Lake Placid—Keene—Keene Valley—Junction US 9; 26.1 m. State 86A.
Two-strip macadam open throughout the year; icy in winter.
State 86A penetrates a section of the Adirondacks famous for winter sports, summer hiking, and year-round beauty. Trails lead from the highway to the summit of Mount Marcy, highest point in the State.
From LAKE PLACID, 0 m. (1,880 alt., 2,930 pop.) (see Tour 16), State 86A twists through rocky farmland toward a narrow pass between high-walled mountains.
At 2.9 m. is the junction with a hard-surfaced road.
Right on this road 0.6 m. to the State-maintained JOHN BROWN’S FARM (open), including his home, a weatherbeaten, clapboarded house now a museum for mementos of his life; his grave, fenced off and marked by a boulder; and a bronze statue of him dressed in the rough clothes and cowhide boots of an Adirondack farmer, with his arm protectingly around the shoulder of a Negro boy. The statue was erected by the John Brown Memorial Association, which conducts an annual pilgrimage to the place on May 9. At the age of 18 John Brown (1800–59), a Connecticut Yankee by birth, saw a slaveholder beat a Negro boy with a shovel and resolved to free the slaves. In 1849 he became associated with Gerrit Smith (see Tour 8), who was offering free farms on his land here to Negroes, and settled on this farm to help the Negroes till the soil. The venture failed because the land was unsuited for cultivation and the Negroes could not quickly adapt themselves to the rigors of Adirondack winters. But to John Brown this place remained home, and to it he returned between his excursions in liberation.
In 1855 he and five of his sons were fighting the free-soil battle in Kansas. In 1856 he was back East smuggling escaped slaves into Canada and meeting Thoreau and Emerson. On the night of October 16, 1859, with his sons Watson and Oliver at his side, he captured the rifle plant and the main arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, his purpose being to use this as a base for guerilla warfare in the South to free the slaves. The next day the militia stormed the arsenal; Brown was captured and his two sons were killed. In spite of appeals by Emerson, Thoreau, Whittier, and others, John Brown was hanged; he himself had observed prophetically: ‘I am not incapable of error and I may be wrong but I think that perhaps my object will be nearer fulfillment if I should die.’
In 1920 the INTERVALES (Olympic) SKI JUMP (R), 3.2 m., was constructed on Intervales Hill and in 1927 was redesigned by Dr. Godfrey Dewey. The total distance from the top of the tower to the foot of the lower hill is 660 feet; stands give spectators an unobstructed view. An annual tournament is held on Washington’s Birthday and an intercollegiate meet between Christmas and New Year’s.
At 4.6 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
Right on this road 5 m., through wild, mountainous country, to HEART LAKE and ADIRONDACK LODGE (accommodations for limited number of nonmembers).
Henry Van Hoevenberg and Josephine Schofield, his intended bride, came here in 1880 and planned to build a home, but Josephine died within a year. Van Hoevenberg returned and built the original Adirondack Lodge as a memorial to her; it was destroyed by a forest fire in 1903. The present structure was erected a few years ago by the Lake Placid Club.
Van Hoevenberg blazed and improved many of the trails in the Mount Marcy region that start at Heart Lake. The longest is INDIAN PASS TRAIL, which cuts through one of the most rugged Adirondack gorges to Mount Marcy. Red markers denote the beginning of the trail at the junction of the road to Adirondack Lodge just north of Heart Lake. On this trail, INDIAN PASS, 5 m., a great ravine about one mile long, whose vertical sides rise over 1,000 feet, is formed by WALLFACE MOUNTAIN (3,860 alt.) (R), an almost vertical wall, and MOUNT MACINTYRE (4,411 alt.) (L), its peak almost one mile overhead. From the trail branches lead to Lake Henderson and Mount MacIntyre. The summit of MOUNT MARCY (5,344 alt.), the highest point in the State, is at 18.3 m.
The MOUNT VAN HOEVENBERG BOBSLED RUN (open about Dec. 20-Mar. 1; half-mile ride 50¢; mile $1), 4.1 m. (R), was designed by Stanislaus Zentzytski of Berlin, engineer of the famous Schreiberhau run in Germany, and was constructed in 1930 at a cost of $250,000 by the New York State Olympic Winter Games Commission. After the 1932 Olympics, the run was taken over and is now operated by the State Conservation Department. The large steel bobs used for the ride weigh 485 pounds (four-man) and 352 pounds (two-man). In the 1932 Olympics, United States teams won both the four-man and the two-man events. Their time was 1 minute 54 seconds for the four-man sled, and 1 minute, 57 seconds for the two-man sled.
The run is about 1.5 miles long and has 26 curves; sleds on speed runs travel from 40 to 60 miles an hour. Some of the curves are 22 feet high, their banks almost vertical. The surface of the run is glare ice made by freezing a mixture of snow and water; the straightaway is covered with a thin frosting of snow to enable the sled runners to bite in and hold the track. Sleds are equipped with brakes, so that the speed is always under control. From seven telephones and control stations operators observe every foot of the slide; when one of the infrequent spills occurs, the starter is notified and the run is closed until obstructions have been cleared. The rustic Adirondack-style clubhouse at the bottom of the run has comfortable rooms, a special layout for viewing the last curve and finish, and a special circuit for operating the electrical timing device which records the speed of the bobs in hundredths of seconds.
