More from the Plains of Abraham - Clinton Essex Franklin Library

More from the
Plains of Abraham
By Mary MacKenzie
EDITED BY LEE MANCHESTER
More from the
Plains of Abraham
By Mary MacKenzie
EDITED BY LEE MANCHESTER
Table of contents
A short history of the Adirondacks:
From creation to the 20th century ..................................................1
History of the village of Lake Placid ................................................22
A local history primer .......................................................................29
Dates in Lake Placid/North Elba history...........................................32
The WIRD radio interviews..............................................................51
Essex County anecdotes....................................................................70
Peru Mountains: First name of the Adirondacks...............................75
Location of Elba Iron Works ............................................................77
Osgood’s and Lyon’s inns ................................................................82
Letter re. Iddo Osgood, Nathan Sherman..........................................85
Notes: Osgood’s Inn, 1984 ...............................................................88
Note on Lyon’s, Osgood’s, 1995 ......................................................91
Alfred Donaldson as a historian........................................................92
Regarding Russell Banks’ novel, ‘Cloudsplitter’..............................97
Against proposal to make John Brown’s Farm
site into a historic Visitors Interpretive Center..........................102
Presidents’ visits: Correspondence .................................................110
Grover Cleveland at Lake Placid ....................................................112
FDR and Essex County...................................................................114
Mystery at Bog River Falls .............................................................117
Wildflowers in the garden...............................................................121
Building a patio...............................................................................131
A short history of the
Adirondacks
th
From creation to the 20 century
Mary MacKenzie always dreamed of writing a truly
comprehensive history of Lake Placid, North Elba and the
Adirondacks — not starting from the first European settlement of the
Plains of Abraham, or from the first human visitors to the region, but
from creation itself. This lengthy first item has been cobbled together
from five different speeches she gave to classes and community
groups in the North Country, all with similar outlines and obviously
drawing upon the same store of materials: (1) to the Northland Rock
and Mineral Club (March 9, 1965); (2) to the Lake Placid Kiwanis
Club on (October 9, 1968); (3) to the Clinton County Historical
Society (date unknown); (4) to “my favorite club,” with whom “I
always love to share … all the wonderful things I have found in the
botanical world” (perhaps the Garden Club of Lake Placid?) (date
unknown); and (5) to a group at Lake Placid’s Northwood School, at
the invitation of Philip A. Adil (date unknown).
I’ve always had my own definition of history: “History is the
sum of all mankind.” But lately I’ve been pondering about that, and I
think I’m going to revise it.
Does man really make history of his own volition? I don’t
believe he does. Isn’t he really made to act by the geological and
geographical influences and demands of his surroundings? For
instance, we see the Phoenicians and the Vikings becoming great
seafarers and traders because of their proximity to the sea, but the
history of other nations is different, in the desert or jungles or
mountains or as islands. Just for example, we see that Plattsburgh
earned its wonderful colonial and pre-colonial history because of its
situation on the great navigable waterway of Lake Champlain, close
to the Canadian border. So history really evolves about mineral
resources or climate and a hundred other geographical conditions.
And a piece of land leaves an imprint on a man, for good or evil.
So I’d like to tell you tonight about when and how and why
history evolved as it did in the Adirondack Mountains.
But in what way do you start telling it all? By going back 10,000
years to when glaciers carved the hills and scooped out the valleys?
Or do you start with the Indians, or with old Samuel de Champlain,
who sailed down the lake in 1609 and probably was the first white
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man to see those peaks, blue and hazy in the distance. The French
began to call them the Peruvian Mountains because they thought
there must be great mineral treasures there, although nobody
bothered to explore them for another 200 years — and that’s how the
village of Peru, in Clinton County, and Lake Champlain’s Peru Bay
got their names.
But we’re not going to start there. We’re going to go back more
than a billion years.
And what was here a billion years ago?
Well, the geologic history of any region is hidden in its rocks,
and of course the Adirondack rocks have a spellbinding story to tell
— to me, it’s one of the great adventure stories of all time.
Adirondack rock isn’t the oldest in the world, as some people
like to say. But it is among the oldest.
The planet Earth itself began over 4 billion years ago. And a
great deal more than a billion years ago the rocks of the Adirondacks
were being born beneath a warm, shallow, primeval sea. Planet Earth
was still an infant in its first geologic era, known as the Precambrian.
You can realize how long ago that was when you reflect that landdwelling animals were not to appear for at least another 700 million
years.
Under this warm, shallow sea that covered our area — all of our
present New York state and eastern North America — was a long,
deep, narrow trough or submerged shelf, which geologists call a
geosyncline. And into this trough poured sand and clay and calcium
carbonate and volcanic ash, probably eroded from an older continent
and volcanic islands which have long since disappeared. For long
ages these sediments drifted in, accumulated layer by layer, were
cemented together and finally evolved into a rocky mass of
sandstone, shale and limestone. At the same time, under its mighty
burden, the trough sagged, allowing the sea to maintain a more or
less constant depth of several hundred feet.
Now, after a certain thickness of rock builds up in the sea,
mountain-building forces are triggered and there is volcanic activity.
We saw this sort of thing happen just a few years ago when a new
mountain island was formed in the sea off Iceland. And so
tremendous pressures and upheaval were forced upon our drowned
rock mass. It not only buckled downward into the earth’s crust but
was thrust upward into the sky. And above the sea, probably all the
way from the Gulf of Mexico to Labrador, rose a mountain rampart
that may well have been as magnificent as the Himalayas — great,
jagged peaks as bare and as lonely as the mountains of the moon.
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Thus were the ancestral Adirondacks born. The foundation of these
once lofty peaks now lies some twenty miles underground.
Intense heat, pressure and chemical action re-formed — or, as
they say, metamorphosed — these sedimentary rocks that had been
created from the muds and sands and lime of the primeval sea.
Sandstone, shale and limestone were magically transformed into
schist, gneiss, quartzite and the crystalline limestones. These are
called Grenville rocks, from a Canadian town in the St. Lawrence
Valley. Because we do not belong, of course, to any other mountain
chain in the eastern United States. We’re uniquely alone and a part of
the Canadian Shield of southeastern Canada. The Adirondacks are an
extension of this shield and join it through an isthmus widely known
as the Frontenac Axis, which extends across St. Lawrence County
and the stepping stones of the Thousand Islands. So you can think of
the Adirondacks as a high Grenville island, with a neck of land to the
west joining it to another vast Grenville island in Canada, and
surrounding us lie areas very much younger in age, including the
Champlain Valley.
We know there are no fossils in the Adirondack rock, although
the regions around us teem with fossils. Why is that? Just in the last
few years, new discoveries have been made that push the start of life
on this planet back to 3 billion years ago. Possibly the great heat at
which our rocks were metamorphosed destroyed all trace of life. But
a more logical explanation is that, at the time our rocks were formed,
only soft-bodied marine creatures, without any shells to leave behind
as fossils, inhabited the sea.
I have said there are no fossils in the Adirondack rock, but there
is one exception: graphite, which is generally conceded to be a fossil.
