and breed a new form of Adirondack deer. Having been raised in the Bavarian town of Berghausen in Germany and, inspired by the enormous Berghausen Castle, Pickhardt sought to have a grand Adirondack home on Schroon Lake. The castle would be on a hill facing west. His steamboat, the Wilhelmina, would be docked at the shore. A large game park, stocked with deer, would surround the site.

Pickhardt was a fervent believer in the popular Aclimitisation movement of the day, which sought to improve animal species by introducing non-native stock. To that end he imported female deer from Germany to be mated with Adirondack bucks, with the idea that the does would become acclimated, and the stock would be enriched. Pickhardt also imported a herd of boars from Germany and planted oak trees to produce acorns for the boars to eat. Without fencing the boars became part of the landscape and ultimately provided dinners for local families.

Wilhelm Pickhardt died in 1895 on a trip from Berghausen to Baden. He did not live to witness the disgrace of his daughter Ione, who was accused of spying on the United States. World War I (1914-1918) presented difficulties for some German Americans who were ambivalent about US participation in a war against Germany. In the Midwest many German Americans worked actively for the German cause. One such group was in Marion, Ohio, where Warren Harding lived. Harding was to become the 29th president of the United States, serving only two years until his death in 1923. Loyal to the USA, he seemed unaware that his beloved mistress Carrie Phillips was in a German spy ring. She lived much of the time in Germany, where she served as handler for Ione Pickhardt Zollner, Wilhelm’s daughter.

Ione Pickhardt (1871-1932) was married three times, first to American businessman Charles Warner Shope, second to a German baron named Kurt Loeffelholz von Colberg and third to German merchant Wilhelm Zollner. A handsome, imposing woman, Ione spent her childhood and teenage summers in Schroon Lake. Even before WW I started she was suspected of spying on American military installations, troop movements and materiel. She was arrested in a hotel room in Chattanooga in 1917. She was dressed, but a partially clothed young US Army officer was found hiding under the bed. One of her sons studied at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis; he was forced to leave when authorities accused his mother of passing information about that institution to the Germans. Ione was charged with violating the Espionage Act but never convicted. The national news media made much of her infamy, focusing on her wealth, good looks and reputation for using sex for spying. And in Schroon Lake, the locals were properly shocked by the notoriety of their one-time summer resident.

At his death at age 61, Wilhelm Pickhardt was buried in a family tomb in Burghausen. His estate was estimated by New York newspapers to be worth $10 million ($35,000,000 today). The funds were controlled by Beresford Pickhardt, and passed on to the children at her discretion.

​Pickhardt’s vast holdings of Adirondack land were affected as the hemlock supply dried up and the tanning industry deteriorated. Businessmen from Glens Falls bought the Pickhardt acres and spent the next decades lumbering the land. Millions of dollars in logs were floated down Schroon Lake and through the Schroon and Hudson Rivers to the mills in Warrensburg and Glens Falls, adding to the fortunes of the region’s lumber barons. As the trees grew back much of the land was acquired by New York State. Seasonal homes were built on privately owned waterfront lots. Dwight Harris built a golf course and clubhouse at Pickhardt’s Point. A new Starbuckville Dam was constructed on the Schroon River in 2005 at a cost of $1.2 million.

After Pickhardt’s death the Stock Farm continued its work. Horses kept on the property and races were managed by George Brown, whose father Lloyd had been Pickhardt’s coach driver. A freed slave, Lloyd served in the US Army during the Civil War and then moved to Schroon Lake. His wife Anna kept a boarding house for Negro servants at the grand hotels. The family are buried in Schroon’s Protestant cemetery. On each Memorial Day local veterans place American flags on the graves of Lloyd Brown and his fellow veterans.

The Pickhardt house remains on the Stock Farm property with Pickhardt Street next to it. In later years Aubrey and Alice Slaterpryce installed a marina, Par-3 golf course and camp ground on the site.

The Pickhardt castle was never built. Pickhardt’s Point at the Narrows became known as Three Bears. Wilhelm Pickhardt’s ambition was boundless, but his dreams remain unfulfilled. And in Springtime the swollen Schroon River continues to create a paradox as it pushes the connecting stream backwards into Paradox Lake.                                                                                               
      ~ Ann Breen Metcalf, Author 

NOTE: To learn more about the Pickhardt Family and their summer life in Schroon Lake, please visit the Schroon North Hudson Historical Society Musem this coming Summer 2023.  We will have a new and exciting exhibit that will be on display telling the story of this interesting family and their influence on the history of the Town of Schroon.  

