The virgin quality of the forest near Round Lake was already considered unusual in 1855, when Ledyard Lincklaen noted that this "dense body of woodland had hardly felt the axe." The region of Upstate New York in which Round Lake lies was heavily forested through the 18th Century, but by 1855 the region had largely been deforested to create farmland. In the early 19th Century, Upstate New York was rapidly being settled by European-Americans. Soldiers who had fought in the Revolutionary War had often received land grants in this former Indian territory. Essentially the first act of most settlers was to cut down the primeval forest and to burn the hardwood logs to make potash, which was quite profitable in that era.