When we look at the shiny black scales of graphite, we can truthfully
say we are gazing upon the crystallized remains of some of the
earliest organisms that ever lived on earth. Whether they were plant
or animal has never been determined.
During this process of mountain building, which of course didn’t
happen overnight but probably took place over a very long period of
time, an odd circumstance occurred, one that has created the strange
puzzle of the Adirondacks and still baffles geologists — and one to
which they haven’t yet found the answer. Great masses of molten or
igneous rock may have shot up from the bowels of the earth and were
forced or intruded into the sedimentary Grenville rocks in a very
irregular manner. At any rate, the Grenville was broken into patches,
pushed aside or tilted, or shot through by molten floods. In some
cases the Grenville actually melted or became part of molten masses
flowing like tar. In other cases, Grenville areas were left intact or
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undisturbed, as we find them today, although such areas are rare
around Lake Placid, as we shall see a little later.
These igneous rocks are said to be the syenites, granites, and the
Marcy- and Whiteface-type anorthosites. They have always, until
just the last few years, been considered younger than the Grenville
rocks. Today, however, many eminent geologists who have been
making an intense study here have abandoned this theory. They
believe that all the rocks that comprise the Adirondacks are
transformed ancient sedimentary rocks of the Grenville period, and
not a whole series of intrusions one after the other. This will give you
some idea of the enormous challenges the geologist still finds in the
Adirondacks, which he considers the greatest assemblage of rock
types in the long, long history of geology, and one of the most
fantastically complicated and least understood. No wonder poor
Professor Emmons, the state geologist who came up here in 1837 and
named the mountains Adirondack, was considerably baffled.
Now, we’ve mentioned anorthosite as one of our rocks, and we
are going to pause here and discuss it for a few moments because it’s
our most important rock, and the main reason why we have the
wonderful High Peaks area which surrounds Lake Placid. I’m sure
this question has occurred to most of you: Why are these High Peaks
compressed in a very small area, but only low mountains and hills
throughout all the rest of the Adirondacks?
The answer is anorthosite. There are two types, the Marcy and
the Whiteface, and they underlie only about 1,500 square miles of
Adirondack country, chiefly here in Essex County. This anorthosite,
as you can see, is a coarse-grained, gray rock in which occasional
blue, green or gold flashes of the beautiful mineral Labradorite are
seen when you hold it at the right angle. The most perfect specimens
of Labradorite are used as gems. This mineral was first discovered by
the Moravian missionaries in Labrador, and when it was originally
introduced into England it commanded fabulous prices because it had
never been seen before. It is much sought after by rockhounds in the
Adirondacks.
This rock anorthosite is unique. It is made up of over 95 percent
of one mineral: lime-rich feldspar. It is a rare rock throughout the
world and occurs in very few spots. There are several bodies in
Virginia, Pennsylvania, Quebec and Norway. The bulk of it is in
northeast North America, from the coast of Labrador to the
Adirondacks. It’s a rather light rock compared to others, but it is very
slow to yield to erosion, and that in large part is the reason for the
locale of our highest peaks, which are composed mainly of
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anorthosite. The rest of the Adirondacks are made up largely of other
rock that erodes rather quickly.
You will often find that the lower mountains around Lake
Placid, and those worn down to mere cobbles, are the ones rich in
Grenville rocks. The Lake Placid area has several very interesting
Grenville sections: Pulpit Rock to Connery Pond, Cobble Hill,
Winch and Owens Ponds off Wilmington Road, Sunrise Notch and
Wilmington Notch. Heaven Hill, where Henry Uihlein resides, is
almost entirely made up of this most ancient of our rocks. Probably
the most famous section of all is Cascade Lakes. Here, numerous
avalanches have exposed the primary limestone, which contains
many crystals, semi-precious gems and minerals. Cascade, of course,
is an exceedingly popular spot with rockhounds.
But let us return to our great adventure story. Modern
geochemical methods have made it possible to determine the time
when the dramatic change in our rocks took place and the mountains
were made. The ancestral Adirondacks are thus definitely known to
have been formed at least 1.1 billion years ago.
In a quarry near Gouverneur once worked for feldspar, a student
of minerals found a few small, dull black cubes, crystals of uraninite,
which is the oxide of uranium. It has the strange habit of slowly
disintegrating, by radioactivity, into lead and helium, and this slow
decay goes on at a very steady rate. Thus, the uraninite was
computed to be 1.1 billion years old — and remember, the parent
rock from which it was formed is a billion years older — and so the
birth of our mountains is pushed back still further into the mists of
time.
Never again were these original Adirondacks to be completely
covered by the ever-advancing ancient seas. Other islands and small
continents were born, lived their day and disappeared, but the great
island of the higher Adirondacks stayed above the waves — though
at times these waves did lap far inland on the Adirondack island, as
is proven by the sandstones and limestones well into our upland area.
As soon as the young mountains rose above the water, however,
they began to die. The winds and waves, the rain, snow and ice
assaulted them over millions of years. Their eroded sands and rocks
may have trickled down to a new trough in the sea that eventually
formed the mountains of New England. Almost certainly, somewhere
there are rock formations that evolved from the Adirondack erosion,
but none are known for certain anywhere. In any event, finally, after
a half a billion years, the great mountains were gone, worn down to
low, rolling hills surmounted by the dome of the Adirondack High
Peaks area. Only the stubs remained.
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And then, about 460 million years ago — and now we’re getting
closer to the present — the Adirondack peneplain began to sag under
a westward advancing sea. Clean beach sands were deposited on
them, and low forms of plant life began to appear on the land that
remained above the water — because you’ll remember that the
Adirondacks never completely vanished again under the sea.
Then, about 300 million years ago — and now we are getting
very close to the present — the Adirondack region, along with all of
eastern North America, was uplifted again. The sea retreated, our
mountains again exposed their ancient Precambrian rocks, and the
inevitable process of erosion began once more. It was following this
uplift that they were sculptured to almost the look of the present
landscape.
The next great event for the Adirondacks was the Ice Age, or
glacial period. Actually the term Ice Age is incorrect, because there
was not one but many Ice Ages, from about a million years ago to
9,000 years ego. They have come and gone, and they may return
again. Even now we may say there’s an Ice Age because we have
polar ice sheets at both ends of the earth.
The Ice Age began when a huge ice cap formed in northern
Labrador, which spread around its margins by plastic flow and
eventually reached as far south as Long Island and Pennsylvania in
the east, advancing and receding many times. During these many
glacial ages, vast sheets of ice covered New York. Even our highest
Adirondack summits were buried beneath the moving ice mass. It
was then that our peaks and ridges were honed and sharpened, new
river valleys were scoured out, and the many lakes and ponds were
formed. Lake Placid itself was formed by the blockading of two
parallel valleys that had been joined by smaller valleys, producing
the islands, and thus forming a ladder-shaped body of water. In a
depression of the dam that created Lake Placid, Mirror Lake now
lies.
There are many evidences in our area of glacial action. The great
bowl-like depression just east of the summit of Whiteface, called a
cirque, was occupied by a local glacier. Its remarkable shape, seen
from Wilmington, is due to the action of the glacier plucking out the
rock. The valley between Esther and Marble mountains was also
formerly occupied by a local glacier, and the Sentinel Range has a
very fine example of a bowl-like depression, or cirque, cut out by a
local glacier.