Like the families of the famous Great Camps in the Central Adirondacks, Andrew Lawrence Ireland and the Bayard Clarkes were prominent New Yorkers who built their mansions as a playground, a place to show off to friends and a way to display wealth while pretending to live simply. But unlike the other prominent families they are all but forgotten today, as the result of a family tragedy that ended their lineage. 

Andrew Lawrence Ireland and the Bayard Clarkes owned Schroon Lake's largest island between 1846-1946. The Clarkes' wealth came from New York City real estate, originally farm land that, in the early 19th Century, was cut up into valuable city blocks.  Their pedigrees go back to the Norman invasion of England and the Dutch settlement of New York.  The Great Camp crowd probably had more wealth, but Ireland and the Clarkes may have regarded them as nouveau riche. 

The large island at the north end of Schroon Lake contains 49 acres.  It sits close to the east shore, facing Schroon Lake Village.  Today the island is owned and operated by the Word of Life Fellowship. Its camp hosts Christian teenagers from around the country for week-long visits, over six summer weeks. 

​Born in 1808, Andrew Ireland was descended from a Norman noble who fought for William the Conqueror and was rewarded with baronial estates.  Andrew attended Hamilton College but left early to travel extensively at a time when few American tourist went abroad.  His sometimes-boisterous group attracted notice as they visited Egypt and Turkey.  Andrew later survived a deadly barge accident on the Danube.
 
Andrew purchased Magdalen Island in Schroon Lake in 1846, long before the Adirondack Railroad opened the eastern Adirondacks to tourist.  He re-named it Isola Bella.  He built a cruciform mansion and maintained carefully planted grounds from which the Hoffman Range and some High Peaks could be seen. As described by writer Benson Lossing in 1866, the house contained a library, statuary, bronzes, and a painting of the Irelands' ancestral home in England.  Andrew also had a house in Schroon village and served a term as Town Supervisor.  

When in New York City, Andrew attended the St. Nicholas Society whose members must prove that their family lived in New York prior to 1785. He liked to regal members with Adirondack tall tales.  One concerned his courageous Newfoundland dog, Pedro, who saved the lives of two men on Schroon Lake. It was in the late autumn, and two employees who had gone to Schroon Lake village were having trouble rowing their skiff back across the stormy lake.  Ice was forming, and the men's hands were freezing around the oars.  Those on the island could see the boat in distress but were unable to help. That's when brave Pedro brought an axe in his mouth to Andrew, who promptly send dog and axe into the lake to the foundering boat.  The men warmed their hands on Pedro's thick coat and chopped a path through the ice.  Pedro, swimming back to the the island, was then sent again to the boat with a bottle of cordial in his mouth. The axe and restorative enabled the men to return safely to the island, and Pedro was roundly praised.  The story was so pleasing to the city dwellers that it made it its way into Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine.
 
We do not know what Andrew's cousin William did that caused his family to send him into oblivion. But it is clear that the socially prominent Irelands in New York were paying to keep William out of the way. Such people were called "remittance men," and William Ireland received payments from the family with the stipulation that he stay quietly in Schroon Lake.  He lived in town but not exactly obscurity.  He was seen every day, dressed as a gentleman, walking to the store that sold newspapers, buying his daily paper, and returning home again.  His secret misstep followed him to the grave. 

Andrew Lawrence Ireland, who never married, died in 1873.  He is buried in the vault at Saint Mark's Church in The Bowery in New York City, where Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant is also interred.  In 1866, in exchange for $18,000, ownership of Andrew's island went to his cousin Aletta Remsen Lawrence, whose husband was Col. Bayard Clarke.  The Clarkes enjoyed their island summer home for nearly 80 years, using the Bogle boat facilities on Schroon village shore for much of that time. 

Bayard Clarke was a well-traveled New York aristocrat who developed a love for the cavalry while serving as an attaché to the US ambassador to France.  In the early 1840's he received commission with the 2nd Dragoon Regiment.  He participated in the tragic Seminole Wars, in which the US government fought the native people of Florida and forcibly moved the surviving Seminoles to reservations in Oklahoma.
 
