Buck Mountain is a summit in the Adirondacks near Little Tupper Lake whose importance centers on the Buck Mountain Fire Observation Station, a sixty-foot Aermotor LS-40 tower erected around 1933 on the privately owned Whitney Park tract. For decades the summit remained on private land, and its history followed shifts in ownership of large Adirondack timberlands, including the 2006 sale of International Paper’s holdings to Lyme Timber Company and a later access agreement between Cedar Heights Timber and Hamilton County. After the county announced reopening plans in 2021 and completed a 1.2-mile trail in 2023, the long-restricted summit became a public hiking destination tied to the region’s conservation history.