History
The mountain is named after former governor William L. Marcy, who authorized the environmental survey that explored the area including its highest peak, known at that time as Tahawus. "Tahawus" is an Indian word that means "cloud splitter;" the local Indians, however, actually had no name for this mountain - the name Tahawus was given to the mountain by white settlers of the area. The first recorded ascent of Mount Marcy was in August 5, 1837 by a large party led by Ebenezer Emmons. The party was looking for source of the East Fork of the Hudson River. Today the ascent is easier due to existing trails that require no technical skills, allowing ascent and descent to be made in a day. Vice President (and former governor) Theodore Roosevelt had just finished climbing Mount Marcy when he learned that President William McKinley, who had been shot in Buffalo but had apparently recovered, had taken a sudden turn for the worse and would not survive his wounds.
Read more about this topic: Mount Marcy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
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