Bayard, whose wife Aletta came from a family of prominent Dutch settlers, was politically active in the tumultuous period before the Civil War, and in 1855 was elected to Congress from New York State's Westchester County.  He became a leader in the American Party, popularly called the Know Nothings, who were both anti-slavery and anti-Catholic as a response to the 1.5 million Irish immigrants who had poured into the northeastern US to escape their country's potato famine.  Bayard Clarke delivered a major anti-slavery speech in Congress in 1856. He helped organize the 1st NY Cavalry Regiment and was commissioned as a colonel. 
 
The Adirondacks offered the Clarke family a place to relax and enjoy nature.  The children spent their summers on the island and in the forests, going boating, hiking, and horseback riding.  As they got older they played golf at the Schroon Lake course and went dining and dancing at the fashionable Leland House hotel. A well-known painting by Samuel Griggs - now in the collection of the Adirondack Experience - shows the Clarke daughters on a beach behind the island. 
 
But tragedy shadowed the Clarkes. Two daughters among the six children were mentally disabled.  For a socially prominent family in the 1800's the situation was unspeakable; the children were cared for at home, and no one discussed their condition.  It was understood that the problem was hereditary. The prejudices of the times were reflected in Bayard Clarke's stern dictum: those Clarke children who were sane and sound were forbidden ever to marry.  The offending trait must not be passed on.  The Clarkes were active in New York City's high society, for many years.  Like Andrew Lawrence Ireland before them, Bayard Clarke Sr. and Bayard Clarke Jr. belonged to the St. Nicholas Society.  Daughters Aletta, Catherine, and Florence Clarke were active in promoting badminton, which their father introduced to the United States after a trip to England.  Aletta was an advocate for highway safety and contributed funds to the National Safety Council.  The sisters appeared at socially exclusive events in New York, and their activities were reported in the press.  The "normal" members of the family were listed in The Social Register; the two daughter who were mentally disabled were not.
 
Schroon Lake residents firmly believed the Bayard Clarkes made their money in the thread business, but that WAS NOT the case.  The Bayard Clarke family was established in New York City many years before the Coats & Clark company that manufactures thread was formed.  Coats Thread Company thrived in England before opening factories in the US and merging in 1896.  Note that the names are spelled differently. 
​
However, the Bayard Clarkes did have some significant relatives, most notably Clement Clarke Moore, the author of "A Visit from Saint Nicholas," better known as "Twas the Night Before Christmas."  Clement, although considerably older, was Bayard Clarke's first cousin.  The family owned a section of western Manhattan in what is todays Chelsea.  It was peaceful farmland when Clement was young but early in the 1800's Manhattan's city fathers imposed the new grid system of streets, and the Clarkes found themselves in possession of dozens of valuable city blocks roughly between 8th Avenue and the Hudson River, running from 18th Street to 24th Street. 

​Clement Clarke Moore was a professional of classical languages at Columbia College and professor of biblical learning at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church.  He gave the Seminary the land it currently occupies in Chelsea, on 9th Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets.
 
Like their cousin, the Bayard Clarkes were devoted Episcopalians. Their money helped build St. Andrew's Church on Leland Avenue in Schroon Lake Village.  In 1914 a Halloween reveler dropped a light cigar in dry leaves, causing the Leland House hotel to burn to the ground and St. Andrew's Church to burn with it.  The hotel was re-built for the 1915 season, and the church was re-built at the south end of the Village, operating today within the Adirondack Mission of the Diocese of Albany.  Bayard Clarke and his son served on the Vestry.  Florence Clarke and her sisters once held a fund-raising party in New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel to benefit St. Andrew's Church.   When Bishop William Croswell Doane made a pastoral visit to the Adirondacks in 1870, he spent the night at the Clarke's mansion on the island. 

​Some Schroon Lakers recalled a visit from Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt to Clarke Island.  How the governor, badly crippled with polio, could have gotten in and out of Florence Clarke's speedboat is a puzzle.  The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, NY has no record of connections between the Clarke and Roosevelt families.
 
Florence Clarke, the last of the childless siblings, died in 1951.  Spending her final years in a nursing home, she could no longer visit her beloved island.  When evangelist Jack Wyrtzen approached her in 1945 with a plan to use the property for his fledgling Word of Life ministries, she agreed to sell it for $25,000. 
 
The only remnant of the Bayard Clarke family in Schroon Lake today is their mausoleum, standing tall in the Protestant cemetery off the Hoffman Road.  The six burial chambers inside are unmarked.  With Bayard Clarke Sr., his wife Aletta, Bayard Jr. and Florence all buried elsewhere, some of these may be the tombs of the troubled Clarke children who grew up sheltered and in anonymity.  

