By: Sharp Swan
This blog is inspired by the Fires of the High Peaks exhibit, a permanent feature at the Adirondack History Museum. Our 2025 season will run from Memorial Day weekend to Columbus Day weekend. For more information about visiting and becoming a member, please visit our website at www.adkhistorymuseum.org - We hope to see you in May 2025!
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1903 was the worst year in recorded history for fires not only in the High Peaks, but also in the Adirondacks as a whole. Though the real number may never be known, officially over 464,000 acres burned throughout the Park.
From April 18th to June 8th of that year, for 48 days, hardly a trace of rain could be found in the High Peaks of the Adirondacks. Even in a normal year, springtime is one of the most volatile times of the year for fires. With the snow gone and before the leaves have budded out, the forest floor is a veritable tinderbox with dried leaf and rubble littering the woods. That, along with poor logging practices, which left an abundance of debris, like treetops and branches drying above the ground, created a great fuel for any fire. The spring of 1903, the driest in seventy-seven years, was a disaster waiting to happen. The fires, which began early in May, were initially small in stature, but large in number, caused by oblivious tourists, trains that spewed forth sparks every mile from their smoke sacks, and careless smokers. The Lake Placid fire began when a farmer disobeyed a burn ban order and scorched his field. It eventually got into the woods and spread quickly.
The fires around Dix were begun by nature when heat lightning, which produces no rain, struck the ground igniting the dry forest. In a relatively short time, without fire control from observers in towers to direct men and equipment to the source, they grew into a wild inferno. As one historian, who lived through the fires, noted that because there was little wind during the early days,
“a heavy pall of smoke hung everywhere and seldom lifted. It added immensely to the difficulties, the nervous strain and discomfort of the whole situation.”
The High Peaks fires were actually five distinct ones that grew from different areas with some of them eventually combining to consume thousands of acres. One fire started in North Hudson pushed its way over East Dix and Grace Peak, sending a finger up to within a stone's throw of the summit of Macomb and onto the east side of Dix before moving north.
Simultaneously, a blaze that began near Euba Mills worked its way west heading over Rocky Peak Ridge and the shoulder of Giant. A third wave of destruction initiated on the west side of Dix and ran over the shoulder of Dial, Noonmark and Round. All three met near Chapel Pond and threatened Keene Valley and Keene. The fire, which started in a farmer's field in Lake Placid, headed straight for Heart Lake and Adirondac Loj, to the southeast. Driven by high winds, it generated a spectacular crown fire that consumed the forest jumping from tree to tree. The Loj fell in the inferno and the blaze made its way toward the shoulder of Wright, over Phelps and to the backside of Big Slide.
Eventually, the firestorm ravaged the woodlands on Cascade and Porter, but miraculously missed the hotel Cascade House between the two lakes. Ultimately, this fire moved down the east slope burning over the Brothers on Big Slide and also headed for Keene Valley. High winds picked up burning bark and embers and blew them across the valley, starting a fire on the side of Rooster Comb and Snowy. The roar of the blaze could be heard for miles and the fires burned so brightly that a person could read a newspaper at night from it.
Smoke from not only the High Peaks, but from all over the Adirondacks filled the air, creating an eerie yellow hue all the way to New York City. The air in Malone, just fifty miles to the north, was so vile and thick with smoke that the residents complained that they could hardly breathe.
With fires surrounding the towns of Keene Valley and Keene on two sides, there was a real danger that the villages would be engulfed in flames being fanned by high winds. Most fled, but those that remained retired to church on June 7th and prayed for God to bring rains to save their villages. The next day, as if by divine intervention, their prayers were answered and a deluge came… and continued to come. For the next twenty-four hours it poured, washing out roads and bridges to the point that everyone went back into church and prayed for the rains to stop. But the fires of 1903 were at last extinguished.
The devastating fire of 1903 was quickly followed by two more horrific ones that added hundreds of thousands of scorched acres to the total of Adirondack lands burned. In the years from 1903 to 1913, over 800,000 acres were burned with a fire coming in 1908 and another following in 1913. Like the previous 1903 fire, both followed long periods of drought. However, unlike the 1903 fire, this time the blazes began later in the year, coming at the end of the summer and into the fall. Though the 1908 fire saw 308,000 acres go up in smoke, the second greatest amount of property burned in Adirondack history, it only affected the High Peaks around the fringes. The 1913 fire, on the other hand, laid waste to 30,000 acres and made a swath two miles wide and twelve miles long that started at Elk Lake, ravaged the summits of South Dix and Grace, consumed the flanks of Dix and mowed over the forest all the way to the summit of Rocky Peak Ridge.
Following a two-month-long drought, in the middle of August 1913, the newly formulated fire tower observers were put in high alert to be ever watchful for the start of fresh fires. The woods were so dry that any spark would ignite a firestorm in a matter of moments. This would be one of the first real tests for the fire system just put in place.
