How North Hudson could reshape land acquisition in New York

Title issues, the bane of Frontier Town campground’s existence, makes governor’s 2025 agenda

By Gwendolyn Craig

Attorney John Silvestri, who represents the town of North Hudson in a more than century-old title insurance case involving an Adirondack Park campground, laughed when he heard the very last paragraph of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 140-page State of the State agenda.

The state may soon accept title insurance.

“I’m glad that finally somebody there has woken up, because I’ve been a lawyer for over 40 years and this has been a pain,” Silvestri said. 

The Hochul administration’s 2025 priority, revealed on Tuesday during her State of the State address in Albany, won’t help the town now, Silvestri said. “The cat’s out of the bag, so to speak.”

North Hudson has become a poster child for the fact that New York is the only state in the country that does not accept title insurance. At the Frontier Town Campground and Day Use Area, dubbed “gateway to the Adirondacks,” the town is spending tens of thousands of dollars settling a more than 120-year-old title issue delaying a state Department of Environmental Conservation easement on about 300 acres.

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Land trust organizations last year used it as an example of what they say is an arduous land acquisition and conservation easement process holding up over 100,000 acres they were holding at a fair market value of over $150 million. 

Under a State of the State book section called “Make Open Space Accessible for All,” the Hochul administration recognized “the need for streamlined processes” for land conservation and suggested it would allow “the use of title insurance to expedite land acquisitions, granting the Department of Environmental Conservation the authority to independently acquire conservation easements, and reducing the financial hurdles faced by nonprofit organizations in their land conservation efforts.”

“These changes are recognition of a broken system and signal a real intent to update the state’s processes,” said Erik Kulleseid, president and CEO of the Open Space Institute, who was the former commissioner of the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. “The need is clear: the pace of land acquisition in New York has declined sharply in recent years. While the state achieved historic land preservation highs averaging 70,000 acres annually for many years after the state’s Environmental Protection Fund launched in 1993, the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation and the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation acquired fewer than 3,800 acres of land in 2023.”

Frontier Town title issue

Land trust organizations, including the Open Space Institute, have said they generally research title issues back 80 years. A more standard practice is to look back 40 years or so, Silvestri said in earlier interviews with the Explorer.

But the state Attorney General’s Office requires perfect title. The DEC, in its attempts to move forward with an appraisal process on about 300 acres of the campground and day use area for a conservation easement with the town, said it found two title hangups.

One, on the bulk of the property, dates back to a 1901 foreclosure case involving the heirs of Abel Skiff, a man who purchased about 204 of those acres in actual frontier times. The mortgage holder foreclosed on 5/8ths of the property, leaving Skiff’s heirs to retain 3/8ths interest. 

Silvestri has been tasked with finding Skiff’s heirs and has contacted at least 19 of them via a legal action known as a quiet title lawsuit. The town is hoping the Essex County Supreme Court will rule that it owns the property, given that it has possessed it more than “10 years without interruption.”

The court was not satisfied with Silvestri’s attempts to contact all the heirs, and declined to let the town advertise in newspapers of the legal action as a last resort. 

An update

That has remained the case since March. Silvestri said the town has spent about $12,000 on a genealogist, several thousands on someone to serve the lawsuit and tens of thousands on Silvestri’s discounted legal fees. He expects it will cost the town about $50,000 so far. If the town could have purchased title insurance, it would have been about $1,500, he said.

One delay, Silvestri said, is that some of Skiff’s heirs believe the whole thing a scam. He’s aware of at least one family member who refuses contact.

“I understand the skepticism of this day and age where there’s so many con artists out there,” Silvestri said. 

He is also frustrated that the state had the town conduct this legal action after it had invested millions into the campground and day use infrastructure. If the court rules Skiff’s heirs have a legitimate interest, the amount they could get could be much more than before.

“But hey, I am tickled pink somebody finally woke up and realized what a terrible, expensive and wasteful policy clearing up deterrent legal issues like this is,” he said.

“The Nature Conservancy applauds Governor Hochul’s State of the State proposals to modernize and expand New York’s land conservation program,” said Jessica Ottney Mahar, policy and strategy director of The Nature Conservancy in New York. “Our state and the world face dual crises of climate change and the unprecedented loss of nature, and we must take action to conserve the lands and waters that New Yorkers depend on.”

Photo at top by Melissa Hart