Camp Santanoni, a 32-acre historic area within the Adirondack Forest Preserve, is a case study reflecting the challenges of saving and preserving a historic site on public land in a wilderness setting, working with multiple lead constituencies, and developing and expanding public interpretation of its buildings and landscapes.
Camp Santanoni, constructed in 1892-93 and the heart of a historic 12,900-acre preserve that also includes gate lodge and farm complexes, typifies the Adirondack great camp, late nineteenth and early twentieth century building complexes with designs which integrate and borrow rustic elements from the surrounding environment. Santanoni is one of several large preserves acquired by New York State during the last quarter of the twentieth century to incorporate into the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Originally established in 1892 in response to concerns about deforestation and water quality, the Forest Preserve is required to “be forever kept as wild forest lands” per Article XIV of the state constitution. When the state purchased the Santanoni Preserve in 1972, this provision immediately made its historic buildings “illegal,” nonconforming structures. Due to the efforts of a coalition of advocates and no small amount of luck, Santanoni remains today as the only publicly-owned great camp and a National Historic Landmark.[1]
Today, the Camp Santanoni historic area is managed by the Santanoni Partners: the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which is responsible for all Forest Preserve lands; Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH), the regional historic preservation nonprofit for the Adirondacks; and the Town of Newcomb, an important political and financial supporter. Historic interpretation is outside of the DEC’s natural resource-based mission; its other historic areas, John Brown Farm and Crown Point, are co-managed with the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. DEC has generally remained uninvolved in but not opposed to interpretation at Santanoni. Seeking to fill the gap, AARCH made research and interpretation central to its mission from the beginning of its involvement at Santanoni during the early 1990s. At the same time, the Santanoni Partners focused on essential stabilization and maintenance projects across the historic area. This work, while critical, led to a not-atypical pattern of AARCH developing a core interpretive narrative which remained relatively unchanged and unchallenged in the hands of seasonal summer staff and an Executive Director running a regional nonprofit while managing efforts at Santanoni.
As stabilization needs become less acute, Santanoni is only beginning to mature and professionalize as a historic site. New AARCH staffing, including a part-time Interpretive Coordinator, Historic Site Manager (the first full-time staff of any kind dedicated to the site), and a new Executive Director, are focused on developing research and associated live interpretation across the historic site to engage the public in new ways. As a team, and especially in my role as Interpretive Coordinator, we have begun to expand beyond the core story focused on the Pruyn family, the original owners, and the property’s architecture. The site has disjointed archives, with a mix of primary resources in public and private hands or lost altogether, and a built fabric with rich clues about the lives of the people who inhabited its spaces. In recent years, we have expanded current or developed new standalone programming on women, anti-suffrage, wealth and class, historic-period staff, and art and music. While these have been well-received, staff time limitations have not allowed for publication, signage, or the creation of internal written narratives. This limits our ability to engage beyond the site with the public and the historical community. Similarly, staff at Santanoni interact with people who have visited the site for decades or have a historic period connection, but AARCH is only in the early stages of collecting oral histories due to technological limitations on-site and a dispersed public off-site.
Santanoni’s remoteness and the challenges of access will always be a basic conflict at the site. While the property has a historic carriage road, only hikers, bikers, and horses are allowed on it; there is no public vehicle access. Historic complexes are distributed across the landscape: a gate lodge at the trailhead/parking lot, a farm at one mile, and the main camp at four-and-a-half miles. This public land management decision allows visitors to breathe in the woods and experience a sense of travel to the past – a ride on the horse-drawn wagon offers a visceral experience of the slow reality of historic period travel. For better or worse, Santanoni has been the center of a debate about accessibility in the Adirondacks in recent years as the DEC explores increasing access for people with disabilities with a mobility device pilot program. The disconnect between the DEC and site interpretation was evident when the initial program offered hours that would not allow mobility device users to take a tour at scheduled times. While AARCH has no direct role in this program, we are interested in using it as a springboard to engage with the history of disability and access at the site. Historic period accounts about the Pruyn family and staff as well as the physical fabric of buildings reflect accommodations to meet changing needs over time. Further, the 1998 lawsuit which placed Santanoni at the center of this conversation, and which directly relates to the use of prison labor at the site and throughout the Forest Preserve, remains little known to the public. The current politics around this subject require a more careful approach and more collaboration with the land manager to build trust, especially given their limited past engagement with interpretation.
While the Adirondacks has a rich indigenous history, we have not yet settled on the best way to address this in interpretation at Camp Santanoni. It is all too easy to start the story with the establishment of the hamlet of Newcomb during the early nineteenth century or the Pruyns land purchase in 1892. Interpreters often share that Santanoni, a nearby mountain for which the camp is named, is understood to derive from an indigenous mishearing or mocking of St. Antoine, introduced to them by Jesuit missionaries. Others have tried starting programs with a land acknowledgement to note the historic and current presence of the Haudenosaunee in the region, but such acknowledgements can feel hollow and performative. While specific stories remain unknown, we are confident that Newcomb Lake, with its springs, streams, and plentiful fish, was a welcoming home to indigenous people long before it was given its current name – but we struggle to incorporate this perspective naturally into current public interpretation. Similarly, we want to begin to address climate change at the site, which has experienced reduced snowpack and more threats from summer flooding. We have limited historic information about weather patterns at the site and are exploring how to best integrate this into interpretation to effectively resonate with skiiers and hikers complaining about conditions.
[1] The compelling legal, political, and advocacy story surrounding the incorporation of former great camps generally, and Camp Santanoni in particular, into the Adirondack Forest Preserve has been well-studied. See Richard Longstreth, “Protecting Artifice Amid Nature: Camp Santanoni and the Adirondack Forest Preserve,” in Ethan Carr, et al., eds., Public Nature: Scenery, History, and Park Design (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 197-215; Harvey H. Kaiser, Great Camps of the Adirondacks, second edition (Boston: David R. Godine, 2020); Robert Engel. Howard Kirschenbaum, and Paul Malo, Santanoni: From Japanese Temple to Life at an Adirondack Great Camp (Keeseville: Adirondack Architectural Heritage, 2009).