Mountain Esther Mountain NAME THAT

WRITTEN BY ROBERT C. LAWRENCE Part of the "WHAT'S WITH THOSE ADIRONDACK MOUNTAIN NAMES?" Series.

While kayaking on beautiful Lake Durant near Blue Mountain Lake, New York, one June day, my wife, Carol Ann, asked me, "Where does Blue Mountain get its name?" So we visited the nearby Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake (now the Adirondack Experience) to find a book on the subject. But, unfortunately, there was no such book.

Thus, I began researching the place name for Blue Mountain and other oronyms (mountain place names). Nobel Prize Literature Winner Toni Morrison once remarked, "If you find a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." So, I wrote, What's With Those Adirondack Mountain Names? which provides insight into more than one hundred Adirondack oronyms.

Not surprisingly, only four of these mountains: Esther Mountain, Mount Jo, Grace Peak, and Mount Inez, were fortunate enough to have women's names bestowed on them. Who were these women? What are their stories? In this column in Simply Saratoga magazine, we attempt to pique your interest, but the whole story is in What's With Those Adirondack Women Mountain Names?

Legend has it that in August 1839, Esther McComb, an adventurous fifteen-year-old girl, set out to climb what would later be known as Whiteface Mountain, despite her parents' wishes. Unfortunately, she took a wrong turn resulting in ascending a neighboring nameless mountain. While exploring that mountain, Esther became lost, but fortunately, searchers found her the following day. After the incident, her mother jokingly called the mountain Esther. The name stuck. Locals, too, called the mountain Esther. Still, outsiders did not even know it existed, including Geologist Ebenezer Emmons, who had surveyed the area in 1837 and had given the Adirondacks its name. It would not be until C.H. Burt mentioned it in his 1865 book, The Opening of the Adirondacks, that people learned of the mountain's existence.

In 1923, Wallace Goodspeed, whose family was one of the first settlers near today's Esther Mountain, told the story he had heard as a boy to Charles Beede, a famous Keene Valley guide. Beede retold the story to author and historian Russell Carson, who later published it in Peaks and People of the Adirondacks.

Grace Hudowalski, the first woman to become an Adirondack 46er, described in The Cloudsplitter (Albany Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club publication) in 1939 what it must have been like for Esther McComb to climb the peak. Grace said, "She pushed on through brush and tall trees, scaled bump after bump, and pulled herself over ledges until she finally stood atop her mountain…she had climbed a mountain for pleasure. Unheard of! For Adventure. Incredible!"

That same year a plaque by the Adirondack Forty-sixers was placed on Esther's summit, commemorating Esther McComb's spirit and the ascension of the mountain "for the sheer joy of climbing." Imagine that!

What's With Those Adirondack Mountain Names?

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