I’ve always been fascinated by maps, especially old ones. Studied carefully, they can reveal a lot of history. Nineteenth-century maps accompanying the earliest guides to the region, by Seneca Ray Stoddard and E.R. Wallace, for example, show that the way to get from place to place on Long Lake back then was by steamboat, roads like Route 30 being decades in the future.

So it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to receiving Thatcher Hogan’s “Mapping the Adirondacks” (North Country Books, 2024). I was not disappointed; for lovers of both cartography and Adirondack history, the 233-page hardcover book is a gem.

The subtitle, “Colvin, Blake and the First True Survey of the Great Adirondack Wilderness,” narrows Hogan’s topic. Quoting from the publisher’s press release, “Hogan has carefully gleaned narrative and illustrations from Colvin’s notoriously dense annual reports and reassembled them with additional historic photographs to chronicle a compelling true story of rugged exploration.”

That about sums it up. “Compelling” is an opinion, for readers — and reviewers — and not the publisher to determine, but I get marketing strategies, and besides, it’s accurate. Both the state-supported Colvin-Blake surveys of 1872-1900, which more than anything else spurred creation of the Adirondack Park and Forest Preserve, and the book itself are indeed that.

One aspect of this volume that’s compelling, but is glossed over in the plugging, is its presentation concept. On the one hand, we have illustrations — some 200 — from Colvin’s time, many by the multi-talented Colvin himself, he being one of those really annoying people who can do several things well. On the other, we have later photographs and other graphic elements, producing a hard-to-achieve combination of chronological continuity overlaid by a tapestry of old and new. Featured are Hogan’s own “Peak Finder decks” (see photo), hand-held flip-cards that identify landmarks in the viewsheds of numerous Adirondack peaks, thus showing us today essentially what Colvin saw 125 to 150 years ago.

Introductory material that demonstrates a firm grasp of Adirondack history and topography has Hogan urging us to “look at even familiar maps more closely.” He lucidly explains what are today archaic Colvinesque surveying — and thus foundational map-making — terms like “theodolite” (a measuring device), “hypsometry” (a measuring process involving altitude determination) and “triangulation” (a measuring technique). In so doing, Colvin revolutionized surveying from a physical ground-up operation (compass bearings, chains) to a mathematical top-down one based off mountain summits, not their feet.

We proceed from there to discussions focused on several of the peaks Colvin and Blake employed for their ground-breaking (in some cases literally) surveying/mapping; Whiteface, Hurricane, Blue, St. Regis, Gore, Coney. A careful reading of the previous paragraph will disclose that they needed bare summits in order to take their readings, which usually required removing the vegetation. This they accomplished by setting fire to it. That is not a currently recommended method of obtaining a view, and yet we all benefit from it on summits like Ampersand.

Author Hogan holds down a spot in the line-up of a six-generation family of Adirondack devotees. Retired as a writer/producer of presentations, marketing materials and trade shows for Kodak Professional and for Kodak’s digital color press development and launch, he lives in the Rochester, New York, suburbs and has a camp “north of Paul Smiths,” he reports. He probably doesn’t need a map to travel from one to the other, but if he did, he would be superb at explaining it. Acquire this “compelling” book, and you will see what I mean.