Hughes and the Adirondacks — Legislature at Fort Ti

The latest in an occasional series of posts

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is often praised for bringing downstate legislators to the region for his Adirondack Challenge outdoor recreation events.

Gov. Charles Evans Hughes brought the entire state Legislature to Fort Ticonderoga on July 6, 1909 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Samuel de Champlain’s discovery of the region — a feat that impressed newspaper reporter James A. Edgerton at the time.

“It would do his old French soul good to know just what a lot of fuss we are making about him (Champlain) nearly 300 years after he is dead,” Edgerton wrote in a report preserved in Institutional Scrapbook Volume 1 at Fort Ticonderoga Museum. “It is much for a mere mortal to have a president of the United States and a governor general of Canada do honor to his ashes, but to have the New York legislature journey in a body to his shore — surely that is the acme of fame!”

Members of the Legislature traveled to Ticonderoga as a group on a special train from Albany.

Most other reporters covering the event focused on President William Howard Taft, who arrived along with the French and British ambassadors on a separate special train later in the day.

“As I sat here listening to the interesting remarks of the ambassador from France and the ambassador from England, I could not but congratulate the United States on the implied compliment that these two countries have paid to her by sending here, as the personal representatives of their respective executives, men so distinguished in literature, in history, in statesmanship, and in diplomacy,” Taft began his speech, according to a July 9, 1909 report in the Troy Record.

Click here to read the most recent previous post in the series.