The Paul & Ruth Jamieson papers (MSS 74) hold a particularly important place in our Adirondack collections, given the lasting significance of Paul Jamieson’s work as a writer and a conservationist. His four major books taken together offer a twentieth-century version of the Adirondack landscape and ideal, and his work to establish rights of passage for waterways throughout the Adirondacks has positively impacted generations of Adirondack pilgrims.
We have recently added to the Paul and Ruth Jamieson papers with an addition to the Paul Jamieson Christine Jerome correspondence. Christine Jerome is the author of An Adirondack Passage, an account of her recreating George Washington Sears’ 1883 paddle and portage across the central and western Adirondacks (266 miles). The correspondence details their overlapping research interests, the writer-to-writer support they shared, and their individual perspectives on wilderness preservation. Within these letters, there is some extraordinary descriptive nature writing, and a real sense of both Jerome and Jamieson as active and insightful readers. These letters very much further our understanding of who Paul Jamieson was, and they are available for viewing in the Frank and Anne Piskor Reading Room.