In the darkest days of winter, when the ice on Pontiac Bay reaches 12 inches thick, a tribe of volunteers brings in a harvest of heavy slabs, then—working in shifts—stacks those building blocks into a marvel on the shores of Lake Flower. The hundred or so foot soldiers, calling themselves Ice Palace Workers Local 101, spend the weeks before every Saranac Lake Winter Carnival braving harsh weather, slippery surfaces and frostbitten fingers to take part in a century-old tradition.
If scholars, until recently, have failed to connect the dots between the eugenics and conservation movements, who can blame them? We like our heroes simple. Who wants to complicate the stunning legacy of Progressivism—the movement that set the stage for antitrust laws, women’s suffrage, municipal reform, the Food and Drugs Act and the Adirondack Park—with crackpot notions about racial hierarchy that rationalized miscegenation laws, the sterilization of thousands, and the brutally stringent anti-immigration quotas of the first half of the last century?
Lost hikers, splintered bones and wildfires—a forest ranger reflects on more than two decades of coming to the rescue. Plus the oldest tavern in the Adirondacks, a trip through James Bond’s Lake George, and new energy in Schroon Lake.
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