Every named stream in the Adirondack Park — the feeder waters that line the High Peaks valleys and fill the ponds.
Nail Creek threads through the Old Forge area — a named tributary in a region thick with wetland channels, beaver meadows, and the kind of unmapped feeder streams that show up on USGS quads but not on trail registers. No fish data on file, no formal access listed, which in this part of the park often means private inholdings or remote headwaters upstream of the stocked ponds that draw the crowds. The Old Forge Wild Forest holds hundreds of miles of unmaintained drainage — Nail Creek is one of them, logged in some earlier century and left to grow back in. If you know which dirt road or railroad grade gets you close, you've likely already been there.
Nicks Creek is a named tributary in the Old Forge watershed — cataloged by name but largely undocumented in terms of access, fishery, or recreation history. It's the kind of small Adirondack stream that shows up on USGS quads and in the state's hydrography records but hasn't made it into guidebooks or stocking reports, which usually means it's either too small to support a fishery, too overgrown for easy access, or simply overlooked in a region dense with bigger water. Old Forge sits at the hub of the Fulton Chain, the Moose River Plains, and dozens of better-known ponds and streams — Nicks Creek may be a connector, a feeder, or just a seasonal runoff channel. If you know it by name, you've likely crossed it on a bushwhack or a logging road.
Ninemile Creek runs through the Old Forge township in the western Adirondacks — one of dozens of named tributaries and outlet streams in a region defined more by its chain of lakes and the Fulton Chain drainage than by its creeks. The name suggests an older surveyor's or logger's reference point, likely tied to distance from a settlement or mill site, but the creek itself doesn't appear in contemporary paddling or fishing reports. No public access points are documented, and it's likely a small feeder or outlet stream tucked into private land or state forest without developed recreation infrastructure. If you're fishing or exploring the Old Forge backcountry and come across it, tag your notes — local knowledge on these smaller waters is always worth sharing.
Ninemile Creek is one of several small waterways in the Old Forge drainage that flows quietly through working forest, more likely to show up as a blue line on your DeLorme than as a destination. The name suggests an old surveyor's benchmark or logging-road mile marker — common nomenclature in this part of the western Adirondacks where creeks were originally valued for log drives, not trout. Without public access documentation or fish stocking records, this is the kind of water that stays local — crossed by snowmobile trail or spotted from a forest road, noted but not publicized. If you're poking around the Old Forge backcountry and cross it, you've found it the old way.
