ALTAMONT — “It’s never going to be done,” said David Bourque as he scrolled through his latest online creation — a StoryMap for Altamont.

Bourque, who is retired from working for the state in information technology and is now president of Historic Altamont Inc., has spent hundreds of hours creating an interactive tour of the village and its history.

Years ago, he stumbled on a StoryMap of Lake Luzerne. “It blew me out of the water,” he said.

The online geographic information system for StoryMap is from ArcGIS, based on software developed and maintained by Esri, the Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc.

Altamont’s is the fourth StoryMap Bourque has created. The first one was made from notes he put together on walks or drives that can be taken around Horicon’s Mill Pond, highlighting 18 points of local interest.

The mill pond is located just below the dam on Brant Lake where Bourque has a second home. He is proud of editing a newsletter for the Brant Lake Association, which 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.”

Brant Lake is in Warren County in the Adirondacks and Bourques’s next StoryMap was on Warren County history and culture. He credits Sara Frankenfeld, the Warren County GIS administrator, and her assistant, GIS Specialist Amanda Beck, for the success of that project.

“That’s where I got the idea for tabs,” said Bourque, which he used for the Altamont StoryMap.

The Warren County StoryMap catalogs 355 places on the National Register of HistoricPlaces.

Bourque, an avid hiker, is currently working on a StoryMap for the Long Path, which is still in draft form. The Long Path stretches from Manhattan to High Point in the Helderbergs just above Altamont. Historic Altamont is working with others to have the path come down off the escarpment into the center of the village and plans to build a kiosk across Park Street from Orsini Park.

Bourque’s StoryMap focuses on the northern portion of the Long Path from Schoharie County to Essex County, which includes the section, after High Point, that is not blazed but rather consists of a series of landmarks.

The StoryMap will highlight 84 landmarks within a 15 mile hiking corridor, spotlighting cultural, historic, geologic and scenic places from Gilboa to Whiteface Mountain overlapping the blazed and road-walk sections to the Blue Line of the Adirondack Park.

Altamont’s StoryMap

Bourque worked with Ken Galluccio, of Albany County GIS, on the Altamont StoryMap. 

“When I first reached him, he said, ‘We’ve never done one of these,’ but he was excited to try it,” said Bourque, adding that Galluccio helped with many ideas to improve the online experience.

Bourque believes that other municipalities in Albany County may want to follow his lead in creating their own StoryMaps.

“I’ll be glad to help others in the future do this,” he said.

The banner picture on the Altamont StoryMap is of the Altamont Free Library, once the village’s train station and a hub for the village that was built up because of the railroad.

The village board had planned to demolish the unused structure when a group of citizens bought it to preserve the historic structure that eventually was restored to its former glory when it became a new hub for the community as its library.

“Is there anything more iconic?” responded Bourque when asked why he chose the train station as the site’s predominant image.

The site opens with seven brief historical descriptions of the area — starting in 1630 when land now occupied by Altamont was deeded by the Dutch West India Company to Killian Van Rensselaer, a wealthy Dutch diamond and pearl merchant from Amsterdam.

“Established as a patroonship, the tract encompassed hundreds of square miles on both sides of the Hudson River, both south and west of Albany,” says the history.

Each panel is accompanied by a historic photograph. Bourque pointed to a favorite photo of the Altamont band.

“If anybody has something they can share, like an old photograph,” he said, “it will be added right away and they’ll be credited.”

Right now, the site has seven tabs but Bourque already has plans to add more.

He started with the tab for Altamont’s Museum in the Streets, which has markers in the village denoting historic places. The site includes a picture of each marker with its placement marked on a corresponding map.

“Jim Gaughan and Keith Lee blessed this,” he said of Altamont’s former mayor and his spouse who were instrumental in setting up the Museum in the Streets.

“You can click on the numbers on the map and it will go to the text for each of the markers,” said Bourque. There is room on the site for additional pictures of each, he said.

Bourque himself took the pictures of the markers and is pleased that they are in high enough resolution that the words — in both English and Spanish — can be read.

A second tab pictures and places on a map all of the historic markers and monuments in and around the village while a third tab pictures and places Altamont’s three churches.

Bourque took the pictures of the churches, both inside and out, and said “wow” to describe his feelings when he saw the inside of St. John’s Lutheran Church. He had not been inside the church before that.

A fourth tab pictures and maps historic markers placed by the Altamont Fair on its grounds and also includes buildings like the Dutch barn and the chapel.

“The fair has all its historic stuff in one file cabinet — just a matchstick away from losing it,” he said, noting he offered to scan the documents but was told, “They can’t leave the building.”

Twelve parks or preserves in and around Altamont are pictured and mapped under a fifth tab. Bourque went as far as 15 miles out from the village to include the Knox wetlands and the Christman Sanctuary as well as Thacher park.

“We are in the process of adding photos …,” he said. “I don’t want mundane photos. I want something eye-catching.”

Anyone who has photos or other materials to share, Bourque said, may reach him at .

A sixth tab depicts pictures from 50 years of the Guilderland Historical Society’s annual calendars.

Bourque described a visit with John Haluska, an enthusiastic leader of the historical society. “I went to his garage and, behind the Christmas decorations, he pulls out a box — it was covered in glitter — and says, ‘Here’s 50-plus years of Guilderland Historical Society calendars.’”

Bourque went over over 600 months of images and scanned the 60 or 70 images of Altamont he found along with their original captions.

The trove includes a 1961 picture of the 1803 Frederck Crounse house with its original portico, which has since been replaced with a porch stretching all across the front of the house.

It also includes structures that no longer exist, like the 1886 John Boyd Thatcher summer home that was burned as a fire department exercise in 1963, the caption says.

Additional photos include those of a camp for young women and of the Kushaqua Hotel.

“This is a catch basin,” Bourque said of the last tab. I want to use them all,” he said of any submitted photos. “This is history.”

Looking ahead, Bourque is thinking of adding tabs for public gardens, illustrated with pictures when plants are in bloom; historic Dutch barns; and maybe even local houses reputed to be haunted.

“This is always going to be a work in progress," said Bourque. “I hope somebody reads your story and says, ‘I have a picture of my house.’ I’ll give them credit for whatever they share.”

Bourque has been working on the site for a year, he said, and has so far spent “a couple hundred hours on it.”

“I don’t watch TV,” he said. “I’d rather sit at my computer. I’ll work on this a couple of hours a night and feel terrific”

He concluded, “This was just a labor of love. I love Altamont.”