numbered peaks in the 'daks

[nundagao]

There are two series (that I know of) of small peaks in the northeastern Adirondacks which are designated on the USGS 15' quads as AuSable #1, 2, 3 and 4; and Elizabethtown #1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Maybe that's how they were identified in Colvin's original surveys. A few have other names. For example AuSable #1 is Bluff Mountain and E'town #1 is Knoblock. Does anyone know of any other series like that?

 

[ColdRiverRun]

The Sawtooths and Fishing Brook area come immediately to mind.

 

[DSettahr]

I recall that there is also a series of numbered hills in the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness.

EDIT:

This Map shows a No 8 Mountain, and No 6, No 7, and No 8 Hills in the area. The other numbers in the series were probably all renamed at some point.

 

[Raymond]

Those Ausable and Elizabethtown numbers are off U.S.G.S. benchmarks, I think.

There’s a mountain named Eleventh Mountain, but I don’t know where that name came from.

 

[Rik]

Those Ausable and Elizabethtown numbers are off U.S.G.S. benchmarks, I think.

There’s a mountain named Eleventh Mountain, but I don’t know where that name came from.

I believe tracts of land were numbered during early surveys. I think Eleventh Mt. was the prominent feature in tract 11.

 

[DSettahr]

I believe tracts of land were numbered during early surveys. I think Eleventh Mt. was the prominent feature in tract 11.

Yep, Eleventh Mountain is in Township 11 of Toten and Crossfield's Purchase. Thirteenth Lake is also in Township 13 of the same survey.

Also, Gore Mountain is in a tract of land labeled as "Gore between Townships 12 and 13." Wonder if that's how the mountain got it's name?

(A gore is a section of land that when surveyed, was not incorporated into any town. It usually resulted either from mistakes in the original surveying, or from surveying lines being at weird angles resulting in small parcels of land or parcels of weird shapes that weren't worth trying to incorporate into a town.)

Looking at No 6, 7, and 8 Hills in the Pharaoh Lakes, they look like they are near Tracts 6, 7, and 8 of the Schroon Tract respectively, but that's probably just a coincidence.

 

[TCD]

I have read that that is indeed how Gore Mountain got it's name.

 

[Tom Rankin]

Numbered peaks?

23?

46?

100?

222?

 

[tgoodwin]

The numbered series such as "Ausable No. 4" are from the USGS survey that was conducted in the early 1940's. This is the survey that set most of the benchmarks we now find on summits. (I guess because of WWII the commercial topo maps derived from that survey weren't available until 1953 or so)
The surveyors would establish a main station on summits such as Hurricane, Cascade, and Marcy. On most of these summits one can find a main disk and two reference marks with arrows pointing to the main disk. The surveyors then "turned angles" to both the reference marks and to the flags placed in drill holes at the numbered locations in order to establish the correct horizontal position for these features. While hikers are usually most concerned about elevation, a GPS unit wouldn't be worth anything without accurate horizontal positions.
As for Gore Mt., the term "gore" came from the textile trade and referred to a long narrow triangle of cloth that could not be used for anything else. When two survey lines differed, they often diverged at only a slightly different angle and thus created long thin triangles. After the Gore Mt. gore, perhaps the most significant gore is the "Gore around Lake Colden, which extended west through the Cold River area. Noah Rondeau's Hermitage was in this gore as it wasn't clear that the State had actually bought this gore when they bought the land to the north and south from the Santa Clara Lumber Company.

 

[DSettahr]

After the Gore Mt. gore, perhaps the most significant gore is the "Gore around Lake Colden, which extended west through the Cold River area. Noah Rondeau's Hermitage was in this gore as it wasn't clear that the State had actually bought this gore when they bought the land to the north and south from the Santa Clara Lumber Company.

According to my map, Rondeau's hermitage wasn't in the "Gore around Lake Colden," but rather what is labeled as the "Morse Gore," which contains much of the cold river area and appears to have resulted from the differing angles that were used to survey Macomb's Purchase and Totten and Crossfield's Purchase. The boundary line between the two purchases runs right through this area, and resulted in the Gore around Lake Colden as well. There's another Gore between the two purchases (in the Mt. Adams area) labeled as the "Gore east of Township 47," referring to Township 47 in Totten and Crossfield's Purchase.