At 7.4 m. is the beginning of a foot trail.
Right on this trail (red markers, 2,000 ft. ascent, steady footing) to the summit of CASCADE MOUNTAIN (4,092 alt.), 2 m. The right fork leads to the summit of PORTER MOUNTAIN (4,070 alt.) 2.5 m.
State 86A crowds through the narrow pass between Cascade and Pitchoff Mountains; a series of streams spider their way down the rocky wall of Cascade Mountain to the narrow bed of CASCADE LAKES (R), strung like a long, narrow ribbon along the road.
At 10 m. is the beginning of a foot trail marked by a small rustic bridge over a swift-running brook.
Left on this trail (red markers, ascent 1,500 feet, steep footing) to an open ledge at 0.8 m., beyond which it veers to the northeast, reaching the summit of PITCHOFF MOUNTAIN (3,450 alt.), 1.8 m., with sweeping views of mountain terrain: Owls Head Mountain in the east, Cascade Mountain in the south, Sentinel Range and Lake Placid in the north and northwest.
KEENE, 14.1 m. (860 alt., 380 pop.), is at the junction with State 9N (see Tour 21), with which State 86A runs in common for 1.5 miles and then swings east across a flat plain with mountains rising to the south and east.
KEENE VALLEY, 17.5 m. (1,040 alt., 450 pop.), boasts of the oldest school district in the Adirondacks, its school records preserved from the year 1813. Some of the most famous of America’s landscape painters have had studios here; among the earliest were John Fitch, Roswell Morse Shurtleff, A.F. Tait, and A.H. Wyant. The grandeur of the valley and the surrounding mountains was transferred to canvas and found its way into the leading art galleries of the country. Shurtleff, born in New Hampshire in 1839, was drawn to Keene Valley in 1868 by the paintings of John Fitch. He is credited with having designed the Confederate flag while a prisoner during the Civil War. Having bought a tract of primeval forest in the valley, in 1885 he built his studio from plans local carpenters called the ‘damndest confusionedest things.’ These practical builders of plain houses designed for comfort in winter could not understand the Japanese umbrella 16 feet in diameter that the artist designed for a ceiling.
Other nature lovers, scholars, and eminent professional men who made Keene Valley their summer home were Noah Porter of Yale, after whom Porter Mountain was named, Professors William James of Harvard and Willard Fiske of Cornell, Charles Dudley Warner, Felix Adler, the Reverend Joseph H. Twichell, and the Reverend Horace Bushnell.
One of the most colorful Keene Valley intellectuals was Thomas Davidson (1840–1900), who opened the Glenmore Summer School here for his Concord School of Philosophy. Although it started out in an old farmhouse, it gradually spread over a dozen or more detached buildings, but disintegrated after Davidson’s death. As a leader of ethical socialism in England, he had previously founded the Fellowship of the New Life; the Fabian Society, formed by dissenting members, was an offshoot of this organization. The Bread Winners College in New York City’s lower East Side was one of Davidson’s more successful ventures.
At the Keene Valley Inn is the junction with the Johns Brook Trail, the oldest and best known eastern approach to Mount Marcy.
Right here, following the southern shore of Johns Brook, past junctions with other trails, to JOHNS BROOK LODGE, 4.2 m. (open in summer; lodging, meals, supplies), which is owned by the Adirondack Mountain Club and serves as a take-off point for the Mount Marcy trails. At 4.8 m. the Johns Brook Trail enters virgin timber, mostly conifer; Bushnell Falls (L), 5.5 m., in a deep ravine, are named for Horace Bushnell, one of the group of climbing clerics who spent their summers in Keene Valley. At Bushnell Falls lean-to, 5.8 m., is the junction with the Slant Rock Trail (red markers).
Left here to the summit of MOUNT MARCY (5,344 alt.), 9.3 m., highest point in the State, from where there is an excellent view of the MacIntyre Range.
Orson Schofield (‘Old Mountain’) Phelps (1817–1905), who wandered into Keene Valley in 1845, is credited with having blazed the first trail to Marcy from the east in 1849. Charles Dudley Warner, whom Phelps knew as ‘Charlie,’ preserved his eccentricities in The Primitive Man, a portrait of the philosophic mind ‘in the earthy exterior.’ Shot into prominence by his friend Charlie, Phelps published The Growth of a Tree, filled with his rugged, earth-tinged ‘speckerlations.’ ‘Soap is a thing that I hain’t no kinder use for,’ he declared.
At 18.1 m. is the junction with a dirt road.
Right on this road 0.5 m. to ST. HUBERT’S INN, a large white frame building named for the patron saint of the hunted deer. It stands on the site of a hotel built by Smith Beede in 1876. The Ausable Lake and Mountain Club, owners of the present inn, has increased its holdings to 28,000 acres (open with certain restrictions), including Upper and Lower Ausable Lakes.
At 26.1 m. is the junction with US 9 (see Tour 21).