In the Adirondack Library
This is a virtual program.
Since 1912, when a young man named George Gray landed an open-cockpit biplane on a farmer’s field, aviation has played an important role in communities located throughout the 6 million-acre Adirondack Park. Through a range of historic images and postcards, Aurora Pfaff tells the story of pilots who linked communities by air, transported goods and people, and the small towns and airfields that they called home. From the novelty of planes landing on skis and daredevil flying circuses to forest fire patrols, exploration of the vast backcountry, and toy deliveries by Santa, airplanes have opened the Adirondack wilderness and made remote communities more easily accessible for tourists and adventurers. Yet this golden age for aviation would not last, for as car travel became easier and more affordable in the mid- to late-20th century, air travel in the Adirondacks would fade in importance and necessity.
Images used in Aviation in the Adirondacks come from the Adirondack Experience: The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, Historic Saranac Lake, Keene Valley Library, Piseco Lake Historical Society, Saranac Lake Free Library Adirondack Research Room, Town of Webb Historical Association, individuals, and other organizations.
Aurora Wheeler Pfaff is a freelance writer and content manager based in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. She writes passionately about history, natural history, and extraordinary ordinary people.
A lifelong reader, Aurora has a degrees in Liberal Arts from the Harvard Extension School, where she studied Victorian literature and took the world’s coolest astronomy class.
Aurora’s recent projects have included articles on the reading habits of the queens of England, bog plant life, and flying over the Adirondacks. She is currently at work on a memoir about caring for her grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease. Aviation in the Adirondacks is her first book.
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9097 State Route 30, P.O. Box 99
Blue Mountain Lake, NY 12812
Opening Day 2024 
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