But the island remains, appearing from Schroon village much as it did when the Clarkes were in residence, with the white boathouse near the center.  The trees at the north end, felled by the destructive hurricane of 1950, have grown back.  Schroon's Chamber of Commerce, using Word of Life boats, take tourists on trips around the lake and island.  Any Clarke spirits remaining today must acknowledge the presence of the Word of Life teenagers who come to the island for week-long visits.  Their exuberance may remind them of their own joyful days in summer paradise.                           
                                                                                                                             ~ Ann Breen Metcalf, Author 08/18/2022
* Special thanks to Lillian Noxon Richardson for her valuable information.  Thanks also to the late Louise Hargraves, Paul Stapley, and Marie Cheney Breen.  

Thomas Cole's "View of Schroon Mountain"
Essay written by John Sasso (Historian and Founder of "History and Legends of the Adirondacks" Facebook Group)
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Undoubtedly, one of the most well-known and celebrated landscape paintings of the Adirondacks is Thomas Cole’s “View of Schroon Mountain, Essex Co., New York, After a Storm.” Painted in 1838 by Cole in his studio in Catskill, New York (now the Thomas Cole National Historic Site), the subject of the painting appears as a sharp, lofty peak in the background, whose prominence parts the storm clouds to let the sun shine upon the hills whose forests are bursting in the colors of Fall. The peak known then as Schroon Mountain, is today’s Hoffman Mountain. The focus of this essay is what drew Cole to eventually create this beautiful piece of work and the location he ventured to in the Schroon region to sketch the view he would transcribe to oil and canvas.

​Thomas Cole (1801-1848), English-born artist and poet, is considered the founder of the Hudson River School, an informal group of mid-nineteenth century landscape artists who drew inspiration from European Romanticism and whose works celebrated the natural beauty of the American landscape. The Hudson River School is the first school of American landscape painting, whose era spanned from 1825 to 1875. Although the name implies a geographic focus on the Hudson River Valley of New York State, the members of the school did not adhere to such a constraint, as their works included regions of New England, the American West, and South America. Artists of the school produced works which emphasized the peaceful coexistence of man with nature, at times including an agricultural setting in their paintings. Man was viewed as having stewardship over nature. This sentiment is conveyed by Cole in his influential “Essay on American Scenery” (“American Monthly Magazine, Jan. 1836):

“It is a subject that to every American ought to be of surpassing interest; for, whether he beholds the Hudson mingling waters with the Atlantic--explores the central wilds of this vast continent, or stands on the margin of the distant Oregon, he is still in the midst of American scenery--it is his own land; its beauty, its magnificence, its sublimity--all are his; and how undeserving of such a birthright, if he can turn towards it an unobserving eye, an unaffected heart!”

The school would include other famous artists such as Asher Durand, Frederic Church, Sanford Gifford, Jasper Cropsey, and Thomas Doughty; artists such as Durand, Church, and Doughty, would include Adirondack landscapes in their works. For more information on the Hudson River School, see https://www.theartstory.org/movement-hudson-river-school.htm.

Cole’s first artistic excursion into the Adirondacks was in 1826, when he traveled north, paying visits to Glens Falls, Fort Edward, Fort William Henry, Lake George, and Fort Ticonderoga. During that time, he visited William Ferris Pell, who built the Pavilion at Fort Ticonderoga as his summer home that same year and made sketches for his painting “Gelyna: A View near Ticonderoga”; Cole would modify the painting in 1829 to coincide with his friend Giulian C. Verplanck’s story “Gelyna: A Tale of Albany and Ticonderoga Seventy Years Ago.” In August of 1826, Baltimore art patron Robert Gilmor, Jr. wrote to Cole, suggesting that he create a painting with “some known subject from Cooper’s novels to enliven the landscape.” Gilmor was referring to James Fenimore Cooper’s classic novel “The Last of the Mohicans,” which was published that year. From 1826 to 1827, Cole produced four exhibition paintings based on “The Last of the Mohicans”: “Landscape with Figures: A Scene from ‘The Last of the Mohicans’” (1826), “Scene from ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund” (1827), “Landscape Scene from ‘The Last of the Mohicans’" (1827), and “Landscape Scene from ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ The Death of Cora” (1827). Although the setting for “The Last of the Mohicans” was set in Lake George, the landscape in Cole’s two versions of “Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund” were inspired from his trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the summer of 1827; the mountain prominent in the painting is Corroway Peak, and the lake is Winipisioge Lake. In 1830, Cole was commissioned by John Howard Hinton to produce seven paintings of views in the United States, from which engravings would be made for Hinton’s popular, two-volume classic “The History and Topography of the United States” (1830 and 1832). Of the engravings, they included a scene of sailboats on Lake George, a raft made of timber on Lake Champlain, and the ruins of Fort Ticonderoga; the following are links to the engravings:

