In late May, Amy and I went for a jaunt in the nearly-15,000-acre Pharoah Lake Wilderness in the southeast portion of the Adirondack Park. This lightly-visited tract may not have same cachet as the much larger Siamese Ponds, West Canada Lakes, or Five Ponds Wilderness areas (much less the High Peaks Wilderness), but its charms are equally alluring. More than that, its history and location make it a poster child for successful wilderness protection and a critical example of the importance of advocating for new and expanded Wilderness areas. When we throw the mantle of Article XIV around lands like those in the Pharoah Lake area and then leave them alone, even the most disturbed areas, given time, recover to a state that for all intents and purposes is as wild as any in the Park. That is an incredibly valuable thing.
The Pharoah Lake Wilderness is unique because of its location. It is the easternmost of our Wilderness areas and as such is closest to the areas that were developed well before most of the rest of the North Country. In fact, surrounded as it is by Schroon Lake, Paradox, Crown Point, Ticonderoga, and Lake George, with all of the associated historical and industrial activity of these settlements, it’s a wonder that there is any sizeable wilderness there at all. Both mining and logging both on the tract and surrounding areas began in the 1820’s, and between the appetite for white pines, hemlock bark for tanneries and, especially, charcoal production for the extensive mining operations at Hammondville, Ironville and Crown Point, whole sections of forest were denuded throughout the nineteenth century. Drought and a massive amount of slash led to destructive fires at the beginning of the twentieth century, and by the end of 1913 most of what is now Wilderness was treeless.
Not any more! When entering the Pharoah Lake Wilderness from the north via the Short Swing trail on Route 74 east of Paradox, one first meanders along the road and to the marshy beginning of Eagle Lake, then a right turn leads to a wide trail that was once a logging road. The woods are open here and the width of the trail makes it not the most intimate beginning for a wilderness trek. But a few hundred yards down the trail invites a terrific surprise: an extended grove of white pines that have been growing for more than century and, while not massive in girth, feature the astounding and humbling heights that make white pines queens of the forest. Wandering through this grove makes any imagination of the area’s industrial past nearly impossible. I did not bring measuring equipment, but knowing comparable pines in some of my other favorite places, I’d guess the heights of the tallest pines to be in the 130 foot to 140 foot range.
Two miles further in, about at the junction with the Tubmill Marsh lean-to, the trail narrows and becomes a true wilderness path, traversing hummocks and eskers, and winding amidst marshy areas and ponds, of which there are many. From here, and throughout the interior of the tract, one gets a feel of the primeval of the same type that might be found in the Siamese Ponds or West Canada Lakes Wilderness areas.
To think that much of an area which feels as wild as any in the Park was bare, burned ground little more than a century ago, while by no means a unique story in Adirondacks, is a testament to the effectiveness or preservation and to the Wilderness advocacy AWA and its supporters do today.
