ALTAMONT — David Bourque says Historic Altamont has a new mission.

He is the president of the not-for-profit group that was founded in 2018 in a failed attempt to save the historic Doctor Crounse House.

“The ‘new’ Historic Altamont is a completely different group than the ‘old’ Historic Altamont,” Bourque wrote in an email after this story was posted on The Enterprise website. “Going forward, we hope that when people discuss Historic Altamont, the Crounse House isn’t always mentioned.”

Historic Altamont aims to preserve a “green belt” around the Victorian village to keep it from being subsumed by suburban sprawl, he said.

The group is calling the initiative the Helderberg Greenway and envisions a six-mile public corridor surrounding Altamont.

“Westmere is lost and McKownville was lost long ago,” said Bourque, who has lived in Guilderland for 50 years, the last 30 in Altamont. “Voorheesville is on the cusp of being lost to suburbia.”

If you stand on the Helderberg escarpment and look down at Guilderland Center, Bourque said, you can see suburban housing stretching out from the historic hamlet toward Altamont.

“We want to protect Altamont’s unique character,” said Bourque.

In 2023, Historic Altamont received $50,000 in federal pandemic funds through Albany County. The group has spent $20,000 hiring a firm to map a network of trails around the village and will spend the remaining $30,000 to build a kiosk that will serve as an end point for the Long Path.

The trail network

LaBella Associates has completed two phases of its four-phase contract with Historic Altamont.

In the first phase, Historic Altamont supplied LaBella with documents and maps — “an inventory of local hiking assets,” said Bourque. These include trails at Thacher, a state park, and at the Bozenkill Preserve, which is owned by the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy, as well as the Long Path.

The Long Path starts near the George Washington Bridge in New York City and ends in the Helderbergs at High Point, with a parking lot on Old Stage Road.

As The Enterprise detailed in a Nov. 27 editorial, the plan is to have the Long Path end in Altamont.

The second phase of the LaBella contract is to provide Historic Altamont with maps of a trail network, which will ultimately be shared with the village.

The third phase is for LaBella to draft a master plan, “a vision to advance trail connections and provide access,” said Bourque.

The fourth phase is to finalize a master plan, providing Historic Altamont with both digital and hard copies.

“At the final meeting, we’ll review the plan and prioritize projects,” said Bourque. “We can then use the plan for additional grants.”

The end goal, he said, is to produce a trail network surrounding Altamont.

Asked how permission for new trails would be secured, Bourque said, “All options would be on the table.”

He said that both the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, in which he is active, and the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy, which is working with Historic Altamont, are experts in getting access easements.

“We need a plan in place for easements,’ said Bourque.

Describing the “green ring” to be preserved around Altamont, Bourque said “We have the escarpment at our backs so we don’t need to worry about that and we’ve got the fairgrounds. It would loop around [to the east of] Altamont to connect with the Bozenkill Preserve,” said Bourque, adding, “I’d hate to see Brandle Road suburbanized.”

The kiosk

The remaining $30,000 will be used to build an “Altamont-themed community kiosk to blend in with the village’s unique architecture,” said Bourque.

The biggest challenge was finding a location, he said. Historic Altamont had wanted to put the kiosk, which will serve as an end point for the Long Path, in Orsini Park at the center of Altamont, but the village wouldn’t agree.

The fairgrounds was too out of the way, he said.

Ultimately, Jeff Thomas, who owns a half-dozen properties in the village and has recently proposed a large development in the heart of Altamont, agreed to a 30-year lease for the kiosk on property right across Park Street from Orsini Park next to the parking lot that was built for the now-empty KeyBank.

The lease for the 12-by-18-foot parcel was signed on Nov. 18, Bourque said, and will cost just a dollar a year.

The kiosk will have six panels, Bourque said, with one panel dedicated to the Long Path and another dedicated to Altamont Community Tradition. Local businesses will be able to leave brochures at the kiosk, he said.

The mover

At 68, Bourque is retired from working for the state in information technology. Now, he puts his energies into a slew of volunteer posts while also caring, along with his wife, for their two young grandsons.

Over the last year, Bourque said, Historic Altamont has grown from just a handful of members to over 30, and he is indebted to the other three officers: Vice President Debra Barnes Breitenbach, Secretary Jodi Novak Wey, and Treasurer Bob Casey. Many of the members, he said, are active in trail maintenance.

Bourque himself is passionate about hiking. When he was a kid, his family would make an annual trek to Ontario where his grandmother was raised. As his family drove though Keene Valley, he would look for the sign marking the trail to Mount Marcey.

“Every year, my Dad would say, ‘That’s the trail to Mount Marcy, the tallest mountain in the state,’” Bourque recalled.

Neither of his parents hiked but, when Bourque was 16 years old and got his driver’s license, he headed to Keene Valley for a solo hike up Mount Marcy.

He was greeted on the trail by the legendary High Peaks forest ranger, Peter Fish, who noted Bourque was wearing jeans and sneakers and had just a can of ice tea in a cloth knapsack.

“He tore me apart; he shredded me,” Bourque recalled. But then Fish took note of the early start and the beautiful weather and said, “Be on your way.”

Bourque was, indeed, on his way.

He climbed all 46 of the Adirondack High Peaks by the age of 19 and has now done four rounds. He also twice climbed all 33 of the Catskill peaks over 3,500 feet. And he is a Northeast 111er, meaning he has climbed all 111 mountains in the Northeast over 4,000 feet.

“I’m a peak bagger,” said Bourque, explaining that he prefers summits to distance hikes like the Long Path.

He takes many hikes alone. “I just love walking in the woods,” he said. “I enjoy the solitude.”

Bourque also has a passion for communication. Twice a year, he puts out a newsletter for the Brant Lake Association in Warren County where he has a seasonal home.

His newsletter won a statewide award.

There used to be a schism, Bourque said, between the wealthy lakefront property owners and the year-round residents but his newsletter has changed that.

“We’re embracing the local community,” he said. “There’s been a complete change in chemistry.”

Bourque created an online history and guide through StoryMaps for Brant Lake and has so far put in 100 hours in creating something similar for Altamont, which is not yet live.

“It’s an online, interactive tour of Altamont with tabs for items of interest,” he said. The free guide will include pictures and explanations for various points of interest

One anchor is Altamont’s Museum in the Streets, which has markers in the village denoting historic places. A second tab is for historic markers and monuments in Altamont.

A third tab chronicles Altamont’s three churches and a fourth, the Altamont fairgrounds. A fifth tab is for local parks and preserves, and a tab for cemeteries is also planned.

Bourque has “all kinds of ideas for additional tabs” like public gardens — “I’ve got to wait until they’re in bloom for pictures” — and “maybe haunted houses — who knows.”

Historic Altamont will have its next meeting, to which the public is invited, at 6:45 p.m. on Dec. 12 at the Altamont Reformed Church at 129 Lincoln Ave.

Representatives from the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference will be there along with Steve Siegard, who is spearheading the drive to bring the Long Path into Altamont.

“It’s a collaborative effort,” concluded Bourque.