New York (State).Dept. of Environmental Conservation. Bureau of Real Property.

James Frost was a surveyor in private business who also worked occasionally for New York State government. Some of Frost's first survey work included projecting and completing a plank road from Albany to Fort Hunter, and drafting one of the earliest maps of Schenectady County. In 1819 Frost began a survey of the eastern shore of the Hudson River, under the direction of the New York State Surveyor General. Frost's other survey work included surveying and creating maps of old Schoharie and surveying lands for the second railroad built in the United States, which ran between Canada and New York State, as well as parts of Clinton, Essex, and Franklin counties. Frost also surveyed Elizabethtown, New Jersey in 1835.

After discontinuing his survey work, Frost's other occupations included farming, running a general store, acting as a Justice of the Peace, and serving as a member of the New York State Assembly for three terms. Frost died at his home in Mariahville, New York on December 23, 1851. He was survived by his wife Mary Marsh Frost and ten children.

Verplanck Colvin (1847-1920) was a prominent surveyor and promoter of the Adirondack Park. He began surveying the Adirondacks in 1865. In 1870, he spoke to the New York State Regents about surveying and preserving the Adirondacks. In 1872, the Regents appointed him the Supervisor of the State Survey and established the Commission of State Parks to investigate setting up the Adirondack Park. By 1880 Colvin had completed the most thorough survey of the Adirondacks ever accomplished. He continued to work as the State Surveyor for twenty-eight years. During the time he was carrying out his survey work, he gave speeches and campaigned for the establishment of the Adirondack Park. In 1900, after thirty-five years of advocating his cause, Colvin inexplicably abandoned the crusade. He died in 1920 in a hospital for the mentally ill.

This series of maps was produced as a result of Chapter 733 of the Laws of 1872, passed by the New York State Legislature to appropriate money "to aid in completing a survey of the Adirondack wilderness of New York." Chapter 848 of the Laws of 1872 appointed commissioners for two years to survey "the timber regions lying within counties (of the Adirondack region)," in order to convert the land into a public park. The Superintendent of the State Land Survey was empowered to conduct any surveys the State Comptroller and the State Forestry Commission authorized to settle disputed boundary titles. Periodic appropriations were passed to continue the survey. Verplanck Colvin, as Superintendent of the Adirondack Survey (later the Superintendent of the State Land Survey), and his assistants conducted the survey during the 1870s and 1890s.