https://adirondack.pastperfectonline.com/…/CE4DDF95-85C2-4B…
https://adirondack.pastperfectonline.com/…/59380FA5-099A-40…
https://adirondack.pastperfectonline.com/…/F1B5A48F-919F-4D…

Beginning in the autumn of 1835, Cole made several excursions into the Schroon Lake region. The reflections of these trips to Schroon Lake, the Catskills, and other regions, in Cole’s own words, are given in Louis Legrand Noble’s following works: “The Course of Empire, Voyage of Life, and Other Pictures of Thomas Cole, N.A.” (1853) and “The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, N.A.” (1856). In a diary entry dated October 7, 1835, Cole writes about how he was rowing on Schroon Lake and noted that the view from the lake was “exceedingly fine.” He continues:
“On both hands, from shores of sand and pebbles, gently rise the thickly-wooded hills: before you miles of blue water stretch away: in the distance mountains of remarkable beauty bound the vision. Two summits in particular attracted my attention: one of a serrated outline, and the other like a lofty pyramid. At the time I saw them, they stood in the midst of the wilderness like peaks of sapphire. It is my intention to visit this region at a more favourable season.”

The “lofty pyramid” he was likely referring to is Hoffman Mountain, which clearly captured his attention. Cole would return to Schroon Lake on June 22, 1837 with his wife, Maria, and the artist Asher Brown Durand and his wife, Mary. Cole recounts this summer trip and how he and Asher ventured to a high point to capture, in pencil sketches, the view of “Schroon Mountain,” which would be the inspiration for Cole’s famous painting – and the subject of this essay – in his diary entry dated July 8, 1837. It is Cole who would introduce Durand to the Schroon Lake region, which inspired Durand produce several landscape paintings and sketches such as “A View of Schroon Lake” (1849) and “Adirondacks” (1848). Of the beauty of the landscape of the Adirondacks, Cole wrote, “I do not remember to have seen in Italy a composition of mountains so beautiful or pictorial as this glorious range of the Adirondack.”
​
In late June of 1837, Cole and Durand ventured off the road about three miles from their lodging, to get a better view of the mountains west of Schroon Lake for their sketch-work. According to Ann Breen Metcalfe in her article “Tales of Hoffman: The Rise and Fall of an Adirondack Outpost” (“Adirondack Life,” March/April 2011), this was the house of a Van Benthuysen. It appears that Cole’s ulterior motive was to get an exceptional view of Hoffman Mountain, to be included in an eventual work of art, for he writes:

“We climbed a steep hill, on which many sheep were at pasture, and gained a magnificent view. Below us lay a little lake, embosomed in the hills, and a perfect mirror of the surrounding woods: beyond were hills, partially cleared, and beyond these Schroon Mountain, raising its peak into the sky. Here we sketched.”

From a pencil sketch from Cole’s sketch-book entitled “Schroon Mountain - from near the head of Schroon Lake,” dated June 30, 1837 (for full, zomable sketch, see: https://www.dia.org/…/schroon-mountain-near-head-schroon-la…), a computer-based analysis of the sketch (coupled with Cole’s diary entry and other evidence) has led me to believe that the steep hill Cole referred to is today’s Severance Hill, a small peak located almost four miles southeast of Hoffman Mountain. The little lake Cole refers to is the small, unnamed body of water lying between Jones Hill and Severance Hill. I will delve into the analysis of this sketch later on.

