Our treasured John Boyd Thacher State Park was not always in the public domain. John and his wife, Emma Treadwell Thacher, spent summers in the Helderbergs during the late 19th Century. In 1900, they purchased a summer cottage near the Helderberg Inn overlooking the village of Altamont.
The summer cottage became a summer home and eventually a full-blown mansion called “The Ravines” due to its proximity to a large ravine carrying runoff from the mountain into the village of Altamont below.
The Thachers were very involved socially with prominent people like Verplanck Colvin, who played a critical role in the preservation of the Adirondack Mountains. He is widely considered the “father of the Adirondack Park.” He also began his career as a topographer, writing about the Helderbergs in an 1969 edition of Harpers magazine…