TOP TEN FUN FACTS ABOUT LONG POND AND ITS WATERSHED AREA

1. There are actually 27 Long Ponds in the Adirondack Park
2. Long Pond isn’t actually a Pond it’s a Lake.  Lakes have, by definition, water that is deeper than six feet, so no plants can grow at the deepest part.  So, one could have a really small lake or a really large pond.  It really depends on the depth.
3. Long Pond at it’s deepest is 21 ft by the Point House at Camp Pok-O-Moonshine. But in the long narrow part of the lake it is still continually over 15 feet deep.
4. Long Pond was originally known as Rattlesnake Pond supposedly because there were once water snakes that lived in the Lake, but these snakes were mistakenly called Rattlesnakes.  Rattlesnakes have not migrated any farther North than Split Rock Point in Essex, NY.  My Grandmother, Sarah Swan (1900-1975) remembered as a child there being water snakes in Long Pond, but that they all disappeared by the time she was a young adult.
5. Rattlesnake Mountain was actually named after the Lake that is now named Long Pond.
6. Trout used to inhabit Long Pond, but sometime in the 1920s John Burnham, who owned the lands around Highland Forge Lake to the North, stocked the lake with Northern Pike, which in turn eradicated the native species from Long Pond.
7. The steep hill just past Mona White’s house on the road to Reber is called School House Hill, because there used to be a school house on top of that hill that all the children from around Long and Frances Ponds used to attend.
8. Forest fires consumed the tops of Rattlesnake, Bear and Poke-Moonshine mountains at different times within the last 150 years.
9. Long Pond does not suffer from the effects of Acid Rain, like so many other Lakes in the Adirondacks.  The PH level of Long Pond is around 7, which is neutral; neither too acidic nor basic.  The limestone in some of the rocks around the Long Pond buffers the effects of Acid Rain.
10. The loud boisterous call of the bullfrog used to resonate much more resoundingly than it does now due to an overabundant population of the reptile.  But in the early 1990’s Blue Herons stalked Long Pond to the point that there we now only hear a few lonely bullfrog voices singing in the evenings.