English: As the green heart of New York state, the forests of the Adirondack Mountains were first brought under protection in 1885 when the New York State Legislature created the Adirondack Forest Preserve. Prior to this time, the dense forests were widely stripped to stumps by expanding lumber, paper, leather tanning, and iron mining industries. The commitment to preservation and stewardship of the forests of the region was expanded in 1892 by the formation of the Adirondack Park, and cemented in 1894 when an amendment was added to the state constitution that read, in part “The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve … shall be forever kept as wild forest lands.”

Today the Park encompasses approximately 6 million acres, and is the largest publicly protected area in the contiguous United States. It is larger than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier and Grand Canyon National Park combined. The Park boundaries include not only preserved forest, but also private lands, allowing towns, farming, business, and recreation to thrive.

The Adirondack Mountains are unusual in several ways – particularly in their shape. Unlike typical mountains ranges - such as the Appalachians or Rocky Mountains - which stretch in roughly linear formation, the Adirondacks form a circular dome. This dome is about 160 miles (258 km) wide and 1 mile (1.6 km) high. Geologically speaking, the mountains are relatively new, formed about 5 million years ago.

On July 30, 2017, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image of a summer day in the Adirondacks. The deep green circular region marks the heavily-forested mountains. Lake Champlain sits in the northwest and the Green Mountains sit under a light cloud cover on right edge of the image.