Protecting Great Camp Sagamore
In this post we take a look at one of the League’s major early victories. The campaign to save Great Camp Sagamore began in 1975 — just a year after the League was founded — with advocacy that saved the main camp complex, and continued in the early 1980s with a complicated legislative process that further protected the 11 historic outbuildings on the Sagamore campus.
An article from the September 5, 1983, New York Times highlights the “complicated land exchange” New Yorkers voted on that year.
Shortly after the League’s founding in 1974, the organization found itself at the center of a major statewide initiative: protecting Great Camp Sagamore. Beginning in 1975, the League took on a leading role in ensuring that the historic Great Camp would be preserved. Built by William West Durant between 1897 and 1901, Sagamore is one of the finest extant examples of Adirondack architecture. From 1954-1975, Sagamore had been owned by Syracuse University and used as a conference and educational facility. By 1975 the University decided to move on from Sagamore and sell the site to New York State — but recognized that by doing so it would be putting the historic structures in peril.
The “forever wild” provision of New York’s state constitution stipulates that buildings on land acquired by the State for Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserves must be demolished. The League lobbied the state to preserve the camp by offering them by bid to the recently established Sagamore Institute, a nonprofit that would preserve and use the camp in a compatible manner within its wilderness setting. Through a special property transfer, ownership of Sagamore passed through the Preservation League just long enough for the organization to insert covenants in the deed to ensure the long-term care of the main camp buildings.
From a 1985 New York Times article titled Camp Sagamore: A Brighter Future, “Concerned that the camp faced destruction, the Preservation League of New York State took up the cause. In November 1975 the league worked out a complicated deal giving it title to seven acres, including the main house and other important buildings, with the state keeping the 1,518 remaining acres. After inserting covenants in the deed to protect the structures, the league resold the property to the Sagamore Institute for $100,000.
A promotional poster made by the League in 1983 to help inform voters about the Sagamore Land Exchange proposal.
Unfortunately, though the main camp was saved, the original farm structures and support buildings of Great Camp Sagamore were not included in that 1975 arrangement. In the early 1980s, the League organized the Coalition to Save Camp Sagamore. Made up of more than 70 national, state, and local preservation and civic organizations, the group sought to advance statewide legislation to protect the historic buildings from loss. The proposed amendment to the State constitution required the Sagamore Institute to give 240 acres of undeveloped land to the State to be included in the Adirondack Forest Preserve, and in exchange the state would give up about 10 acres of land on which the historic outbuildings stood. Once the bill was passed by two consecutively elected state legislatures, the Coalition led a large-scale campaign that convinced 63% of the state’s voters to approve the Sagamore Land Exchange. The Sagamore Institute continues to steward the historic buildings of the Great Camp and the land on which it sits as a welcoming place for education and connections to history, nature, and community.
These photos from Great Camp Sagamore were taken in 2021.