On Monday, August 17th a severe electrical storm, which produced no rain, passed over the eastern Adirondacks, sending lightning bolts that hit the ground and ignited a fire at the base of Macomb, on its eastern side. Fire Observer Carey stationed in the wooden tower on Makomis Mountain, just east of the Underwood Club, spotted the blaze and instantly notified Ranger Greenough. Grabbing eight men, Greenough headed for the fire, five miles in through rough terrain. This entire area had been burned over in 1903 and in the decade since most of the dead trees had fallen over, creating a slash that made getting to the fire very difficult. But if they could reach the fire before it spread, they had a good chance of keeping it under hand. So far, the fire control protocol had worked as designed.
But, the bane of every fire fighter is wind and that day, as they approached the site, a heavy gust fanned the blaze. With thousands of acres of previously burned over lands, the dried timber was “almost as inflammable as gunpowder.” The forest exploded into an inferno. The wind blew hot, burning embers great distances, setting more fires up to a mile away. Despite the early warning, the inferno was out of control heading towards Elk Lake. All the rangers, some farmers that were drafted into service, as well as lumberjacks who volunteered, dug a six-mile long fire line in a superhuman effort to stop the blaze from spreading south. They then set a backfire trying to consume all of the usable fuel in front of the fire. Through their efforts, the inferno heading for Elk Lake was stopped dead in its tracks. But as fortune would have it, the winds now shifted from the south and the blaze reversed direction and headed north.
Men and resources were shifted north to the Underwood Club, and for weeks, 300 men fought the blaze until utterly exhausted. By digging a trench along some unburned portion of the forest and lighting more backfires, the Underwood Club was saved. Almost as if the fire had a mind of its own, it then turned northwest and headed for more fertile woods around the Ausable Club. The men fighting the fire, who had been brought in from the iron mines at Mineville and the Finch Pruyn lumber company, were exhausted. Every able-bodied citizen in the area had been roused, but if the Ausable Club lands and the Adirondack Mountain Reserve property, with its valuable old growth forest, was to be saved, reinforcements would have to be sent.
Fortunately, then governor of New Jersey, but soon to be president, Woodrow Wilson, had visited the Ausable Club the previous summer and was sensitive to their plight. He now directed the military to help, if at all possible. The Fifth Infantry was stationed at the Plattsburgh Barracks and luckily three companies, G, E, and H, happened to be within striking distance in Lake Placid. Under the direction of their commander, Colonel Morton, they marched to Saint Huberts on September 11th, setting up their camp at the baseball field near the present-day parking lot. The infantry was immediately put to work digging a fire line, but it was quickly surmised that they needed more soldiers if they wanted a chance at stopping the fires. On September 17th, Companies, B, D, and F showed up, marching in from the railroad station in Keeseville. All told, 360 soldiers and officers fought the fires and according to a witness, “rendered most efficient service in constructing fire lines, setting back fires and patrolling trenches: they were faithful, vigilant and energetic both night and day.”
So far the blaze had been contained to the already burned over areas from the 1903 fire, but was close to opening up fresh unburned terrain. Under the guidance of Ausable Club personnel, Colonel Morton directed a fire line to be built across the notch between Round and Noonmark and along the dirt road at Chapel Pond. The trench in the notch held, saving the northern third of Round Mountain and the direct route to the Ausable Club. But, high winds turned Round Mountain below the fire line into an inferno, burning off everything and sending the flames over the summit and down toward Chapel Pond. A witness said, “every tree, on that high, rocky bank of the pond, was ablaze, and every blaze was reflected in the dark water below. The roar, which we had been able to hear at the distance of a mile and a half, was terrifying.” She continued by saying, “Tree after tree toppled down the slope, and the burning branches were shattered into thousands of pieces, and bounced down the rocks, shedding sparks as they went.” Another witness of the same scene stood in awe as “a whole slice of the cliff broke off, and slid into the lake covered with burning trees!” Just like in 1903, the blaze jumped the road and headed up the other side towards Giant and Rocky.
The soldiers rushed up the trail to Giant, stringing a telephone line as they went and built a fire line along the ridge leading to the summit. The high winds blew flames and pieces of burning debris over the ridge setting the woods on fire beyond the fire line. When the blaze reached the old growth forest the fire literally exploded, as if, as one witness attested, “vast quantities of kerosene had been dumped on it.” Nothing humanly possible could stop this hell on earth.
When all hope was lost, when all human endurance had been expended, nature came to the rescue about midnight on September 21st, dumping nearly six inches of rain on the inferno. It was a real soaker, stopping the fire in its tracks. When the smoke cleared, the destruction caused by both the 1903 and 1913 fires was clearly visible. The high winds and intense heat, along with the hard rains that washed away any trace of soil, had cleared off the summits of Grace, Spotted, Noonmark, Round, Rocky, and the ridge to Giant. While, to modern eyes over a hundred years later, these burned off areas present a pleasant, wide-open vista, to people who stared up at the fire’s destruction, it was ugly and depressing. Marian Putnam encapsulated those feelings when she wrote in 1913,
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