Ausable Chasm, New York, 1950s

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Ausable Chasm, New York, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Ausable Chasm, New York

Ausable Chasm, New York, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-37F3EF

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The rock face at Ausable Chasm rises out of a dense forest of conifers and hardwoods in what someone in the 1950s would have regarded as proper wilderness, though it was already a tourist destination on the map. A small label reading "Ausable Chasm" is glued to the lower left corner of what appears to be a color slide, the kind of amateur notation that suggests this was someone's vacation documentation, not a professional survey. The photographer stood among the scraggly brush overhanging the gorge and pointed upward at the stratified sandstone walls, capturing the chasm not as a geological lesson but as a site visited, seen, and marked for the family archive. The gesture of labeling it—as if the viewer might forget what they were looking at—says everything about how Americans in this era approached natural landmarks: you went there, you photographed it, you identified it, and then you were done.

The historian's note

Ausable Chasm is a sandstone gorge carved by the Ausable River in northeastern New York near Keeseville, in the foothills of the Adirondacks. The site opened to public tourism in the mid-19th century and by the 1950s was an established regional attraction, accessible by highway and marketed through the postcard and guidebook industry. The stratified walls visible here are characteristic of the upper Paleozoic sedimentary formations typical of the region. Color transparency film, such as Kodachrome or Ektachrome stock common in amateur photography of the period, was the standard means by which middle-class Americans documented travel between the late 1940s and early 1960s, making such slides abundant in family collections and institutional archives.

Subjects & keywords — each links to a search

Ausable Chasm·1950s color transparency·natural landmark·New York gorge·labeled slide·sandstone formation·amateur vacation photography·Adirondack region·mid-century tourism·tourist destination·travel documentation·geological exposure·conifer forest·Paleozoic sedimentary

New Yorkplace · location Ausable Chasmlandmark · landmark Adirondack Mountainsplace · location

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Particulars

Creator: Unattributed
Date: 1950–1959
Place: Ausable Chasm, New York — the main gorge wall viewed from the rim trail, northeastern Adirondack region
Subject: Ausable Chasm sandstone gorge
Original format: jpg
Original held: Yes, by the archive
Rights: Open