ADIRONDACK: America's Notional Park
Adirondack Park, the largest park in the lower 48 states, was established in 1892, when the state government drew a line around a few million acres of land in upstate New York. The park was intended in part to preserve wilderness, though much of the land was (and continues to be) inhabited, developed, and privately owned. Captured within the park boundary is a wide spectrum of American life and history, from pristine woodlands and native grounds romanticized and exploited by Gilded Age industrialists, to tourist attractions of postwar family travel car culture, and soiled lands of the post-industrial present. Still evolving with the rest of the country, this unique Notional Park seems to suggest: what if the whole of America was a park?
2021 CLUI Research Project