Office of the Saratoga County Historian

Ira Gray, known in his later years as “Adirondack Ike,” was a well-respected woodsmen and guide in the Adirondacks. Born on October 18, 1886 in the Town of Day, Gray was a lifelong resident of the Sacandaga Valley until his death in 1982 at the age of 95. Gray was a hunter, trapper and fishermen, and liked to share his experiences of growing up in rural Saratoga County. The author of four books and countless articles and short stories, he became the authority on what life was like in the Sacandaga Valley in the early 1900s. Gray relays tales of logging in winter, maple sugaring and driving teams of horses. Gray witnessed the creation of the Sacandaga Reservoir and worked as an early forest ranger, fighting fires in the Adirondacks. 

In the 1970s, Gray began writing down his experiences in book form, the first of which is entitled “Follow My Moccasin Tracks” in which he discusses his ancestry and several anecdotal tales of his life in the woods. This book became so popular that it went into its third edition. The house he lived in, called Hi ‘N’Dri, still stands in the Town of Day and boasts a New York State Historic Marker in front of it. In the early 1970s, Gray’s longtime friend Paul Bradt began a room in his museum dedicated to “Adirondack Ike” which contains much of his memorabilia from hunting, fishing and guiding in the southern foothills of the Adirondacks.