Robert Hall had moved his family to the Adirondacks in 1956 at the suggestion of artist Rockwell Kent. He had been a Washington and European correspondent for the Daily Worker and later, the editor of its Sunday edition.
By the mid-fifties, he had had enough of radical politics. He contemplated moving to southern Vermont, where he and his young family spent their summers and where they had friends. But Kent told him that a magazine was for sale in northern New York. He took the train from New York to Ausable Forks, where he learned that the magazine was not for sale after all. But, since he was in the Adirondacks anyway, he thought he might as well look around. He rented a car and drove to nearby Elizabethtown. There, standing in front of a building, was the owner of the local paper. Hall asked him if he needed some help. When asked what he could do at a newspaper and print shop, he replied, ‘everything.’ So he became a country editor.
He soon wanted a paper of his own, as long as it was in the Adirondacks. He purchased the Warrensburg News, then the Corinthian, the Indian Lake Bulletin and the Hamilton Country News. In 1962 he established Adirondack Life as a supplement to his weekly newspapers. He purchased the Lake George Mirror in 1969.
In 1968, Governor Nelson Rockefeller appointed him to the Temporary Commission to Study the Future of the Adirondacks, whose most significant proposal was the creation of the Adirondack Park Agency. Hall supported the creation of the regional land use agency both in and outside the columns of his newspapers, a position which began to cost him advertisers. So when Rockefeller asked him to become editor of the state’s Conservationist magazine, he accepted, selling his newspapers, the Lake George Mirror included, to Denton Publications. He died in 1993.