As the last ice sheet began to wane, the highest peaks of the
Adirondacks were the first to be uncovered, islands in a sea of ice. In
fact, the whole Adirondack region was one vast island, because the
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St. Lawrence and Champlain valleys became arms of the ocean, and
that is why whale bones are found today in Lake Champlain.
Slowly the islands became larger, surrounded by huge lakes.
North Elba, the Saranac Lake section, Keene, Jay and Wilmington
were almost one huge lake.
At various times there were three major lakes in the Lake Placid
area, known to geologists as the South Meadows and the Upper and
Lower Newman lakes. The South Meadows Lake was some 10 miles
long and wide, containing a number of islands. Some unmistakable
beaches exist today on the shoulders of the Sentinel Range and on
Scott’s Cobble, where the town ski slopes are. The outlet of this great
lake was to the west, since the valley containing the Cascade Lakes
was filled with glacial moraine.
This early lake was succeeded by the Upper Lake Newman,
which was even larger. Some terraces of this once great lake are very
evident today. Some day when you’re driving along the Cascade
Road by the Rollie Torrance farm, look across the fields to the John
Brown plateau and the ridges south of it along the Au Sable River,
and you’ll see striking evidence of the terraces of this old lake. The
Olympic ski jump hill also bears the imprints.
After the extinction of Upper Lake Newman, another great lake
came into being, known as Lower Lake Newman. This lake was of
still greater extent and included the valleys occupied by both the west
and east branches of the Au Sable River, the connecting link being
the Wilmington Notch. These waters flooded the area covered by
Lake Placid, the greater portion of the Saranac Lake quadrangle, and
the area of Franklin Falls, Keene and Keene Valley over to Upper
Jay.
Of course the great ice sheet carried down from the north
millions of boulders that were dumped on the Adirondacks, some on
the highest peaks — Marcy, Colden and McIntyre — and here is a
story of what happened not so long ago to some of those boulders.
Whether or not you believe it depends upon whether or not you
believe truth is stranger than fiction. Noah LaCasse, a native of
Newcomb, told this tale back in the 1930s when he was an old man
in his 70s. He said that when he was a young man they used to
organize in Newcomb what they called “stone rolling” parties, some
of which seem to have been co-ed. They would go way into the
woods and climb one of the High Peaks and roll the boulders off. He
said their greatest thrill was to start a big boulder from the top of
Colden. This would crash down the steep slopes, shearing off many a
good-sized tree, it would jump Avalanche Lake and finally come
back down the side of Avalanche Mountain, landing with a
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tremendous splash in the lake. And so, while glaciers deposited the
boulders, that is one story of how mere man displaced some of them.
We might recommend this harmless pastime today to juvenile
delinquents as a way of working off steam — instead of breaking up
beach houses following debutante parties, or throwing rocks and beer
bottles at policemen.
And then the great waters withdrew, leaving the landscape as it
looks today, the valleys so filled with glacial debris brought from
outside that most of our ancient rock lies deeply buried beneath it.
The whole area was a great Arctic tundra, bare of vegetation. The
wonderful forest cover we have today has built up only since the
final ice sheet wasted away about 9,000 years ago. But even today
the land still, at times, suddenly bounds back, shrugging off the
weight of the foreign ice. We have an earthquake, and there is great
excitement and much ado over what is, after all, only a very minor
readjustment in the long, long geologic history of the Adirondack
Mountains.
And now that I’ve told you like it was, I’m going to make a very
important correction. The story I’ve just told is the one that evolved
over a 130-year geologic study of the Adirondacks. But in just the
last several years, a very major and exciting new discovery has come
about through studies emanating from St. Lawrence University. In a
narrow belt — 30 miles long and 3 miles wide — along the
Oswegatchie River near Gouverneur, an exposed belt of rocks has
been studied and found to be 2 billion years old, twice as old as the
Grenville, which has always been thought to be the oldest. This
means that it was probably laid down as a sediment in an extremely
ancient sea 3 billion years ago. This rock has been named PreGrenville.
All this adds up to the fact that there was another great mountain
range covering our area prior to the birth of the Adirondacks. This
great mountain range, of course, completely eroded, and upon its
roots our present Adirondacks were laid down. And so we now know
that we have in northern New York some rocks of extraordinary age
that represent a fragment of the earth’s very earliest history — and
this rock may underlie the whole of the Adirondack complex. No
doubt a great deal more of it will be recognized in outcrops within
the next few years.
Now that we’ve covered the facts, let’s return to a question I am
often asked: “How old are the Adirondacks?” Well, the Adirondacks
are all ages, ranging from at least 3 billion years ago to now. They
didn’t just pop up complete as we now see them, as some sort of
catastrophic upheaval. They are the roots and bedrock of mountains
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that were given birth 2 billion years ago, whose tops wore off into
the ancient seas, and evidently under them are the roots and bedrock
of other mountains born 3 billion years ago. They are old, among the
oldest mountains in the world. But, in the manner of all things
subject to constant change, however slow and imperceptible, they are
forever new, too. The landscape we see in Lake Placid today was
sculptured and honed down from the ancient rock only over the last
300 million years, which is short in geologic time. Our mountains
have an “old shoe” look, as William Chapman White says. They look
as if they’ve been there since the world began — and what’s more,
they actually have been.
We know now that the familiar expression, “the everlasting
hills,” is decidedly incorrect. Our mountains, of course, are even now
dying as they did a long time ago. But there’s no doubt they’ll be
born again, as they always have been. From the evidence of the past,
it seems that this region is mountain-building country — always has
been, and can never be anything else.
At last, the land was ready for human occupation.
First came the Indian. Forests of mixed evergreens and
hardwoods covered most of our land when the first Indian hunters
came into our town. They were not the Iroquois, but an older,
prehistoric race that inhabited New York more than 5,000 years ago.
At any rate, early hunters were here before the Great Pyramids were
reared at Giza in the Nile Valley, and when our European ancestors
were still savages in the early New Stone Age. I own a cache blade
which dates back to these aboriginal tribes, and it was dug up here in
North Elba 4 years ago, proving that prehistoric Indians antedating
the Iroquois were familiar with this region.
Then our mountains became the hunting grounds of the
Algonquins, and particularly of one tribe, the Adirondacks. The
Iroquois waged constant warfare with these Algonquins, as they did
with almost everyone else, and by the time Champlain arrived on the
lake that bears his name, the Iroquois had driven the Algonquins
from our area. Champlain was told that all the surrounding country
belonged to the Mohawks, an Iroquoisan tribe. The Indians seemed
to have no particular name for our mountain region. On the earliest
maps it is called merely “Land of the Iroquois” or “Land of the
Mohawks” or “Beaver-Hunting Country of the Six Nations.” This
great wilderness remained unexplored by the white man, and a big
question mark until almost 1800.
