An Adirondack roadside 1893

Seneca Ray Stoddard produced this photograph, entitled ‘An Adirondack Roadside’, sometime around the turn of the 20th century. It's a snapshot of rural life in the Adirondack region, published within a book advocating for the area's preservation as a State Park. Stoddard's image encapsulates the growing tension between industrial progress and the conservation movement in the United States. The Adirondacks, with its vast forests and waterways, was a site of intense logging and resource extraction. Simultaneously, it was becoming a popular tourist destination, and figures like Stoddard used photography to promote its natural beauty and advocate for its protection. The inclusion of the photograph in a publication dedicated to creating a state park underscores the intersection of art, politics, and environmentalism. Such publications and photographs were powerful tools in shaping public opinion and influencing policy decisions. The road that you can see on the image served as a means for extraction of natural resources, but it also gave access to the nature for tourism, creating tensions between preservation and use. Historians can use archival materials such as census data, tourist brochures, and records from conservation organizations, to understand how the idea of wilderness was constructed and contested in this period.