The Adirondack Mountains are an unusual geological formation located in the northeastern lobe of Upstate New York in the United States. The mountains rise in Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Lewis, St. Lawrence, Saratoga, Warren, and Washington counties.
Unlike other mountain ranges that run along fault lines, the Adirondack mountains resemble a dome. They were formed by recent uplift that has exposed previously deeply buried and ancient rocks more than a billion years old. The same rocks can be found in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, Canada, and the Adirondacks can be considered the southernmost expression of this range. They are bordered on the east by Lake Champlain and Lake George, which separate them from the Green Mountains in Vermont. They are bordered to the south by the Mohawk Valley, and to the west by the Tug Hill Plateau, separated by the Black River. This region is south of the Saint Lawrence River.
State Park
The Adirondack Mountains are contained within the 6.1 million acres (2.5×106 ha) of the Adirondack Park, which includes a constitutionally protected Forest Preserve of approximately 2,300,000 acres (930,000 ha). About 43% of the land is owned by the state, with 57% private inholdings, heavily regulated by the Adirondack Park Agency. The Adirondack Park contains thousands of streams, brooks and lakes, most famously Lake Placid, adjacent to the village of Lake Placid, two-time site of the Olympic Winter Games, the Saranac Lakes, favored by the sportsmen who made the Adirondacks famous, and Raquette Lake, site of many of the first Great Camps.
