Upper Hudson River

You're looking at a beautiful 1896 drawing of a chain pickerel, a freshwater fish of the pike family whose predatory reputation is such that they're sometimes called "waterwolves." As you might guess from their body shape, they're well-suited for lurking in water vegetation and then suddenly darting out to capture prey with their sharp teeth--not just other fish, but frogs, mice, and even ducks. Sometimes chain pickerel will attack a human fingers or toes, despite their weighing only a couple of pounds. A larger member of this family, the muskellunge, can grow to more than 50 pounds in the St. Lawrence River.

But the real reason you're looking at this pickerel is because it's identified as having been taken from the Upper Hudson River. Ten years earlier, in the 1880s, the New York State Commission of Fisheries, Game, and Forests had introduced the species into a new habitat; it was a popular sport fish and it seemed like a good idea. Likewise, we learn that Chautauqua Lake was used as a hatchery for 3 million muskellunge annually. A Rochesterian named Seth Green was one of the first to perfect modern pisciculture, but the interrelations between individual species and larger ecosystems weren't well understood at the time. Northern reaches of the Hudson and what would become the Adirondack State Park were highly valued by anglers because many fish were disappearing from waters closer to humans. Chain pike needed shallow, weedy habitats that were deemy swampy--and therefore often "drained"--so to preserve a valued game fish pickerel were introduced into new locations: uncontaminated water, plenty of weeds. The species continues to expand its range.

Orra A. Phelps, "Tahawus" (1937)

The highest point in New York State was named after Governor William L. Marcy, the person who authorized an exploratory expedition resulting in the first recorded ascent of that peak by a European in 1837. Still, during the 19th century efforts were made to rename the peak in a way acknowledging indigenous peoples--who had been displaced by colonists. The name Tahawus—"Cloudsplitter"—became a sort of poetic alternative to the official name. As part of the Centenniel Celebration of the peak's first ascent, Phelps had planned to climb the peak following that historical route, but when the leader didn't show up she and friend improvised a route of their own. Her poem written afterward became a popular anthemn for the Adirondack Mountain Club and its "Forty-Sixers"—those having climbed all the high peaks in New York state higher than 4,000 feet in height.

Thomas Cole, View of Schroon Mountain, Essex County, New York, After a Storm (1838). Perhaps the most influential American painter of the 19th century, Cole’s spectacular scenes of upstate New York sparked a "Hudson River School" of landscape painting. In contrast to the castles and history of Europe, Cole thought that “the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness.” Here, the rugged peak now named Hoffman Mountain is associated not simply with picturesque beauty but an untouched Nature that affects “the mind with a more deep toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched.” The only human traces he allows in this composition are Native Americans, barely visible in the right foreground and canoeing on the lake. As such, Cole’s representations of primeval nature often blurred with explicitly allegorical works like The Course of Empire or The Voyage of Life.