“Either someone shows you the way here, or your car gets a flat tire,” said Dan Reynolds, a nurse from Syracuse who spends many weekends here in Township 40. “And that’s just the way we like it.”
But come next week, voters across New York State will be asked to settle a century-old skirmish here, one pitting the state against residents in a township where a numerical name dates to a group of just-the-facts surveyors in the 1700s.
At issue are more than 200 parcels of land, spread across the township, which the state has long maintained as its property, to the dismay of those living there who think they are the owners. Over the decades, lawyers and legislators have proposed more than 100 solutions, all of which stalled, prompting some residents to paint their homes green in hopes of being overlooked by state surveyors. There have been lawsuits — some won by the state, some by residents.
“If your land is contested, you can’t get a mortgage,” said Jim Dillon, the proprietor of the Raquette Lake Hotel and Tap Room, a combination of a bar, a restaurant, a laundry and a general store on the shores of the lake, a place its fans describe with almost Brigadoon-like luster. Pines shoot out of small islands in the middle of the clear and placid lake, which is ringed with cabins, camps and homes, some accessible only by boat.
“If you’re a millionaire, and it’s a second home, maybe it’s not a big deal,” Mr. Dillon said. “But if you’re a working man, it is.”
The latest possible fix, on the statewide ballot as Proposal 4, would permit the Legislature to settle the title disputes and add new forest preserve lands, namely a lake-to-lake canoe carry on the Marion River.
And while most local land disputes do not require a constitutional amendment, the Township 40 situation does because it involves an adjustment to the “Forever Wild” provision in the State Constitution — Article 14, which guarantees no sale, exchange or destruction of forest preserve. The measure has already been approved twice by the Legislature, a condition for any constitutional amendment.
Tensions about land ownership in the area have run high at least since President Roosevelt’s administration (Theodore, not Franklin). “Adirondack Squatters and Camp Owners Clash,” read a headline from the Nov. 15, 1903, edition of The New York Times, which outlined arguments that still resonate. “They claim that the state’s title to the land, which was obtained by virtue of tax sales, is defective.”
Joseph Martens, the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, acknowledged that the titles for many of these properties were “very confused,” mentioning a range of mix-ups, including contested tax sales, poor descriptions of property lines, or cases where two landowners both thought they owned the same property. “The state was acquiring pieces of land as it has done since the creation of the park,” Mr. Martens said, “but private landowners had title to the same property and built residences and camps on the land.”
This is not the first time that voters have been asked to weigh in on such a local issue, including those in Township 40. In 2007, voters approved the use of forest preserve land for wells in Raquette Lake, where all the disputed Township 40 parcels are. “Forever Wild” has been altered several times since its constitutional inclusion in the 1890s for minor changes like the building of a public cemetery (and cutting down some trees) or extending a runway (into a forest). Voters last said yes to a change to Article 14 in 2009 when the state was allowed to swap six acres to the power company National Grid for a new power line in exchange for 10 acres of forest.
But local residents this year are worried, fearing that downstate voters will reflexively reject a complicated land deal about a place they might not have heard of.
“I’m afraid that some people will look at it and not know what it is and vote no,’” said Lance Maly, a retired conservation officer, who lives in Old Forge, in neighboring Herkimer County. “As I might for something in Suffolk County.”
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