We might say that the honor of being the first summer tourists
here belongs to the Mohawks, because while they never had any
permanent village, they did congregate in large numbers for the
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summer months. One of their largest summer villages was evidently
located on the plateau where the old Torrance farm is, at the entrance
to the Heart Lake [Adirondack Lodge] Road. I learned from a
member of the St. Regis tribe that the Indians also had a summer
encampment on one of the islands in Lake Placid. They regarded
Whiteface as a sacred mountain and used it as a lookout post.
Perhaps the ancient and half-rotted dugout canoe which was found at
the bottom of Lake Placid some years ago by skindivers belonged to
those Indians. Early settlers here also found traces of an Indian
council ground on Brewster Peninsula [on the south end of Placid
Lake].
There were two known Indian trails in North Elba. One was the
Saranac River at our western border, which was almost a main trail
from the Fulton chain of lakes to Lake Champlain. The only other
known North Elba trail, which is considered quite ancient, was up the
Hudson, through the Indian Pass, and thus into our town. And so
Indian Pass was very well named by the early settlers.
Then the Revolution came, the Indians were banished from their
ancestral lands, and into the hands of the state passed the vast tracts
of the uninhabited Adirondacks. We do not know who the first white
man was to see Lake Placid — probably a wandering trapper, in the
days when everyone was pursuing the beaver because everyone in
Europe wanted a beaver hat. It might have been John Jacob Astor
himself, in the days when he was a poor young man roaming the
wilderness with a pack on his back. For Astor combed the farthest
reaches of the Adirondacks around the age of 17, with his partner,
Peter Smith of Utica, and as we get on with our story we will see that
it was this same Peter Smith who many years later bought up almost
half of our township, perhaps because he was familiar with it and had
seen it in his youth.
In 1781, part of the Adirondacks — including North Elba — was
set aside by the state as bounty land, not for Revolutionary War
veterans but for men who would be willing to act as a militia to
guard our Canadian border. There were, unhappily, no takers, and the
state, uncertain what to do with this great white elephant, surveyed it
in 1786 and threw it open for sale to the public. North Elba was
divided into Townships 11 and 12 of the Old Military Tract. And still
there were no takers.
Now, far over to the west in the great Macomb’s Purchase of St.
Lawrence County, settlement was well advanced by 1795. And to the
east little villages began to spring up at Westport, Jay, Elizabethtown
and Keene. Between east and west lay this trackless wilderness. But,
happily for our history, it did not remain trackless for long. For even
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before 1800, the settlers of Macomb’s Purchase built a road from
Hopkinton in St. Lawrence County to Westport on Lake Champlain,
for commerce with the Champlain basin. Primitive as it was, it was
nevertheless the first track into the unexplored northern wilderness
and North Elba. At first it was called the Northwest Bay-Hopkinton
Road. Soon it became popularly known as the Old Military Road, not
because it ever served any military purpose but because it wound its
way through the Old Military Tracts. In 1810 it was taken over by
the state and improved.
Of all the things I love in North Elba, I love nothing any more
than this Old Military Road. It is our very oldest man-made
possession, for from Keene to Saranac Lake it follows almost exactly
the same course it did over 166 years ago, and parts of it have
changed little if at all to this day. Even today, every time I go there
over the abandoned, gloomy forest stretch of the Old Military Road
that is known as the “Old Mountain Road,” I feel the mysterious and
heavy silence of the past. This was once the last leg of the journey to
North Elba. From Keene the road climbs up and up over Alstead
Hill, hugs the north flank of Pitchoff Mountain, and finally plunges
down to Cascade Road, just west of the Freeman’s Home motel.
Many a hair-raising tale was told in the old days of the hazards
in negotiating this primitive mountain passageway to the west.
Sometimes in the stillness I think I can hear the sound of huge wagon
wheels clanking over treacherous stones.
It was down this road in 1800 that North Elba’s first settler
came. There has probably never been anywhere, at any time, a more
unlikely first settler. His name was Elijah Bennet. He was not a
young man, being 46 in 1800, and his second wife Rebecca was 36.
He was also a cripple. He had served in the Revolution as a private,
and his left arm had been severely fractured by a musket ball at the
famous Battle of Bunker Hill. Then, too, Elijah was a poor man, as
were almost all of North Elba’s early settlers. Ours is not a history of
wealthy land barons and patroons and stately manor houses. It is
instead a history of simple farmers who lived off the land by the
sweat of their brow, of rude log cabins, fierce winter gales and nearstarvation, and a desperate battle, not with Indians but with wild
animals, of which there were many we no longer have — panther,
lynx, bobcat, moose and wolf.
Elijah and Rebecca Bennet were without children when they
arrived in North Elba in 1800, although they had been married 8
years. By 1810 they had seven children. When we consider that they
were in advanced middle age when they started to produce this large
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family, I think we can all agree that the climate of North Elba proved
very salubrious.
Elijah settled on Great Lots 279 and 280 of Township 11 of the
Old Military Tract. This land today would fetch a king’s ransom, for
it includes the site of all the main Lake Placid Club buildings and
grounds and its upper golf course, lower Main Street and the Mill
Pond area. Elijah was the only one of North Elba’s first colony to
settle within what are now the village limits of Lake Placid. That he
did so, however, once and for all refutes a certain claim of town
dwellers that theirs is the area first settled, and the villagers are
johnny-come-latelies. The fact remains, though, that Elijah did settle
on a part of Lake Placid village.
The Bennets lived here for 30 years, and Elijah died here in
1830 at the age of 76. We do not know where our first settler lies
buried. No cemetery here or in Keene contains his headstone, but
there is a clue as to where his final resting place may have been, as
we will see a little later in our story.
The Bennets were not long alone in their mountain home. From
1800 to 1810 the clop of horse and oxen hoof was a familiar sound
on Old Military Road as family after family careened down the Old
Mountain Road, took one look at the marvelous mountains, woods
and waters, and settled in. The dull thwack of the axe sounded in the
forests as the farmers cleared their land — and, later, the spank of
water wheel and the squeal of bellows as the Elba Iron Works rose
on the Chubb River, lending the settlement its name.
Perhaps you wonder how our town looked then. It looked very
different, I am sure, from what you imagine. We all tend to think of
North Elba, when the first settlers came, as a dark, mysterious,
primeval forest with towering pines that were here when Columbus
found America. It must have been a beautiful forest indeed, but there
was in fact little white pine. The predominant trees were hemlock,
beech, maple and spruce. And there were great open beaver
meadows, for the beaver were very numerous in those days and
dammed every little river, brook and rill that flowed in the town.
This was very fortunate for the early colonists, for the beaver
meadows provided good grazing for sheep, goats and cattle until they
could clear their land.
There was no particular area of settlement. They put down
stakes everywhere — the Torrance farm section, along the Au Sable
River, all along the Old Military Road as far as the summer drive-in
theatre, all through Averyville, the Bear Cub Road, the River Road,
and the area around Mill Pond. They were all good Yankee names
12
like Griswold, Bliss, Needham, Porter, Mack, Button, Pond and
Thorndyke.
The first marriage was that of Elijah McArthur and Electa
Brooks, and the first death that of Arunah Taylor, who perished by
cold in the woods. By 1810, there were 200 souls living here; by
1815, probably 100 more. There was a grist mill, a saw mill, regular
church services, and a school, taught by Fanny Dart. And there was
rather a large iron works located just below the present electricpower dam on the Chubb River, which gave employment to many
people. Company houses for the workers were located where the
airport now is.
