Adirondack Mountain Climber
Emmons gave the Adirondacks their name in 1838. The name "Adirondacks" is an Anglicized version of the Mohawk ratirontaks, meaning "they eat trees", a derogatory name which the Mohawk historically applied to neighboring Algonquian-speaking tribes; when food was scarce, the Algonquians would eat the buds and bark of trees.
Emmons who was studying the geology of the Adirondacks led the first recorded climb of Mount Marcy on August 5, 1837. Emmons party was looking for the headwaters of the East Fork of the Hudson River which it found at Lake Tear of the Clouds on the mountain.
Mount Emmons in the Adirondacks is named for him.
Read more about this topic: Ebenezer Emmons
Famous quotes containing the words adirondack and/or mountain:
“New York has her wilderness within her own borders; and though the sailors of Europe are familiar with the soundings of her Hudson, and Fulton long since invented the steamboat on its waters, an Indian is still necessary to guide her scientific men to its headwaters in the Adirondack country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I never weary of great churches. It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)