Topo maps are often the result of aerial photography and are terrible
for karst topography I have read, where overhangs, caves, sinkholes,
etc., are in the environment, often overlooked.

In the North Creek example I looked at, the hemlock forest was cleared
for tanning upwards of 30,000 hides from all over the world, on the
rail head that also carried New York State's gemstone, garnet, and
later titanium, when the US government built a railroad (over State
safety objections) to the Tahawas mines (said in one small news blurb
to have been "the world's largest titanium mine" allegedly for the
white paint on military armored tanks for winter camouflage) much of
the landscape was known for its clear views of the cleared land at the
beginning of the 20th century, or before. Today its has grown back so
much that many of the features of the past are hard to relocate, and
aerial photography can still help with some of it in the case I was
looking at the proposed "Gore Mountain Ski Village" at the old ski
lift in North Creek.

Interesting use of photography I saw was the RPI model railroad group
which using old photos of different northern New York State railroad
places recreate some of the historic landscape. A similar exhibit is
in the North Creek Railroad Museum, part of the surviving short
railroad ridden to Riparius, NY and back along the Hudson River. It
also contains a small ski museum within the old depot now its retail
space, free museum, and rail ticket office.

New York Mohawk natives lived in the vicinity (and may still) in the
next hamlet north of North Creek, North River, NY which was arguably
before the railroad, the beginning center of development on the west
side of the river, today also used in the spring for "world-class"
whitewater river rafting. It is the also the entrance roads into the
historic garnet mines that were opened later than the settlement. The
State maintains four (4)  exhibitions on road turnouts between North
Creek and North River along the Hudson River to describe the area, the
history of the Adirondack Park (larger in area than the State of
Massachusetts) and the natural environment and its cultural features,
about 40 miles below the river's origin in the small lake "Tear of the
Clouds".