It was at this time that a great part of the town was first
lumbered off to make charcoal to supply the iron works. And it was
at this time that many of the place names were given. Lake Placid
was named then. Even the islands in Lake Placid, Moose and Buck,
were named as early as 1804. Our present Mirror Lake was
christened Bennet’s Pond for Elijah Bennet, and Chubb River and
Chubb Hill (now, unfortunately, called “Riki Hill”) were named for
Joseph Chubb, who had a large farm where the Rodzinski, Allwork
and Fortune houses are. I have seen an ancient cellar hole almost
across from Fred Fortune’s on the Old Military Road, with an old
well hole in almost perfect preservation. This was undoubtedly the
site of Joseph Chubb’s house.
As for the settlement itself, it was known by various names. The
first seems to have been the Plains of Abraham. If this seems a
strange name for a mountain community, you should take a good
look at your town, for it is almost entirely an immense, uplifted
plateau all the way from Cascade to Saranac Lake, with a few
cobbles dotted here and there. It was also known as Keene Plains and
the Great Plains, and sometimes just The Plains. Finally it was
referred to mostly as Elba, and then North Elba to distinguish it from
a community named Elba in the southern part of the States
By 1817 it all came to an end. The little settlement had been
dealt a two-edged blow. In 1815 the iron works shut down, leaving
many without work. In the summer of 1816 an arctic cold wave
destroyed all crops, and near-starvation followed. It snowed every
month that year — including June, July and August — and for a long
time afterward it was referred to by old-timers as “1816 and hell
frozen over.” In the wake of these two tragedies, there was a general
exodus from the town. The farmers moved on westward in the tide of
empire, and the once bustling, thriving community of Elba fell into
decay. The forest encroached again on abandoned pastures. In the
clearings the panther screamed again, and deer and moose grazed
13
unmolested in the deserted fields. Only 10 families were left in the
whole of what is now North Elba. In the next 25 years there were
never to be more than 10 families at one time, two of them over at
the Saranac Lake end.
Most of these early settlers had been squatters — in other words,
they never bothered to buy from the state the land they settled. It has
often been claimed that they left because Peter Smith bought up the
entire town and would not sell them the land they had improved. This
is not correct, however, for Peter Smith did not buy his land until
after most of them had gone — and, in any event, Smith purchased
much less than half the town, mostly land that had never been settled.
There was one family that stayed on that has always been one of
my favorites: the Osgoods (no relation to our present Osgoods).
Every community has its rich, important, respected first citizen.
Elba’s was Iddo Osgood, always known as Squire Osgood, who
came here just after Elijah Bennet, probably in 1801. He died in
North Elba in 1861, which made him a continuous resident for 60
years. Iddo served several terms as supervisor of the town while it
was still part of Keene. He was a commissioner of the Old Military
Road for the state while it was being improved after 1810. He was
also a justice of the peace, as was his son Daniel. His son Dillon
became our first postmaster in 1849.
Iddo was a great opportunist, for when the town became all but
deserted in 1817 he appropriated to himself all the abandoned fields
for his own sheep and cattle. You might say he had a field day.
Osgood also had the first inn and tavern in the town.
This first colony of Elba became forgotten, even by those who
arrived later and found traces of it. If it is mentioned at all in the
history books, it is dismissed in a sentence. And that is why I have
taken on the job of trying to reconstruct it, for it lies at the very roots
of our history and gives meaning to all that followed.
In the early 1900s, gruesome evidence of it came to light, for
people digging at the sand pit opposite the ski jump began to uncover
old skeletons and an assortment of bones. There seems to have been
no endeavor to preserve them and re-inter them in hallowed ground,
for the young village boys had a rattling good time for some years
playing with the bones. This was undoubtedly our first cemetery, all
outward signs of which had vanished in 100 years. It was quite
probably here that our first settler, Elijah Bennet, was buried.
Most of you have probably wandered through our cemeteries,
idly reading the inscriptions. Have you ever wondered about the
people whose bones lie there? I often do. What was his trade? How
did he live? What were his joys and sorrows? How did he die?
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I think the headstones that fascinate me most are those of the
Thompson family, for what a story lies behind them.
One day in 1824 there strode down the Old Mountain Road to
the Plains of Abraham a man who was destined to become the
patriarch of North Elba’s most uncommon family. Already he was
the father of four sons, one of them an infant in his mother’s arms.
Five more sons and a daughter were to be born here.
His name was Roswell Thompson. He was born in New
Hampshire, and he had come through the forest from Lewis, near
Elizabethtown, where he had settled before 1815. Legend has
credited him with 22 children, but there is not a shred of evidence to
support such a claim. He actually fathered 10, nine boys and a girl —
but we can all agree that even 10 is a goodly sum, and surely no
other 10 children of one family were ever so buffeted about by the
winds of fortune. This prolific and interesting family was to know
terrible tragedy, death and separation, almost all of it growing out of
their eventual close alliance with John Brown. The entire foundation
of this large, hearty, industrious pioneer family was disrupted with
the arrival of John Brown in North Elba.
The children, in order of birth, were John, Archibald, Henry,
Franklin, Samuel, Leander, William and Willard (who were twins),
the one girl Isabelle, and Dauphin. Today the descendants of only
two of them — Franklin and Archibald — are left in Lake Placid.
The others are scattered all over the United States, and few are aware
of the existence of the rest. The Thompsons are the only family in
town today which descends from Lake Placid’s earliest days.
William and Dauphin were to die martyrs’ deaths at Harper’s
Ferry with John Brown. Henry was to marry a daughter of John
Brown and suffer near-mortal injury at Black Jack in Brown’s
Kansas raids. Isabelle was to lose her husband, a son of John Brown,
at Harper’s Ferry. Leander was to lose his wife and all his children in
a North Elba epidemic; he later served the Union cause in the Civil
War. Willard was to know the terrible infamy of Andersonville while
a prisoner in the same war. And Henry, John, Samuel and Isabelle
were to follow John Brown’s stricken widow from North Elba to
settle amid alien corn.
Roswell Thompson settled on property in 1824 that is now the
Lake Placid Club golf links. In later years, he built a large house that
was sold to the Lake Placid Club and became known as Mohawk. In
one sense, the Thompsons can be said to have been the builders of
the early village of Lake Placid, for almost all the sons were
carpenters and joiners and had a hand in raising many of the early
15
houses and hotels. John Thompson was the first supervisor of North
Elba when it was set off from Keene in 1850.
The Thompsons achieved national fame when the Harper’s Ferry
incident was blazoned across the front pages of America’s
newspapers.
William and Dauphin were both raw country boys when they set
off for the south with John Brown and his men. Quite probably they
had never before been outside Essex County. William was 27, a
kind-hearted, good-natured fellow who enjoyed telling funny stories.
