Noah john rondeau biography
Home / Athletes & Sports Figures / Noah john rondeau biography
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's life and eventually went on welfare. Sixty-seven years old at the time, Rondeau never would return to the Cold River. He even would play the violin for visitors to his hermitage, which he self titled the “Town Hall of Cold River City”.
He rerouted the Northville-Lake Placid Trail so it ran past his cabin, and he entertained visitors with coffee, conversation, and fiddle music. He was, however, quite well read, with a strong interest in astronomy.
Word traveled of the hermit living on Cold River and he would often have visitors once he started living year round at his hermitage and would still provide guiding services to those who found themselves at the self-proclaimed “Cold River City”. He also writes explanatory commentary, sometimes too much of it.
I enjoyed the way the steady repetition of journal entries followed the arc of a year in the woods.
Rondeau was fond of nicknames, and some of the journal entries didn’t make any sense until Richard Smith, an old friend of Rondeau’s, helped interpret the cryptic remarks. He set up several buildings in "Cold River City," including the "Town Hall" in which he resided, a "Hall of Records," and a number of "wigwams:" teepee-shaped structures which were made out of timbers he had cut to be used for firewood during the long Adirondack winters.
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 be deciphered until 1992 (Life With Noah, p. 91).
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.While staying there, he was taught how to live in the woods, a preview to the many years in the same isolated forest that he would call his “city” for 21 years. Rondeau did begin writing an account of his early childhood, however. He also made occasional brief visits to jail for game law violations.
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)."
He kept extensive journals over a period of several decades, many of which were written in letter-substitution ciphers of his own invention.
Intermingled with these appearances were brief trips into the Cold River valley. He became a guide for hunters and visitors in the western high peaks, and while doing this, staked out his camp on the Cold River that became his home in 1929. Some may have lived more solitary lives than Rondeau, but he was a true Adirondack Hermit.
Born in 1883 and raised near Ausable Forks, Rondeau ran away from home to escape an abusive father during his teenage years.
Noah John Rondeau was born on July 5th, 1883 and spent his early life in the northwestern Adirondack hamlet of Au Sable Forks. Get few loads Wood.
Why the code then? Noah John Rondeau was never granted his final wish: to be buried at his hermitage; his remains lie in the North Elba Cemetery. It seems that the era in which he lived in and his love for the wilderness motivated him to live in the life he did.