House To Survive, Adirondack State Park, New York, United States

Not all of the land within the park is owned by the state, although new sections are frequently purchased or donated. State land comprises 2,700,000 acres (11,000 km2), about 45% of the park's area, including the highest peaks in New York State, as well as Mount Marcy, the highest elevation in the state. About 1 million acres (4,000 km2) of this is classified as wilderness, with most of the remainder managed under the somewhat less stringent wild forest classification. Villages and hamlets comprise less than 1% of the area of the park; the remaining area of more than 3 million acres (12,000 km2) is privately held but is generally sparsely developed. There is often no clear demarcation between state, private, and wilderness lands in the park. Signs marking the Adirondack Park boundary can be found on most of the major roads in the region, but there are no entrance gates and no admission fee.
History
The vast majority of the Adirondack Mountains are within the bounds of the traditional territory of the Mohawk First Nation until at least 1720. A sedentary agrarian democratic society before Contact, they controlled the eastern part of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy or Six Nations. The Mohawk population had already been decimated by European diseases when they were largely driven out of their homeland by foreign European settlers. Although the Confederacy was divided, most of the Iroquois sided with the British during the American Revolution. After the war, most of the Iroquois land which fell within the American border was forcefully signed over through treaties or seized outright. During the 19th century, the U.S. Government forced most of the Iroquois off their traditional territory into reservations in the Midwest. Many escaped to Canada, where they were granted land in the British colony of Upper Canada, modern day Ontario. Citizens of the Mohawk Nation, numbering around 125,000 today, now live mostly north of the Saint Lawrence River in Canada along with the other member nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The Iroquois are now in the midst of land claims proceedings over parts of the state of New York.