Think serial killer, and Berkowitz, Bundy or Dahmer come to mind. However, in the 1890s, following Jack the Ripper’s London killing spree, Mudgett, by then sitting in a cell at Philadelphia’s Moyamensing Prison, was the notorious monster.
History
A Trove of Vintage Lake George Photographs
For 75 years, Jule and Fred Thatcher captured everything from chowder parties to swim marathons and everyone from prize fighters to Roosevelts.
The Black Woods
If by chance The Black Woods: Pursuing Racial Justice on the Adirondack Frontier lands in your bookstore this November and you are bold enough to try to lift it without a small crane, you will be amused to know I first envisioned this production as a pamphlet. Maybe 50 pages max.
A Wild Ride: When Sherman’s Amusement Park Was Our Family Business
Last summer, I was delighted to discover an article in this magazine about how the Caroga Arts Collective is bringing a musical revival to long-shuttered Sherman’s Amusement Park in Caroga Lake.
Harold and Faith: A New Exhibit Spotlights Weston’s Muse
His artwork was called “rough and rugged as hickory stumps,” like the man himself. Friends described her as “soft, gentle, like the moss in the woods.” It was a match made in heaven, or at least the Adirondacks.
Billion-Dollar Bet: New York’s Risky Investment in Lake Placid’s Olympic Dream
When I go to see Mike Pratt at the Olympic Regional Development Authority’s glossy new state-funded headquarters in Lake Placid, the first thing he does is spread out photographs of Olympic sports venues and stadiums in Beijing, Berlin and Sarajevo that lie abandoned and in ruins. His message is plain: This almost happened here.
Adirondack Cryptids: Champy vs. Bigfoot
A Captain Crum, who navigated the lake in 1819, told a tale of an almost 200-foot-long black monster with three teeth and a star on its forehead. Sandra Mansi, the photographer behind a hotly debated 1977 image of “Champy,” compared the creature to a dinosaur.
Silent as the Grave: A Forgotten Quaker Burial Ground
The humble, plain-living Quakers who lie buried here rejected displays of vanity and so kept death, as they had life, as simple and unemotional as possible.
From Old Mountain Phelps to Today’s Adirondack Guides
Plenty has changed—not just the park’s physical landscape, with its trail system and network of highways that connect even our tiniest communities to the outside world, but also how, in the modern world, people learn about and experience this place.
The Revolutionary Roots of Lake Luzerne’s Name
A few months ago I came across a 1788 handwritten letter by a French nobleman, the Chevalier de La Luzerne, that was being auctioned in a gallery in Boston. I was astounded, to say the least.
On Sale Now
April 2026
The Wildlife Issue! A peek inside the secret lives of Adirondack moose by Jeff Nadler, wildlife portraits by Pamela Underhill Karaz, an opossum search party led by best-selling author Kristin Kimball, plus loons, turtles, turkeys, chipmunks, coyotes and more.
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