If you stand in front of the gas fireplace in the lobby of the Queensbury Hotel in Glens Falls, you’ll be looking up at a giant Griffith Baily Coale oil painting depicting a scene from James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans.” By giant, we’re talking at least 10 feet by 13 feet, mounted high so as to appear even more towering, and dark, dramatic, showing two natives, a British Army scout, a couple of colonial women he’s transporting to safety, all gathered in front of a cave glowing with the light of a single torch.
That’s Cooper’s Cave, a short walk from the hotel, hard by the steam-spewing Finch paper mill (always a surprise to see bustling American industry, is it not?) and in the middle of the rushing Hudson and all that shale rock carved out over the ages. There’s a circuitous walk down to an outcropping over the cave, a visit to which inspired Cooper to write “The Last of the Mohicans,” and along the way any number of informative, national park-style signs for the historically curious.
But here’s the thing. James Fenimore Cooper was here, too. He and Charles T. Dering of Sag Harbor invested in a whaling ship together (their wives were cousins, Floyds, of the Declaration signer William Floyd fame), and then he lodged at Duke Fordham’s Inn downtown to kill time and write while waiting for his ship to come in, so to say. Over by Tutto il Giorno there’s a plague referring to his stay and his ship, the Union. Though somewhat obscured, at least it’s not one of those traditional yellow lettering on blue background jobs, which are now known to be notoriously error-prone, what with “no controlling authority” behind them, to paraphrase Al Gore.
I’m sure something bigger, more graphical, more readable and informative would be seen as exceedingly touristy for this area. But what about the bespectacled 12-year-old book nerd who’s visiting from Indiana with his family? He’d like to know.
Tourism isn’t necessarily a sign of moral shortcoming or bad taste. With a daughter having spent four years at a western New York college, I was a tourist aplenty, and what I saw upstate was history better preserved, more civic pride, usable hiking trails and attractive bike paths, more kid-friendly parks, and superior school facilities, all accomplished with far, far less money.
Back at the Queensbury Hotel, which, like its painting, dates to 1926, a visitor took one last awed look before ducking into Fenimore’s Pub for a pint and some French onion soup.