Blue Mountain Lake, New York -
Cabin of a Hermit

For more than 30 years, Noah John Rondeau lived alone in an 8x12-foot cabin and a teepee in New York's Adirondack Mountains. He became a hermit, he said, to escape "the slavery of industrialism." But he enjoyed visitors (just like this hermit), and once even welcomed a newsreel crew that flew him to New York City in a helicopter.

Unfortunately, a wind storm in 1950 wrecked his camp, and Rondeau spent the last 17 years of his life living in boarding homes, hospitals, and a chicken coop. His final wish -- that his body be taken to his former camp site and cremated in his teepee -- was not honored. Instead, a rock was taken from the site and used as Rondeau's headstone in North Elba Cemetery.

Rondeau could make such an odd request because the teepee had been saved, along with his cabin and belongings, and had become a popular exhibit in the Adirondack Museum. They're still popular, and the museum now shows the newsreel as part of the exhibit, and has a life-size wooden carving of Rondeau swinging an ax.

Rondeau also asked the museum if he could be buried on its grounds, near his stuff. This request was denied, too, although we think it would have made for an even better exhibit.