Virtual Program

In the summer of 1851, long before the central Adirondacks became a vacation destination, two young landscape painters crossed the region all the way from Lowville to Crown Point looking for wilderness scenes to sketch. Jervis McEntee and his friend Joseph Tubby would go on to become respected landscape painters. Guided by Asa Puffer, a local woodsman, they walked and paddled over 200 miles not including side trips. As they travelled, they met every working Adirondack guide of those times as well as many early settlers, hermits and a surprising number of other travelers.

This epic sketching trip has received little notice until now. Fortunately, the artists both kept journals, and McEntee’s handwritten journal has been preserved in the collection of the research library of the Adirondack Experience. The story of the sketching trip is based on McEntee’s journal as well as a host of other obscure original sources including Tubby’s journal, newspaper articles, letters and a formerly anonymous magazine article.

Based on this research, and using the tools of literary non-fiction, Pitts has fashioned a series of thirty letters that the artists could have written. These letters allow the reader to become deeply familiar with the artists and their experience of the pristine Adirondack wilderness. Every letter is followed by an author’s note that explains the factual basis for the claims in the letters. The book also contains illustrations by McEntee and original maps tracing the route.

About the Author:

Edward Pitts is a retired attorney and former Social Security Administrative Law Judge who lives in Syracuse, NY. He now spends his time researching, writing and lecturing about Adirondack history. Syracuse University Press has published two of his Adirondack history books: Beaver River Country: an Adirondack History (2022) and Sketching the Adirondacks; Letters from the Wilderness (2025). His articles on Adirondack history have appeared in Adirondack Life, Adirondac, LOCALadk, and online on Adirondack Almanack and the New York Almanack. He also maintains a blog of short illustrated articles titled Annals of the Beaver River. He is a member of the Rap-Shaw Club on Stillwater Reservoir in the west-central Adirondacks where he was president of the board of directors from 2011 until 2016. Before becoming a lawyer, he taught philosophy courses at St. Bonaventure University and at the Pennsylvania State University.