Beyond the pond, below the point where Cole and Durand sketched, they saw some hills cleared of timber (likely due to lumbering activity in the area) which they hoped would provide a much better view of Hoffman Mountain. Tempted by such a prospect, they quickly descended the hill they were on towards the pond, went around its shores and through a swampy forest, and came to a clearing upon which there were one or two log cabins. Cole observed how the few residents were surprised to see two strangers dash across their land while saying nary a word. Continuing to their destination, unabated, Cole writes:

“We climbed the topmost knoll of the clearing, trampling down the luxuriant clover, and, beneath some giant denizens of the woods, whose companions had all laid low, we eagerly looked towards the west, and – were disappointed. A mass of wood on the declivity of the hill enviously hid the anticipated prospect. For once I wished the axe had not stayed. But we were not to be foiled easily. We entered the wood, and found it by a narrow strip. We emerged and our eyes were blessed. There was no lake-view as we had expected, but the hoary mountain rose in silent grandeur, its dark head clad in a sense forest of evergreens, cleaving the sky, ‘a star-y pointed pyramid.’ Below, stretched to the mountain’s base a mighty mass of forest, unbroken but by the rising and sinking of the earth on which it stood. Here we felt the sublimity of untamed wildness, and the majesty of the eternal mountains.”

From the clearing on this hill, the location of which I have determined to be the most likely point where Cole and Durand stood awe-struck by the panorama before them, they commenced sketches of their “grandest view.” Cole’s description of Hoffman Mountain as a (quoted) “star-y point pyramid” is in reference to a verse in John Milton’s “Epitaph to Shakespeare.” The sketch Cole produced is entitled “View of Schroon Mountain – Looking North,” dated June 28, 1837 (for full, zoomable sketch, see:https://www.dia.org/…/view-schroon-mountain-looking-north-j…). Although sketched in the summer, Cole took some artistic liberties with the landscape when creating his painting, such as portraying the region of Hoffman Mountain in the height of the autumn season and making the mountain higher and more sharply pointed than it actually is. The careful, scrutinizing eye will also note two Native Americans towards the bottom-center of the painting: both in a red-feather head-dress, looking at one another, with the one on the left wearing a dark-blue garment and pointing towards the east.

To the extent I am aware, no study has been made of where Cole was when he made the aforementioned sketch. To this end, I leveraged two free pieces of mapping software available to the public: web-based caltopo.com, and Google Earth Pro. The former has a feature called “View From Here,” which allows one to view the topography of the surrounding area from where they are situated on a map, as if they were standing at that point. The latter has a similar feature called “Street View,” which is often used in the web-based Google Maps to allow one to view what their surroundings would be like if they were driving on a particular road. I have successfully used both pieces of software before to analyze a c.1890 Seneca Ray Stoddard photograph and Asher Durand’s 1848 painting “Adirondacks.”

Knowing what was being viewed (Hoffman Mountain) and Cole’s diary entry giving some idea of his direction of travel (towards the west, from Schroon Lake) helped in focusing on what region of the map to look. Although a thorough discussion of the methodology I employed is beyond the scope of this essay, the first step in my analysis was to draw out what I call a Region of Likelihood (ROL), which encompasses where the landscape scene was likely sketched from, based on the profile of Hoffman Mountain. Next, given that Cole wrote he and Durand were on a high point when they stopped to make their sketch, I employed the “View From Here” feature on high points such as Severance Hill, Hedgehog Hill, Jones Hill, as well as those that are not named. In particular, I focused on those near a body of water, since Cole said they went past a pond en route to their final destination. After much panning, zooming, and examination of views from various points, I arrived at a point with the best match to Cole’s sketch: off the western slope of the southwest hump of Jones Hill, or coordinates (43.8731,-73.7962). The snapshot of the view from this point in caltopo.com is provided, with the surrounding peaks annotated. As in Cole’s sketch and painting, we see the southern ridge of Hoffman Mountain to the left, rising towards the summit; Blue Ridge Mountain behind the eastern slope of Hoffman Mountain, which merges with the Peaked Hills; just to the east and behind the Peaked Hills, Dix Peak and Macomb Mountain peeking out on the far right; as the painting depicts, the marsh between Jones Hill and the southern ridge of Hoffman Mountain.

