October 1, 2023 – March 31, 2024

The Quarterdeck

The Dalton-Loines Family Papers

Between 2019 and 2022 Sylvia Rogal Pope donated her collection of documents, photographs, and ephemera from the Dalton-Loines family to the Adirondack Research Library. In 2022, Phyllis Modley donated a guestbook filled with additional memories. The Dalton-Loines Family Papers consists mainly of materials that focus on their lake houses in the Northwest Bay of Lake George.

This collection is an exciting gift as it not only reflects a family’s commitment to preserving nature through generations but exemplifies the role women took in grassroots environmentalism during the 20th century. The Adirondack Research Library extends its deepest thanks to the Dalton-Loines family and to each of its members who, through the years, saw the value in preserving not only this cherished place on Lake George but these treasured memories.

The Dalton-Loines Family

Stephen Loines (1846-1919), a wealthy marine insurance broker, and his wife Mary Hillard Loines (1844-1944), a prominent suffragette, lived most of the year in Brooklyn Heights, New York with their three daughters Hilda, Elma, and Sylvia (who married William Dalton), and their son Russell. Beginning in the 1890s, they would amass 12,000 acres on Northwest Bay on Lake George including two miles of shoreline. They clearly enjoyed the recreation and entertainment the lake and her shores afforded but they also committed themselves to their conservation. Among other efforts, they were ardent supporters of the creation of a Lake George Park and fought the construction of Rt. 9N along the shores of Lake George.

Much of the Dalton Loines property is now in the hands of conservancies and New York State. The 36-acre Loines Preserve was donated to the Eastern New York Nature Conservancy by the Loines sisters in 1964. An additional 1,310 acres was purchased by the Lake George Land Conservancy in 2000 and 2001 and is now the Pole Hill Pond Preserve owned by New York State. Another 160 Acres at Wing Pond is currently preserved by the LGLC.

Their conservation legacy lies in the woods and wetlands that filter the streams and runoff that feed Lake George and the herons, mergansers, beavers and other animals, large and small, that today find a home there.

 

“No land conservation effort on Lake George’s west shore has contributed more to the preservation of the lake’s water quality than the acquisition of Loines properties by New York and the land conservancies over the past one hundred years.” ~ Tony Hall, editor and publisher of the Lake George Mirror