New York State Board of Commissioners of the Land Office Forest Preserve Land Purchase Proposal Files

Numerical by proposal number corresponding to rough chronological order of correspondence.

The Board of Commissioners of the Land Office supervised the use, acquisition, and disposition of state lands not already under another jurisdiction. Legislation of 1885 established both a state forest preserve and a Forest Commission to maintain and control it. The law designated 14 counties in which land then owned or subsequently acquired by the state would be preserved as forever wild forest land. Subsequent laws appropriated funds for the acquisition of additional lands for the preserve.

The series consists of correspondence, appraisal and survey descriptions, and a few maps relating to proposed land purchases for expansion of the Adirondack Forest Preserve. The files track activities surrounding purchase of land for the Forest Preserve from the purchase proposals made to the Board of Commissioners of the Land Office by the Conservation Department (earlier the Conservation Commission) to the Board's approval of the purchase.

The Conservation Department proposals, consisting of letters to the Board recommending purchase of specified parcels of land, indicate the location, name, or lot number(s) of the tracts(s) and often a price per acre and total cost. Proposals are accompanied by an appraisal and survey description of the land indicating: metes and bounds; types of trees and other characteristics of the land; by whom offered for sale; price at which offered; amount appraised at; and recommended purchase price.

Some correspondence indicates other considerations such as easements, mineral deposits, and outstanding mineral rights. In a few cases, the State Geologist provides detailed information on the mineral content of the land. Many proposals have a handwritten annotation indicating the Board's approval of the purchase on a specified date. Files for some proposals are missing. Missing files are noted in the container list.

There are six maps scattered in the series. The maps are either annotated print tract maps or unannotated blueprint maps that accompany the Conservation Department recommendations and show land in the Adirondack Mountains recommended for purchase. The maps cover land in Hamilton, Essex, St. Lawrence, and Fulton counties. They often deal with land offered for sale by lumber companies, or, in one case, for an easement right-of-way to construct and maintain a telephone line proposed for the protection of the forestlands in the vicinity. Information on title, scale, surveyor, and legend is usually present on the blueprints, but the print maps are merely cut-out sections that have been colored in crayon to show the purchase areas in question. The maps range in size from 24 x 21.5 cm to 47 x 159 cm.

Microform is available at the New York State Archives through interlibrary loan.

This series was microfilmed by State Archives staff in 1995 as part of a cooperative reformatting project with the State Dept. of Environmental Conservation, funded by a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

There are no restrictions regarding access to or use of this material.