Noah John Rondeau

Noah John Rondeau (1883— August 24, 1967) was a widely-known hermit in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. He was raised near Au Sable Forks, New York, but ran away from home as a teenager and only obtained an eighth-grade education. He was, however, quite well-read, with a strong interest in astronomy. Before distancing himself too far from civilization, he lived in Corey's, New York on the Raquette River in the western Adirondack High Peaks, where for fifteen years he worked as a handyman, caretaker and guide. He gained some of his knowledge of the woods from Dan Emmett, an Abenaki Indian from Canada. He also made occasional brief visits to jail for game law violations. Onuphrius lived as a hermit in the desert of Upper Egypt in the late 4th century A hermit (from the Greek erÄ“mos, signifying desert, uninhabited, hence desert-dweller) is a person who lives to some greater or lesser degree in seclusion and/or isolation from society. ... Eagle Lake, Adirondack region The Adirondack mountain range is a group of mountains in the northeastern part of New York that runs through Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Hamilton, Herkimer, Lewis, and Warren counties. ... Official language(s) English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  Ranked 27th  - Total 54,520 sq mi (141,205 km²)  - Width 285 miles (455 km)  - Length 330 miles (530 km)  - % water 13. ... Au Sable Forks is a hamlet (and census-designated place) located in the Town of Jay in Essex County, New York, but some of the developed area is inside Clinton County, New York. ... The Raquette River originates at Raquette Lake in the Adirondack Mountains. ... Daniel Decatur Dan Emmett (October 29, 1815 – June 28, 1904), was born at Mount Vernon, Ohio. ... Abenaki couple The Abenaki (also Wabanaki), meaning people of the dawn, are a tribe of Native Americans/First Nations belonging to the Algonquian peoples of northeasternNorth America. ...

Rondeau frequently hunted and trapped in the Cold River area, about 17 miles from Corey’s, and in 1929, at age 46, he began living alone year-round in the remote area, saying he was "not well satisfied with the world and its trends", and calling himself the "Mayor of Cold River City (Population 1)." 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

He kept extensive journals over a period of several decades, many of which were written in letter-substitution ciphers of his own invention. The ciphers progressed through at least three major revisions in the late thirties and early forties, and in its final form resisted all efforts to decipher it until 1992 (Life With Noah, p. 91). In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encryption by which units of plaintext are substituted with ciphertext according to a regular system; the units may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, triplets of letters, mixtures of the above, and so forth. ... This article is about algorithms for encryption and decryption. ...

Although he was considered an Adirondack hermit, he normally accepted visitors to his hermitage, and even performed for them on his violin.

During World War II, in his sixties, Rondeau was apparently suspected of being a draft dodger, as he submitted a letter dated 4/8/43 to the Ausable Forks Record-Post:

I never went to Cold River to dodge anything, unless it was from 1930 to 1940 when it might be said I dodged the American labor failure at which time I could not get enough in civilization to get along even as well as I could at Cold River under hard circumstances in the back woods. Since I'm not evading I did not make my first appearance at Cold River on the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed. What I'm doing toward the war effort looks like nothing, but that's all I can do and I'm doing it and it is this -- I'm self sustained.

In 1947, Rondeau was flown to the National Sportsmen's Show in New York City by helicopter, starting a series of appearances at similar shows throughout the country. Nickname: Big Apple Location in the state of New York Coordinates: Country United States State New York Boroughs Bronx (The Bronx) New York (Manhattan) Queens (Queens) Kings (Brooklyn) Richmond (Staten Island) Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Area    - City 1,214. ...

In 1950, the Conservation Department closed the Cold River area to the public after a “big blow” leveled the forest, forcing Rondeau from his home at age 67. He then lived around Lake Placid, Saranac Lake and Wilmington, New York. Besides the sportsmen's shows, he worked for a time at Frontiertown and at the North Pole in Wilmington as a substitute Santa Claus, but he didn’t return to a hermit life, and eventually went on welfare. He was buried in North Elba Cemetery, near Lake Placid, with a stone from his Cold River home marking his grave. North Elba is a town located in Essex County, New York. ... Lake Placid is a village of 2,638 in the Adirondack Mountains in Essex County, New York, near the center of the Town of North Elba and named after an adjacent lake. ...

References

• Noah John Rondeau, Mayor: Cold River City (Population 1)

• Noah John Rondeau, Adirondack Hermit

• Adirondack Museum: Adirondack Lives

• NCPR: Remembering Noah John Rondeau, the Hermit of Cold River

• William J. O'Hern: Life With Noah, North Country Books, 1997.