The Adirondack Park is a part of New York's Forest Preserve in New York, United States. The park's boundary corresponds to the Adirondack Mountains. Unlike most preserves, about 52 percent of the land is privately owned inholdings heavily regulated by the Adirondack Park Agency. This area contains 102 towns and villages, as well as numerous farms, businesses, and an active timber harvesting industry. The year-round population is 132,000, with 200,000 seasonal residents. The inclusion of human communities makes the park one of the great experiments in conservation in the industrialized world.The park's 6.1e6acre include more than 10,000 lakes, 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, and a wide variety of habitats including wetlands and old-growth forests.HistoryFor the history of the area before the formation of the park, see The History of the Adirondack Mountains.Early tourismBefore the 19th century, the wilderness was viewed as desolate and forbidding. As Romanticism developed in the United States, the view of wilderness became more positive, as seen in the writings of James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.The 1849 publication of Joel Tyler Headley's Adirondack; or, Life in the Woods triggered the development of hotels and stage coach lines. William Henry Harrison Murray's 1869 wilderness guidebook depicted the area as a place of relaxation and pleasure rather than a natural obstacle.