Dauphin was only 21, a handsome lad nearly six feet tall, with
blonde, curly hair and blue eyes, innocent as a baby. He is described
in Stephen Vincent Benet’s narrative poem, “John Brown’s Body,”
as the “pippin-cheeked country boy.” He was a quiet person who
read a great deal and said little. William and Dauphin sincerely
believed in John Brown’s cause, as did almost all the Thompsons,
and went to Harper’s Ferry without being urged and purely from a
sense of right and duty.
The action at Harper’s Ferry took place on October 17, 1859.
William, who had been left as a sentry on the bridge, was driven off
by the Jefferson Guards and fled back to the armory, which Brown
had taken. At Brown’s request, he went out with a prisoner to stop
the firing with a flag of truce. The sole result was that he fell into the
hands of the enemy and was made a captive in the Wager House
hotel. Mad with the desire to revenge the death of the Harper’s Ferry
mayor in the raid, the mob attempted to make away with William in
the hotel itself. A brief respite was secured him by a young lady who
begged that his life be spared. The mob then dragged him out by the
throat, carried him to the bridge and shot him. Before he fell, a dozen
or more balls were buried in him. Then they threw his body off the
trestlework into the Potomac. As he lay in the shallow water below,
he was riddled with yet more bullets. The body, said a local historian,
could be seen for a day or two after, lying at the bottom of the river
with his ghastly face still exhibiting his fearful death agony.
Making all allowances for the horrors of the day, the killing of
William Thompson was still considered a disgrace to the state of
Virginia, and it loses nothing of its barbarity with the lapse of years.
That night John Brown and his raiders and their prisoners
occupied the armory’s engine house, with the doors shut and barred.
With the coming of dawn, the United States Marines, using a ladder
as a battering ram, broke open the door. Rushing in like tigers, they
bayoneted Dauphin Thompson. It is said that he died immediately.
William and Dauphin, with six other raiders who were killed,
were buried in an unmarked grave, almost at the water’s edge of the
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Shenandoah River. There they lay while the Civil War raged over
them. In 1899 their bones were disinterred and removed to North
Elba and were given a hero’s burial by John Brown’s side. The
changed opinion of the country is reflected in the fact that while
Dauphin had been killed by United States Marines in 1859, in 1899
United States infantrymen fired a salute over his and his comrades’
grave at North Elba.
But perhaps even a sadder tale is Isabelle Thompson’s, whose
husband, Watson Brown, was also killed in the raid. Isabelle married
Watson when she was 19 years old. Their one child, Frederick, was
born in August 1859. There is still in existence a very touching and
tender series of letters from Watson to Isabelle just before the raid,
which no one can read unmoved, and which have become famous in
the literature of history. The most famous, quoted by Benet, says,
“Oh, Belle, I do want to see you and the little fellow very much but
must wait. ... I sometimes think perhaps we shall not meet again.”
And they never did. The heart-broken young widow for a time
had consolation in her little son Freddy. A very poignant description
of the widowed Isabelle and her little son is contained in the book,
“Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters and Journals.” Louisa and her
father, along with most of the other intellectuals of New England,
had been staunch supporters of John Brown, and after his execution
Isabelle and Mrs. Brown were invited to visit the Alcott home at
Concord. A tea was given in their honor, and Louisa reported in a
letter to her sister:
The two pale women sat silent and serene through the
clatter; and the bright-eyed, handsome baby received the homage
of the multitude like a little king, bearing the kisses and praises
with the utmost dignity. He is named Frederick Watson Brown and
is a fair, heroic-looking baby, with a fine head and serious eyes
that look about him as if saying, ‘I am a Brown! Are these friends
or enemies?’ I wanted to cry once at the little scene the
unconscious baby made.
Someone caught and kissed him rudely; he didn’t cry, but
looked troubled and rolled his great eyes anxiously about for
some familiar face to reassure him with its smile, When he was
safe back in the study, playing alone at his mother’s feet, C. and I
went and worshipped in our own way at the shrine of John
Brown’s grandson, kissing him as if he were a little saint, and
feeling highly honored when he sucked our fingers or walked on
us with his honest little red shoes, much the worse for wear.
The younger woman [Isabelle] had such a patient, heartbroken face, it was a whole Harper’s Ferry tragedy in a look.
When we got your letter, Mother and I ran into the study to read it.
Mother read aloud. As she read your words that were a poem in
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their simplicity and (newly married) happiness, the poor young
widow sat with tears rolling down her face; for I suppose it brought
back her own wedding day, not two years ago, and all the while
she cried the baby laughed and crowed at her feet as if there was
no trouble in the world.
But even little Freddy was taken from Isabelle, for the child
sickened and died in 1863 when he was only 4 years old. His little
headstone is in our North Elba Cemetery.
I have seen portraits of Isabelle in middle age, when she was
living in Wisconsin, had been married many years to her second
husband, a nephew of John Brown, and had two daughters. She was a
stolid, placid, serene-looking woman, with no mark upon her face of
the terrible tragedy of her youth.
Archibald seems to have been one of the few Thompsons who
suffered little of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He was
a rollicking, adventuresome young man who married late in life and
was a notable axeman and woodsman in his later years. He went to
California in the Gold Rush of 1849. The story is told that, one day,
his mother sent him down to the spring for water. He filled the
bucket, suddenly set it down and took off for the gold fields on the
spot, without saying goodbye to his family. A couple of years later
he returned to North Elba, went first to the spring, filled the bucket
he found there, strode to the house, opened the door and said, “Hello,
Ma. Here’s your water.”
That is part of the story of the Thompson family, which came
here in 1824 and has endured until today. There are a lot of other
interesting stories behind all those tombstones. I wish I had time to
tell them all.
We are very greatly indebted to the handful of families like the
Bennets, the Osgoods, the Thompsons, and the Averys of Averyville,
who stubbornly clung to the soil of North Elba while all others
deserted it, who endured the terrible hardships of pioneer life and
kept our history and town alive while others passed it by.
But suddenly in the 1840s, North Elba found new life. A second
tide of immigration swept in upon Gerrit Smith’s offer for sale of the
lands he had inherited from his father, Peter Smith. As you all know,
about 1846 Smith also founded a Negro colony here as a
humanitarian project. Within 10 years the experiment proved a
failure, due to the harsh climate. The project did, however, serve to
draw the attention of John Brown, who moved his family to North
Elba in June 1849 and resided here the better part of 10 years, using
the place as a planning base for his abolitionist activities.
18
It is not my intention to dwell very long on the story of John
Brown and the Negro colony. It is too well known to all of you, has
been written about ad infinitum and is still being written about. This
episode has been stressed out of all proportion by historians, but we
must admit it has given us a great deal of fame. And whatever each
of us may think of John Brown’s character, good or ill, we can all
agree that his name has become a household word throughout the
world, and a symbol of freedom and of the dignity and rights of all
men. This is now one of the world’s great shrines, this simple, gaunt
little house with its back to the west wind and looking out over the
great Plains of Abraham of our past. We are lucky to have this
important historical attraction in our town. Its importance will
increase rather than decrease as history moves on.
