Elizabeth “Betsy” Folwell, an Adirondack essayist and conservationist has died at the age of 71 of cancer, according to news reports citing family friends. Folwell was widely known in the Adirondacks, having arrived in Blue Mountain Lake in 1976, after graduating from college.
Betsy served as the first education coordinator of the Adirondack Museum (now Adirondack Experience). She then led the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts from 1980 to 1988 and with her husband, Tom Warrington, operated a general store in town.
In 1989 she joined the staff of Adirondack Life magazine as a assistant editor. She became the magazine’s creative director in 2005, and retired in 2021.
During her time at the magazine, she wrote scores of articles and essays on the politics, nature, history and culture of the six million acres Adirondack Park.
“In her essays, she honored people whose names might otherwise be lost to time, lending lyrical paragraphs to wary recluses, jocular business owners and retired teachers,” Tim Rowland wrote in a piece remembering her life.
She won eight writing awards from the International Regional Magazine Association. Her Adirondack Life essays were collected in Short Carries: Essays from Adirondack Life (2009). She also co-wrote the first three editions of The Adirondack Book, a kind of guide to all things Adirondack.
“She is such a force,” Bill McKibben wrote in the introduction to Short Carries. “So deeply ingrained in this place that it’s almost easy to overlook her single greatest talent: her own writing.”
In 2017 Betsy and Tom began restoring a 1946 Silk City diner in Blue Mountain Lake. The restaurant — Chef Darrell’s Mountain Diner — opened in June 2021 on NYS Route 30.
In 2021, Betsy joined The Adirondack Land Trust‘s board of directors and more recently she has been part of a group working to secure support and funding for the 123-year-old steamboat Tuscarora.
Legally blind since the early 2000s, she had a remarkable depth of knowledge about the Adirondacks. “She was an inspiration,” long-time friend and Blue Mountain Lake Fire Chief Greg George told Adirondack Explorer. Always a communitarian, when that fire department was short on volunteers, Betsy joined.
New York Almanack holds a debt of gratitude to Folwell. She was an early and great supporter of John Warren’s work.
“Betsy was an inspiration for those of us who aspire to more fully understand and appreciate the Adirondacks, beyond just as a place to recreate,” Warren said. “She’ll be missed broadly and deeply around the region.”
Photo of Betsy Folwell by Nancie Battaglia (provided by Adirondack Land Trust).
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