Mary Landon MacKenzie (1914-2003) was historian emeritus of the village of Lake Placid and the town of North Elba in New York's Adirondack mountains. An autodidact and an indefatigable researcher, MacKenzie amassed thousands of pages of material on regional history before her death, but had published only a few journal articles and one slim illustrated history. A local journalist, Lee Manchester, took it upon himself to compile and edit MacKenzie's collected works so that they did not disappear into the void after her passing. Her signature work, “The Plains of Abraham: A History of Lake Placid and North Elba,” was published in 2007. In 2008, Manchester won the first Special Appreciation Award ever given at the Adirondack Literary Awards program for his efforts to preserve Mary MacKenzie’s research. You can email Lee Manchester at [email protected]