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The Great Hall at the museum in Tupper Lake, N.Y.
FROM space, the Adirondacks at night appear as a black void amid a sea of glittering lights. Established more than a century ago, the six-million-acre Adirondack Park — a mix of public and private lands roughly the size of Vermont, with huge stretches of wilderness — has grown ever more remarkable as development has fundamentally altered much of the Northeast.
With hundreds of lakes and seemingly endless mountains that support bears and moose, alpine tundra and centuries-old trees, the Adirondacks can generate the same rush of wonder that the West does — a dizzying appreciation of time and space. But apart from the backcountry hiker or expert naturalist, few visitors come to know the Adirondacks in any meaningful way.
Now, with the opening of the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, there is a chance to grasp the science behind the scenery: the complex relationships underpinning a wilderness landscape that is also host to humans.
The museum, nicknamed the Wild Center, opened on Tuesday, the $30 million brainchild of a former New York State environmental employee with deep family roots in the Adirondacks. It marries stunning design, paying homage to the great-camp vernacular with local stone and timber, and an educational philosophy that seeks to inject science with sizzle through high-tech multisensory exhibitions.
The museum sits on 31 acres, part of which functioned years ago as a gravel mine, a fact that the founders felt good about because it meant not having to disturb a pristine environment to construct their building. A trail wends gradually down to the Raquette River, with two attractive lookout points, and a staff naturalist is available to lead museumgoers on guided walks.
Visitors enter via the Great Hall, a nine-sided space studded with nine birch trees. Directly ahead is a wall of glass overlooking an artificially created pond and wetland. In an opening ceremony, the pond was stocked with brown trout, rainbow trout and painted turtles. (Gov. George E Pataki and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton released one each.) Even before opening day, however, another painted turtle had wandered in on its own and was seen swimming the pond.
THE museum is not large compared with the Adirondack Museum 30 miles to the south in Blue Mountain Lake, which has 22 buildings and focuses on the human history of the Adirondacks. But the natural history museum makes an ideal companion to the older institution and is smartly laid out, taking visitors on a stimulating tour of the natural characteristics of Adirondack landscapes, from bogs to trout streams to mountain summits.
A living river exhibition runs along one wall. It begins with a trout pool and then turns into a lower trout stream, then an upper trout stream and then a plunge pool before finally culminating in a waterfall where river otters cavort over faux boulders. An exhibit about marshes presents snapping turtles, smallmouth bass, northern pike, yellow perch and pumpkinseed sunfish. Psychedelically hued wood ducks and giant waterbugs are on their way.
There are so many live creatures — 75 species will be represented — that the center almost feels more like a mini-zoo than a museum. Children are allowed to touch. They can dip their hands in the river exhibition, which includes a shallow tank with rocks, tiny fish and tools in front of a large aquarium containing rainbow trout.
At the marsh exhibition, there is a whimsical keyboard that enthralled my 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son. Each key made a different animal or insect sound, from the haunting vibrato of the loon to the whine of the mosquito. Their duet was surprisingly jazzy, thanks to the bass note of a bullfrog. "You can play your own natural symphony," a staff biologist, Leah Filo, said.
The architect, the St. Louis-based firm of Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum, has festooned the museum with huge, color-saturated nature photographs, along with projected images. There are also quotations worth pondering, blown up and illuminated, like one from Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814): "Nature is one connected whole. At any given moment every part must be precisely what it is, because all other parts are what they are."
The managing director, Elizabeth M. Lowe, who worked in public affairs for the state's Department of Environmental Conservation for almost 20 years, conceived of the museum in the late 1990's. Her family's ties to the Adirondacks go back 100 years. Her great uncle owned a resort on Long Lake, and she has a remote cabin there, accessible only by boat.
Ms. Lowe was fascinated by the forces of nature in the park, which showed their power in a "microburst" windstorm in 1995 that felled and injured trees over more than 400,000 acres and an ice storm a few years later that damaged a million acres. Those events inspired educational displays that she created while working at the state agency. "The Adirondacks is such an incredible place, with so many unique natural features," she said "It struck me that we needed our own natural history museum."
