New York's Forever Wild: The Forest Preserve at One Hundred

This tablet, placed in nineteen eighty-five, marks the one hundredth anniversary of the New York State Forest Preserve. In eighteen eighty-five, the state legislature set aside the Adirondack and Catskill forest lands as public property, to be kept as wild forest forever. Nine years later, the protection was written directly into the state constitution, making it nearly impossible to reverse.

The language was stark and intentional: the lands shall be forever kept as wild forest. No lumber company, no developer, no future legislature could undo it without a constitutional amendment passed by two successive legislatures and then approved by voters. The logic behind the rule was partly ecological and partly economic: the forests protected the watersheds that fed the Erie Canal and the Hudson River, keeping the arteries of New York commerce clear.

The mountains and streams here are still wild because of that decision.