It Happened Here -- The Man who Measured 

(and Saved !) the Mountains

It was the young surveyor's first report as Superintendent.  If the state legislators thought they would be getting just facts and figures and a corrected map or two, they were in for a surprise. They would get these, certainly, but they would also get an illustrated and poetically descriptive report of adventures and discoveries and both a reasoned and impassioned plea for the protection of the Adirondacks, as well.

"Far above the chilly waters of Lake Avalanche, at an elevation of 4,293 feet lies SUMMIT WATER, a minute tear of the clouds, as it were, a lovely pool, shivering in the breezes of the mountains and sending  its lipid surplus through Feldspar Brook, to the Opalescent river, the well spring of the Hudson."

The young surveyor, who carried the unwieldy name of Verplanck Colvin, on his first Adirondack survey had discovered the source of the mighty Hudson River and given it the name that would stick, Lake Tear of the Clouds.

Verplanck Colvin came from old money.  His grandfather, James,  had married Catherine Huyck Verplanck, heir to monies from the huge Dutch Coeymans Patent, and his naming was a testament to that union of those families. Financially secure, his family had educated him with tutors at home in Albany, then at Albany Academy, and then, when the family moved to Nassau, at Nassau Academy.

It was there in the Rensselaer County countryside that the young Verplanck developed his love of Nature and the outdoors, while the school fostered in him a love of science and a facility for mathematics. The Civil War came and his older brothers enlisted.  Regular letters home from them riveted Verplancks attention as he pored over maps his father had given him allowing him to follow every movement of his brother James through the south. Verplanck longed for a career in the military, but not because he was interested in war, but because of a fascination for maps and logistics. 

 At school. Verplanck made a life-long friend in Mills Blake.  Blake became his co-conspirator, his trusty lieutenant at school and when Verplanck began his survey work, Mills became his second in command.  At the end of his life Mills Blake was there as his caregiver.  As with any life-long close association between friends of the same sex, their were speculations about a homosexual relationship, but there is no proof of this, one way or another. 

At the late age of 43, Verplanck had earnestly pursued the courtship of a girl, Hattie Pruyn, age 22. Totally smitten, he made a nuisance of himself, virtually camping in the Pruyn's parlor trying to impress Hattie with tales of his adventures, trekking the Adirondak wilderness, slaying ferocious panthers, all the while Hattie's sister, Huybertie plotted practical jokes to pull on him.  More than once he would exit the Pruyn residence only to be doused with a bucket of cold water from the upstairs balcony, courtesy of Huybertie, or put on his hat to be showered with a hail of small
pebbles surreptitiously placed there by the younger sister.  Eventually Hattie Pruyn would be swept off her feet by a younger man, and announced her engagement to him. Verplanck was crushed.  He sent her a mourning card framed in black with the words "Oh Hattie," and threw himself back into his survey work.

It was generally expected that upon graduation Verplanck would join his father's law firm and begin his education to become a lawyer. He was given a job at Colvin and Bingham and secured a clerk position for Mills as well. The tenant-landlord property cases interested him the most because they provided him with an excuse to study old maps and and to get out of the office and go tromping up in the Helderberg Mountains looking for old boundary markers.  In his free time he read widely, broadening his knowledge of geology, geography, cartography and surveying,  using the resources available to him as a young professional. He became known at the State Library and the Albany Institute, whose weekly lectures he attended regularly. Alfred Street, the State Law Librarian, and a published author on the Adirondacks recommended books and sparked his enthusiasm for the Adirondacks.  Colvin began making frequent trips into the mountains north of Albany. On these trips he experienced, first hand, the inadequacy of the available maps of the Adirondacks. He also saw for the first time the devastation the lumber industry was wrecking on the mountains and their watershed. From the summit of Mount Seward he observed in horror wide swaths of clear cutting. He wrote a report of the climb and read it before the Albany Institute. Concerns about the timber industry had been growing. His paper was selected for publication in the Annual Report of the New York Museum of Natural History, and the Governor made mention of it in his State of the State Message.

 In 1869, he and Mills took a short trip into the Helderbergs to practice making observations, taking notes and making sketches . On his return he compiled his notes and made an illustrated report.  Harper's New Monthly Magazine, a national publication bought it for publication. The next year Colvin followed it up by a trip to the Rockies,  and another article "The Dome of the Continent" was also published by Harper's.  By this time he decided he would leave the law practice.  In 1872 Colvin was named to a state commission to look at forestry practices. In its report it warned against the wholesale destruction of New York forests and urged protection for certain counties but did not go so far as to support the creation of a separate park.  Colvin used his position to advocate for a comprehensive remapping of the Adirondacks.  That spring, an Adirondack Survey was commissioned with Colvin appointed to lead it.

The appointment launched Verplanck Colvin into a flurry of activity.  Equipment and supplies needed to be bought, men had to be hired and organized into working groups.  A perfectionist, and micro-manager of the first order he created a ninety two page book of procedures and regulations for his employees.

Colvin realized a major source of error in existing maps was due to their reliance on magnetic compass bearings. Seamed with large and small deposits of magnetic ore the Adirondacks could make a compass swing wildly, or more often, distort bearings by a few degrees, one way or another, depending on ones position relative to the deposits. The alternative to using compass bearings was to establish the location of landmarks by triangulation, a much more labor intensive procedure. Starting from a baseline, (Colvin selected two lighthouses on lake Champlain, whose distance apart he knew) the young surveyor measured the angles from the ends of his baseline to a landmark whose position he was trying to determine. Using trigonometry Colvin could determine the distances to the landmark, thus fixing its position.  From these lines other bases lines could be established and other landmarks fixed and so on and on.

 For his long distance surveys he was given a "grand theodolite" a kind of super transit that with its powerful telescope,  could view distant objectives and measure both horizontal and vertical angles.  Colvin created a special box for it which doubled as a levelable base.  Slung between two poles this 300 lb. monster instrument was carried by two or more workers from mountaintop to mountaintop for over a quarter of a century!

Over the kinds of distances Colvin was surveying it would be impossible to send a man out with a simple surveyor's pole.  Instead, the self taught surveyor constructed log tripods or quadripod  "signal" towers. Covering them with white canvass panels, or sheets of tin that reflect the sun, these providing him with a sighting point for his transits. Sometimes he would top them with of tin sheets "Stan-helios" that, rotating in the wind would act like a flashing beacon in the sun.

(To Be Continued--Next Week)

Marker of the Week -- "Repurposed" Ver.  2.0

We trust that this building didn't serve all these functions at the same time, though come to think of it, it sure might have been handy if folks got a little too rowdy at the dance hall.

         On Old Rte 146, corner Rte 9, Clifton Park