Verplanck Colvin - Barons to Boreas

By: Bill Killon - Guest author
January 23, 2017

Verplanck Colvin

As a kid growing up in the center of the Adirondack Park, my parents would take my brother and me hiking, and it was understood that we hadn't reached the top of the mountain unless we stepped on the brass surveying plug embedded on the summit. It wasn’t until after reading Dr. Philip G. Terrie’s book, Contested Terrain, that I understood the importance of these bits of arbitrary metal. Over 100 years ago, surveyor and explorer Verplanck Colvin strategically distributed these bolts, hooks and eyelets across the Adirondack landscape. In a time of rampant exploitation of natural resources by lumber barons, Colvin used these points to precisely locate state land that would lay the groundwork for a revolutionary form of conservation and preservation. Although many of the shiny legible surveyor’s bolts that we tagged as kids are replacements for Colvin’s original points, the weathered eyelets that secured giant wooden surveyor’s towers can usually be found nearby. If you’re lucky and you know where to look, you can still find some of Colvin’s original markers stamped with the identifying “Adirondack Land Survey.”

Dr. Terrie’s book led me to Paul Schaefer’s, Adirondack Explorations and Nina H. Webb’s, Footsteps Through the Adirondacks. Like Schaefer and Webb before me, I became fascinated with Colvin’s work. The reports that he penned between 1872 and 1900 describing his explorations in the Adirondacks read like adventure novels. The descriptive, sometimes flowery prose is hard to put down. The pages are filled with exciting treks through unknown lands with trusty guides all the while battling unforgiving weather, wild animals and of course… surveying too. I was hooked. I had been working in the world of commercial and editorial video and photography since graduating college and was looking for a subject for a personal project. Around the same time, digital still cameras started allowing for the recording of quality HD video and with that the cost barrier to producing such a film disappeared. I contacted my friend and writer Tom Henry, with whom I had collaborated with on a number of projects for Adirondack Life Magazine, and soon we found ourselves hot on the trail of Verplanck Colvin, the father of the Adirondack Park.

As with any new project, the question is, will anyone care? A membership of 140 of some of the nicest and most interesting people that you’ll ever meet who celebrate Verplanck’s accomplishments soon came to my attention. The Colvin Crew’s superintendent Jim Vianna welcomed me to one of their functions and was kind enough to share his wealth of knowledge for the film’s first interview. From there, pieces fell into place. Dr. Philip G. Terrie hosted Tom and me for an incredible interview about all things Adirondack. I met guidebook writer Tony Goodwin on the Giant Mountain trail and a couple of months later, on a cold and rainy September day, he graciously met us in a lean-to at Adirondack Loj for an interview. The story led to Tim Maguire of the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Park. Emmy Award winning, Willem Lange, recorded the intro to the film as the voice of Colvin. The legendary Dan Berggren expertly performed the narration. For the soundtrack, musicians Chris Gribnau and Lisa Henry adapted and recorded “The Ballad of Blue Mountain Lake” on banjo, piano and even flugelhorn. The Adirondack and the Chapman museums worked with me to pull to together related photographs.

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