The new wave of settlement was again made up of staunch
farmers of New England heritage. They came mostly from Keene
and Jay and the villages bordering Lake Champlain. They had all had
a hand in developing Essex County from the start, and the rigors of
North Elba did not faze them in the least. There came names like
Nash and Brewster, Hinckley and Huntington, Washburn and Blinn,
Scott and Davis, Ames and Lyon, Peacock and Merrill, names that
are still with us. By 1850 our population had again reached 200,
almost the same as it had been 40 years before. At this time we were
wholly a farming community, but the rudiments of the tourist trade
were in evidence with the building of the first inns on Old Military
Road, Scott’s and Osgood’s, followed by Lyon’s, the old stagecoach
stop, which is still standing. Writers, artists, hunters, fishermen and
professional people, heeding rumors of Elba’s wild and primitive
beauty, began to visit the area, and after the Civil War they came in
great numbers. Our modern history was about to begin.
If I seem to skip over the Victorian Age and treat it lightly, there
are several reasons. First, it is fairly recent as our history goes, and
most of you are familiar with it. It has been fully dealt with in the
history books — in fact, it is the only era of our human history that
has been written about.
Secondly, it was a time of such tremendous growth that it is hard
to single out this or that personality or event.
And third, it is the period that I personally like least of all — and
I will be very frank about it. I think it’s because I would not have
wanted to live in Lake Placid during the last 30 years of the 19th
century or the first 10 years of this one. It was, very plainly, at that
time one of the ugliest villages on the face of the earth — and this
despite the great hotels and summer homes that were being reared,
and the tremendous influx of the wealthy and aristocratic. We are apt
19
to think of early villages as having great charm and natural beauty.
This was not so of Placid. If you have seen as many photographs of
this era as I have, you will know what I mean.
The village was almost completely denuded of trees. They had
all been cut down. Signal Hill, Grand View Hill, even the Lake
Placid Club area, all stand out bare as billiard balls, raw and ugly and
windswept. Even the background of the mountains cannot soften the
harsh lines of the new houses and hotels. There were board sidewalks
on Main Street, and the first wooden buildings were ugly and
tasteless, typical Adirondack architecture. They remind me of a stage
set of Matt Dillon’s Dodge City and the Long Branch. Actually, the
village today is far lovelier than it was then, and a vast improvement.
But, no matter. Lake Placid in those days became established as
one of the great resorts of the east, the playground of the wealthy and
prominent. We are particularly indebted to two families of the second
migration who made this so, the Nashes and the Brewsters. It is their
vision that can be said to have shaped the golden age of hotels.
Joseph Nash’s Red House and Benjamin Brewster’s Lake Placid
House were the first inns in the village, after 1850, and Nash was
responsible for the first of the Stevens Houses, which were made so
famous by the Stevens brothers, John and George. Had these men
been content to remain farmers, it is safe to say we would not have
come so far so fast. Indeed, it can be said that Joseph Nash was the
creator of Lake Placid village. He owned most of the land, he wanted
to see it developed, and he did a very great deal to hasten its
development. The beautiful little Nash Red House that we all knew
and loved stood for many years at the foot of Stevens Hill as a
symbol of Lake Placid’s past glory. It is our very great loss that it
was not preserved.
And then we know that with the advent of the Lake Placid Club
in 1895, the novelty of a winter sports program was introduced to the
North American continent, and from this period the growth and fame
of the village as a winter sports resort was rapid, leading to its
selection as the site of the third Olympic Winter Games.
So we reach the end of our travels. We’ve come a long way
together. Our journey took us over a billion years, from the lunar
landscape of a great mountain island in primeval seas, to a land of
glittering glaciers, then a frozen tundra, the hunting ground of the
Mohawk, a lonely frontier farming settlement, an iron-works town,
and a land all but abandoned for 25 years. Then again a farmer’s
town, and a luckless Negro settlement with John Brown. Then the
first ripple of the tourist trade that, in a short 50 years, swelled to a
gigantic wave. The golden age of the great hotels, the rich man’s
20
playground, one of the most exclusive resorts on the continent, the
cradle of winter sports, the Olympics, and on down into recent
modern times.
This is the bounty of our history: that it is infinitely rich and
varied and vigorous, and it is uniquely our own. For there is no other
history like it in all the world.
21
History of the
village of Lake Placid
THE TEXT OF A SHORT BOOKLET PUBLISHED BY THE
LAKE PLACID-NORTH ELBA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The village of Lake Placid, noted summer and winter resort,
1,967 feet above sea level at its highest elevation, is situated in the
scenic “High Peak” area of the Adirondack Mountains in Essex
County, New York. It lies on the shores of lakes Mirror (formerly
Bennet’s Pond) and Placid, and is surrounded by the vast Adirondack
State Park lands.
Origin of the name Lake Placid is unknown. Its first appearance
was on a map of Township 11, Old Military Tract prepared by
Stephen Thorn, State Surveyor, in 1804. This being the earliest
survey of the township, the lake was undoubtedly named by the first
settlers, who were then in residence.
The social and economic evolution of this village is closely
correlated to that of its township, North Elba, and must be considered
an integral part of the latter’s history.
Lake Placid lies in the northern center of the town, which
occupies a lofty plateau ringed by the highest summits of the
Adirondacks, including Marcy (5,344 feet) Algonquin of the
McIntyre Range (5,112 feet), and Whiteface (4,672 feet). Formed
during the infancy of the planet Earth, in the Pre-Cambrian period,
the Adirondack massif is classed as one of the oldest mountain
systems in the world, and its ancient rocks are of more than passing
interest to both scientist and rock hound.
North Elba was traditionally the site of a Mohawk Indian
summer village before the advent of the white man, and numerous
arrowheads and other artifacts unearthed over the years confirm the
legend. The first white men to visit it were probably soldiers of the
Crown during the French and Indian wars, and later wandering
trappers who harvested the town’s teeming beaver population.
Actually, for centuries the entire Adirondack area had been the
exclusive beaver hunting grounds of the Iroquois confederacy. Just
prior to the Revolution some Adirondack tracts (not within North
Elba) were deeded out by the Crown and Indian treaty. After the
Revolution, title to the remaining lands passed into the sovereign
State. North Elba was first included in Albany County, then
Charlotte, Washington and Clinton counties in succession, and
22
finally Essex. After the formation of Essex County in 1799, North
Elba was pert of the Town of Jay, and then Keene, until 1850.
In 1781 the legislature passed an act to raise a militia for border
defense on bounties of the State’s unappropriated lands. This led to
the definition and a rather superficial survey in 1787 of the “Old
Military Tract” which now is included as parts of Clinton, Essex and
Franklin counties. North Elba, with an official area of 153.5 square
miles (14 miles long and 11 miles wide), is contained in Townships
11 and 12 of the Old Military Tract, as surveyed by Thorn in 1804
and 1805. No claims being filed for bounties in this wild,
inaccessible area, the tract was ultimately thrown open for sale to the
general public.
Access to the remote North Elba area was gained, evidently
before 1800, over the Northwest Bay-Hopkinton road (Old Military
Road), which led from Westport on Lake Champlain to Hopkinton,
St. Lawrence County. Contrary to popular belief, the road never saw
military use. Probably first known as the Northwest Bay Road, it
later was popularly referred to as Old Military Road for the tract
through which it passed. The road was built by private owners of the
great Macomb’s Purchase to the west for commerce with the
Champlain basin, and was not acquired and improved by the State
until 1810. Parts of its original course are still in use for public travel.
