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Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks: The Tupper Lake Wild Center
Check out all the interesting exhibits the Tupper Lake Wild Center has to offer
There are national and state parks all across the United States. These parks are the home to all sorts of creatures of nature, keeping it separated from human beings. However, there is one park in the state of New York that completely separates itself from any other park in the country—Adirondack State Park.
"Our mission is to help people understand the world of the Adirondacks."
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"People don’t live in other parks like Yellowstone," Development Director Diana Fortune says. "This is what makes a place like the Adirondacks so much different."
Adirondack State Park is about six-million-acres of land and about 3.5 acres privately owned. The park was established in 1892 and has been the home to 130,000 people for that time. The Tupper Lake Wild Center, which opened in the summer of 2006 in Tupper Lake, NY, is a museum located on 31-acres of Adirondack land and dedicates themselves in teaching people about this extravagant region.
"Our mission is to inspire a broad public understanding of the natural systems that shape and sustain life in the Adirondacks," Managing Director Stephanie Ratcliffe says.
The Adirondacks is a place where humans and nature can coexist in the same world. The museum's staff members take great pride in the message they try to send to the public.
"It’s practicing what you preach," Ratcliffe says. "We try to make man and nature coexist better, and we’re very proud of it."
The museum contains numerous exhibits, split up between outdoor and indoor exhibits. Outside, you can walk on trails no matter what time of the year it is. You can cross numerous bridges overlooking the ponds or walk around the sky towers bird watching. Indoors, the living river trail takes you across marshes, the river and through the forest for a real life experience. They also have live exhibits, including the famous otters at Otter Falls.
"I think this museum is a nice way to reach out and give scientific information to the public."
"The otters are probably our signature exhibit," Fortune says. "Everyone, especially the children, loves them because they’re so playful."
The museum staff have received nothing but positive feedback from their visitors and believes they have been successful in getting their message across.
"We just want people to appreciate it," Fortune says. "Our mission is to help people understand the world of the Adirondacks. Hopefully, everyone that comes here will get a better understanding of the natural world."
The museum is a science based educational institute and is also a non-profit organization. The museum itself is also unique in its own way, being the first museum to achieve benchmark green building certification with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) silver. Silver is the type of ranking received, gold being the highest. LEED is a rating system used by the U.S. Green Building Council. The council tries to promote green buildings across the countries and evaluate places by how profitable an industry is, how responsible it is, and how healthy it is. The museum's staff continue to educate the public about the Adirondacks and know their mission is an endless one.
"Our job here is never done," Ratcliffe says. "We want to continue to teach people how to appreciate the Adirondacks. For people who already do, the museum allows you to appreciate it at a different level."
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One person who has a lot of experience in teaching about the Adirondack region through the museum itself is SUNY Plattsburgh professor Dr. David Franzi. Franzi is a professor in earth and environmental science and gave a number of helicopter tours in the Adirondack region for the museum.
"I think this museum is a nice way to reach out and give scientific information to the public," Franzi says. "It’s an entertaining way to teach people about natural and human history."
Dr. Franzi gave a tour from a helicopter to show people the glacial history of the Adirondacks and the flooding that created the flat rocks in areas like Clinton County.
"We would take a helicopter around the Adirondacks and point out the landforms formed by flooding," Franzi says. "Looking from the air allows you to see things that you couldn’t from the ground. It helped people get a better feel for it."
May will begin their spring exhibit where they can continue teaching people about life and nature of this region.
"I came to help start this museum five years ago," Ratcliffe says. "I always vacationed here and realized how beautiful of a place it is live; it couldn’t be better."
How would like to learn more about humans and nature in the Adirondacks?
The Tupper Lake Wild Center is a museum located in Tupper Lake, NY that teaches people about Adirondack State Park. They emphasize on the parks uniqueness of coexisting man and nature in one. The museum takes up 31 acres of land and holds a large number of different exhibits indoors and outdoors. There are waterfalls, rivers and live animals featured in their exhibits and a number of shows for many to see. The museum is closed for the entire month of April for its exhibit installations, but will reopen on May 1. They’re hours are usually 10 a.m.- 6 p.m., but vary on holidays and special occasions.