She capitalized on two decades of professional contacts with environmentalists, sportsmen and political leaders, making 200 phone calls to anyone who might have an opinion on the potential for a museum.
The first fund-raising effort, a simple letter offering membership in a museum that existed only in theory, brought in $500,000. Eight years and more than 5,000 donations later, the museum has raised about $30 million (about a third of it from government sources), a staggering amount in a region that still has pockets of poverty despite the affluence of some of its second-home owners.
"The most important thing about the Adirondacks is the fact that it is the world's best model for humanity and nature living together," said Donald K Clifford Jr. (a k a Obie), the president of the museum's board. Mr. Clifford, a Westchester County resident and former member of the American Museum of Natural History's executive committee, owns a house on Big Wolf Lake, a private association created by his grandfather in 1916.
The exclusive association, with only 31 members, contributed $5 million to the museum project, an act of generosity that earned it a weighty plaque embedded in the floor of the Great Hall, which is dedicated to Big Wolf Lake.
The outpouring of support reflects the deep affection of residents and visitors for the Adirondacks, as well as concern for its future. Acid rain has taken a toll on the scenic lakes, and the park's growing popularity has translated into a spike in homebuilding on property that was previously untouched.
The successful fund-raising also enabled Ms. Lowe and her team to execute their vision with first-rate talent and sumptuous building materials. In a corner of the museum called the Naturalist Cabinet, which is the equivalent of a discovery room, floor-to-ceiling shelves are fashioned from satiny birch and cabinets have wrought-iron drawer pulls shaped like twigs.
This is where museumgoers of all ages are encouraged to slow down and probe the natural world more deeply. There are taxidermy specimens, bones, plaster-cast animal tracks, pelts, microscopes, scientific literature, children's books, games and puzzles. There are even art supplies in case anyone has an urge to capture the tranquil pond outside the window.
One educational game called "Guess What I Ate?" explores scat, or, as Lisa Rodriguez, a naturalist, translated for my children, "animal poop." Children read clues like this one: "I live in an evergreen forest. I eat plants and bark from high up in trees. I'm an herbivore." They then try to identify the animal, in this case a porcupine, and find its scat from a box of realistic-looking rubber models.
The museum is still a work in progress. Landscaping work remains to be done around the building and the wetland. And some of the exhibitions were still awaiting animals as the museum officially opened.
But the contents of the museum are perfectly complemented by the trail leading down to an oxbow in the Raquette River, where ruby-throated hummingbirds moved silently among birch trees, Scotch pines and meadowsweet. Brad Donahue, one of the museum's naturalists, pointed out the flute-like refrain of a wood thrush in the distance.
By the river, all seemed still. A green frog peered out from the muddy bank. Two dragonflies mated. A pumpkinseed sunfish guarded a nest she had carved in the river bed. Whirligig beetles skated between lily pads, and white admiral butterflies flitted around us. All seemed still, that is, until we really looked.
If You Go
The Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks (518-359-7800; www.wildcenter.org, informally called the Wild Center, is at 45 Museum Drive in Tupper Lake, N.Y., about a 300-mile drive north of New York City. To reach it from Interstate 87 (called the Northway north of Albany), take Exit 30 and turn left on Route 73 toward Lake Placid. Stay left at the fork a few miles before Lake Placid, taking Old Military Road, which ends at Route 86. Turn left onto Route 86 West, toward Saranac Lake, and merge with Route 3 at the first light. Continue on Route 3 to Tupper Lake. As you enter Tupper Lake, turn left on Hosley Avenue. The museum entrance is on the left.
The museum is open daily except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day and two weeks in April. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in summer and fall and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday, Saturday, Sunday & Monday from Columbus Day to Memorial Day. Admission is $14 for adults, with discounts for children and people over 65