* Which came first: Ampersand Stream, or Lake, or Mountain? Here's an intriguing explanation from
The Gentleman's Magazine, 1892:
Ampersand
is a mountain. It is a lake. It is a stream. The mountain stands in
the heart of the Adirondack country, just near enough to the
thoroughfare of travel for thousands of people to see it every year,
and just far enough away from the beaten track to be unvisited, except
by a very few of the wise ones who love to digress. Behind the
mountain is the lake, which no lazy man has ever seen. Out of the lake
flows the stream, winding down a long, untrodden forest valley, until
at length it joins the Stony Creek waters, and empties into the
Raquette River. Which of the three Ampersands has the prior claim to
the name I cannot tell.
Philosophically speaking, the mountain
ought to be regarded as the father of the family, because it was
undoubtedly there before the others existed. And the lake was probably
the next on the ground, because the stream is its child. But man is
not strictly correct in his nomenclature; and I conjecture that the
little river, the last-born of the three, was the first to be called
Ampersand, and then gave its name to its parent and grandparent. It is
such a crooked stream, so bent and curved and twisted upon itself, so
fond of turning around unexpected corners, and sweeping away in great
circles from its direct course, that its first explorers christened it
after the eccentric supernumerary of the alphabet which appears in the
old spelling book as &.