[3] The Adirondack mountain range has such unusual characteristics compared to the area around it that it is divided into its own province within the Appalachian Highlands physiographic division.

[4] It is bounded by three other provinces: the St. Lawrence (Champlain) on the north, northeast; the Appalachian Plateau to the south, southwest; and the Valley and Ridge to the southeast.

He explained that the word was used by the Iroquois as a derogatory term for groups of Algonquians who did not practice agriculture and therefore sometimes had to eat tree bark to survive harsh winters.

[7] Such words were strongly associated with the region, but they were not yet considered a place name; an English map from 1761 labels the area simply Deer Hunting Country.

[9] During the Archaic Period (8000–1000 BC) this semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer Laurentian culture inhabited the Adirondacks; evidence of their presence includes a projectile point of red-brown chert found in 2007 at the edge of Tupper Lake.

[9] During an interval of roughly 11,000 years following the end of the Last Glacial Period, the climate of the Adirondacks gradually warmed, with the area's tundra being replaced by forests that were now able to grow.

[9] During the transition between the Archaic and Woodland (1000 BC – AD 1000) periods, multiple different groups replaced the Laurentian culture—including the Sylvan Lake, River, Middlesex, Point Peninsula, and Owasco cultures.

The Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues became the first recorded European to travel through the center of the Adirondacks, as the captive of a Mohawk hunting party, in 1642.

[9] Because local Iroquoian and Algonquian tribes had been decimated first by smallpox and measles in the 1600s, then by wars with encroaching European settlers, there likely were very few people living in the region by the time Pownhall wrote his description.

It is only relatively recently that numerous archaeological finds have definitively shown that Native Americans were indeed very present in the Adirondacks before European contact, hunting, making pottery, and practicing agriculture.

[12] Later, the wilderness character of the region became popular with the rise of the Romantic movement, and the Adirondacks became a destination for those wishing to escape the evils of city life.

[14] Because of plate tectonics these collided with Laurentia (the precursor of modern North America) in a mountain building episode known as the Grenville orogeny.

Minerals of interest include: The Adirondacks are uplifted by a hot spot in the Canadian Shield in contrast to other mountain ranges in New York which are a part of the Appalachian chain (not to be confused with the cultural region of Appalachia).

[17] Around 600 million years ago, as Laurentia drifted away from Baltica (European Craton), the area began to be pulled apart forming the Iapetus Ocean.

Trilobites were the principal life-form of the sea bed, and fossil tracks can be seen in the Potsdam sandstone floor of the Paul Smiths Visitor Interpretive Center.

Evidence of this period includes: Soils in the area are generally thin, sandy, acidic, and infertile, having developed since the glacial retreat.

The Adirondacks typically experience pleasantly warm, rainy weather in the summer (June–August), with temperatures in the range of 66–73 °F (19–23 °C), cooler than the rest of New York State due to the higher elevation.

[25] Attempted reintroductions of elk and lynx in the 20th century failed for numerous reasons, including poaching, vehicle collisions, and conservation incompetence.

The alpine ecosystem is considered extremely fragile, and was damaged by hikers prior to a 1970s campaign by the Adirondack Mountain Club to preserve it.