Returning to my suspicion that Cole and Durand may have ventured up Severance Hill before arriving on Jones Hill during their sketching expedition, one reason which led to this is a sketch of Cole’s entitled “Schroon Mountain – from near the head of Schroon Lake,” dated June 30, 1837, just two days after he made the sketch of Hoffman Mountain from Jones Hill. The sketch depicts a pasture with a fence across the slope and a figure of a farmer tending to his land. Recall that Cole and Durand came across farmland on their way up the first steep hill. Performing a similar analysis on the sketch with caltopo.com as before, the location (43.8643,-73.7567), which is along the Northway (I-87) on the eastern base of Severance Hill, provided an excellent match; see the snapshot of the view at that location in caltopo.com. The rising slope in the foreground, to the left of Hoffman Mountain, is the northeast slope of Severance Hill. From Cole’s July 8, 1837 diary entry, he mentions wanting a better view of the mountains to the west from off the road. The view of Hoffman Mountain rising above the hills in grand stature, as shown in Cole’s sketch, would not surprisingly entice Cole and Durand to venture off further for a prize view. Had they viewed Hoffman Mountain from one of the hills south of Jones Hill, then they would have ventured northward.

It would be negligent of me to neglect mentioning a poem which Cole wrote as an ode to Hoffman Mountain, entitled “Song of a Spirit.” The tone of the poem is one where the mountain is a great, lonesome spirit speaking about itself, how it is able to rejoice after withstanding the terrible forces of Nature over many millennia. The first four verses of this poem are:

"An awful privilege it is to wear a spirit’s form,
And solitary live for aye on this vast mountain peak;
To watch, afar beneath my feet, the darkly-heaving storm, 
And see its cloudy billows o’er the craggy ramparts break;"

The American author and poet Arthur Billings Street appears to have been well aware of Cole’s poem, for in his classic 1869 work on the Adirondacks, “The Indian Pass,” Street writes:

“thence struck in a northeasterly direction a rough road, ascending widely cleared heights, whence lay a broad forest landscape, with Schroon Mountain – the Spirit Mountain of the red man – lifting its dial-top grandly at the south, and then through twining woods.”

“SPIRIT MT” made its appearance in the 1872 edition of W.W. Ely’s “Map of the New York Wilderness,” where it appears between “HOFFMANS MT” and “BLUE RIDGE.” When E.R. Wallace published his version of Ely’s map in 1882, entitled “Map of the New York Wilderness and the Adirondacks,” he kept Spirit Mountain on it. It appears that the map-makers may have been mistaken and thought Spirit Mountain was another peak near Hoffman Mountain, hence, their placement of it on their map. I have been unable to find any survey for a Spirit Mountain in the region, and the origin of this alias for Hoffman Mountain appears to lie with Mr. Street.

In closing, it has once again been demonstrated how public-domain mapping software can be used to analyze the landscape of historic paintings, sketches, photographs, and other illustrations. Although requiring some trial-and-error effort, out-of-the-box thinking, and (sometimes) access to historical documents relevant to what is being analyzed, such software can be used to determine what is being viewed and where the artist/photographer may have been when they captured the scene. A significant benefit of the software is that it may often preclude the need to perform a visit to possible locations in the field, which can be time-consuming, costly, and arduous. It is my hope that this type of landscape analysis for historical purposes will gain interest, and to someday collaborate with professionals in the field of art to study this effort further.

​Above Image: Thomas Cole’s “View of Schroon Mountain, Essex Co., New York, After a Storm” (1838)
(Source: The Cleveland Museum of Art)

Above Photo: Thomas Cole (1801-1848)  (Source: Wikipedia)

Above Photo: Asher Brown Durand (1796-1886) (Source: Wikipedia)

Above Image: Thomas Cole’s “Gelyna: A View near Ticonderoga” (1826) (Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Above Image: Thomas Cole’s Scene from ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund” (1827) (Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Above Image: Thomas Cole’s “‘The Last of the Mohicans’: The Death of Cora” (1827) (Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Above Photo: Result of “View From Here” in caltopo.com on the southwest knob of Jones Hill, which best matches Thomas Cole’s sketch “View of Schroon Mountain – Looking North”

Above Photo: ​Result of “View From Here” in caltopo.com from the eastern foot of Severance Hill, which best matches Thomas Cole’s sketch “Schroon Mountain - from near the head of Schroon Lake”

Above Photo: ​Photo of Hoffman Mountain from Jones Hill

Above Image:
Locations A, B, and C in caltopo.com, where “View From Here” was used:
A: The eastern foot of Severance Hill
B: Summit of Severance Hill (not matched against any sketch)
C: Southwestern knob of Jones HillAbove Photo: 

Image Above: Portion of W.W. Ely’s 1879 edition of “Map of the New York Wilderness.” Spirit Mountain is denoted between Hoffman Mountain and Blue Ridge.
(Source: David Rumsey Map Collection)