The Adirondack Park runs to 6.1 million acres, more than any other park in the lower 48, and about half of it is private land.
The park dates to 1892, centered on the Adirondack Mountains in northeastern New York, and about 52 percent of the land inside it is private, the other 48 percent state Forest Preserve. That split shows up on the lakes. Some are ringed with camps: Lake Placid has roughly 225 camp sites on its shores and islands, many reachable only by boat, and Upper Saranac is lined with camps from Great Camps to small cottages. Others are mostly public shore. About 75 percent of Cranberry Lake's shoreline is state-owned, and on Indian Lake most of the shore is Forest Preserve and the campground sits on islands you reach by boat.
The names are a mixed bag. Lake George, the one people call the Queen of the Lakes, runs 32.2 miles with more than 170 islands and drains north into Lake Champlain through the La Chute River at Ticonderoga. Raquette Lake may or may not be named for snowshoes left on the shore in 1776. Cranberry Lake was named for the bogs it used to have. Nobody is quite sure about Schroon, except that it's said SKROON. Lake Tear of the Clouds got its name from a surveyor in 1872, and at 4,293 feet it's the highest pond in the state, often cited as the highest source of the Hudson.
You're mostly on the water. Long Lake is 14 miles of the Raquette River gone wide, about half a mile across, with two public beaches and a state boat launch; the three Saranac lakes give you a 17-mile paddle with a single carry, and both are links in the 740-mile Northern Forest Canoe Trail. Mirror Lake, in the middle of the village of Lake Placid, allows no motorboats and no snowmobiles: canoes, kayaks and paddleboards in summer, a skating track around the edge in winter. Heart Lake sits under Mount Jo at the trailhead for Mount Marcy and Algonquin Peak, the two highest points in the state.
Up there it's a crewneck. The Lake George crewneck in Blue Spruce is for the run up the shore from the village to Bolton Landing, the Saranac Lake crewneck in Predawn is for people who own a canoe and actually use it, and the Cranberry Lake crewneck in Collegiate Crimson is the deep cut, for anyone who likes their shoreline 75 percent state-owned.
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