It was the first road to traverse the Adirondack wilderness.
Settlement at Lake Placid was commenced in 1800 by Elijah
Bennet of Orwell, Vermont, a Revolutionary War veteran of the
Continental Army who was wounded in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Bennet (who gave his name to Bennet’s Pond, rechristened Mirror
Lake in the early 1870s by Miss Mary Monell) occupied and farmed
Lots 279 and 280 of Township 11 within present village limits until
his death in 1830. Shortly after his arrival, other New England
farmers moved in rapidly to form a community on the fringes of the
present village. Among these were Isaac Griswold, Theodore and
Jonathan Bliss, Jonathan Jenkins, Daniel McArthur, Jeremiah and
Charles Needham, Ebenezer Mack, James Porter, Josiah, Daniel and
James Wilson, and the Dart family. Early settlers Joseph Chubb and
Daniel Ray gave their names to the Chubb River and Ray Brook.
Some of the pioneers were squatters and never bought the land they
farmed, but many did obtain Patents from the State.
By 1810 population was 200 and a school and church services
had been established, Fannie Dart was the first schoolteacher, Cyrus
Comstock, an Essex County Congregational circuit rider, the first
minister, and the first death that of Arunah Taylor, who perished by
cold in the woods.
23
At this time a substantial iron works was constructed on the
present Lower Mill Pond, with two forges, numerous buildings,
gristmill and saw mill. Operated by the Elba Iron and Steel
Manufacturing Co., with a capital stock of $100,000, it was mainly
the creation of State Comptroller Archibald McIntyre. The settlement
then became known as Elba, the origin of the name being the island
of Elba, a rich source of minerals from ancient times. Other early
names for the isolated mountain outpost were Great Plains, Plains of
Abraham and Keene Plains.
During the War of 1812 several Elba men enlisted for military
duty and one, Wilson, was killed in action during the Battle of
Plattsburgh.
Growth continued until 1816 when two misfortunes led to a
general exodus. The iron ore mined at Cascade Lakes had proved
inferior in quality and the Elba Iron Works was then forced to
purchase its raw material at Arnold Hill mine in Clinton County. For
the purpose of transporting ore on sleds in the winter season, a road
was built to Wilmington over the Sentinel Range about 1812. The
whole operation proved too costly and in 1817 the works shut down,
leaving many without employment. The unusually severe weather
conditions of 1816 (known as “the year without a summer”), which
brought ruined crops and near starvation, also contributed to the
town’s abandonment.
Following this, in 1817, Peter Smith of Utica, a partner of John
Jacob Astor in the fur trade, and father of the noted abolitionist Gerrit
Smith, purchased extensive lands in the town from the State. For
some reason as yet unknown, few lots were sold out by him, and
from 1820 to 1840 probably not more than ten families at a time,
engaged in farming, occupied North Elba. These included a few
long-term residents, namely, Iddo Osgood, who came in 1808,
Simeon Avery, founder of Averyville, who came in 1817, Jacob
Moody, who settled the Saranac Lake end in 1819, and Roswell
Thompson, who arrived in 1824 and was a son-in-law of early settler
Jonathan Jenkins. Moody and Thompson descendants still reside in
Lake Placid and Saranac Lake.
A second tide of immigration was initiated in the 1840s, due in
part to Gerrit Smith’s sudden offer for sale of his inherited lands.
Among the arrivals who were to contribute much to local history
were Remembrance Nash and his sons Timothy and Joseph, Thomas,
Jackson and Benjamin Brewster, Horatio Hinckley, Alonzo
Washburn, Joseph and William Peacock, Martin Lyon, James
Merrill, Roswell Parkhurst, Nelson Blinn, Robert Scott and Hiram
Brown.
24
In 1846 Smith also founded a Negro colony in the town as a
humanitarian project, by giving away lots to free Negroes of the
North. Within several years the experiment failed and but a few
Negro families stayed on, including Epps and Appo. The project did,
however, serve to draw the attention of John Brown, of Harper’s
Ferry fame, who wished to instruct them in good farming practices.
Brown moved his family to North Elba in June of 1849 and resided
here the better part of ten years, using the place as a planning base
for his abolitionist movements. Two of his children were married to
children of Roswell Thompson (Ruth to Henry Thompson, and
Watson to Isabelle Thompson), and two Thompson boys, Dauphin
and William, were killed in his Harper’s Ferry raid. His hanging in
1859 and subsequent burial at North Elba focused national attention
on the town and gave it considerable notoriety, and the Brown farm
and grave two miles south of Lake Placid, now a state historical site,
is an important tourist attraction.
Iddo Osgood had opened the first inn to cater to travelers before
1833, and in 1849 this became the site of the first town post office,
presided over by Iddo’s son Dillon as postmaster. The mail had
previously been delivered by post rider. Osgood’s inn was later taken
over and improved by Martin Lyon and became a well-known
stagecoach stop. By 1850 the rudiments of the tourist trade were in
evidence and a second hostelry was in business, owned by Robert
Scott. This later was expanded and became famous as the Mountain
View House, a favorite stopping-off place of Governor Horatio
Seymour. Writers, artists, hunters, fishermen, mountain climbers and
professional people, heeding rumors of its wild and primitive beauty,
began to visit the area. In this year Elba was set off from Keene as a
separate township with John Thompson, another son of Roswell, as
first Supervisor. The inhabitants, having learned of a second Elba in
Genesee County, added North to the name to distinguish the two.
The 1850 census recorded 210 people living in the town, about the
same as the 1810 count.
Up to this time there had been no settlement around lakes Placid
and Mirror, aside from Elijah Bennet’s early tenure. In 1850 the main
roots of the present village were laid down with Joseph Nash’s first
purchase of large tracts on the west shore of Mirror. These lands,
including all of Grand View Hill, today constitute the main business
section and hub of activity from Signal Hill down to the Central
School. The Nash farm home, built in 1852, familiarly known as the
“Red House,” began to cater to summer vacationists and became
known far and wide.
25
In 1871 the first village hotel, Brewster’s, later called the Lake
Placid Inn, was constructed by Benjamin Brewster at the head of
Mirror Lake. Though originally a very primitive affair, it grew in size
and luxury and attracted many famous names until it burned in 1920.
Its erection was followed in rapid succession by Joseph Nash’s
Excelsior House (later the Stevens House under the proprietorship of
John and George Stevens), Grand View, Allen House and Mirror
Lake House, ushering in the golden ago of summer hotels. On the
larger lake, Placid, other hotels were built, notably the Ruisseaumont
and Westside (now Whiteface Inn), and beginning in 1872 with the
building of the Hall, Gray and Sands camps, palatial summer homes
began to dot the shores, numbering over 100 by 1910. The Cascade
House on Cascade Lake, and Henry Van Hoevenberg’s great log
structure at Heart Lake, Adirondack Lodge, were also wellfrequented resorts of the period. The latter was destroyed in the great
fires of 1903 which scarred many sections of the town.
Lake Placid was now established as a major summer resort and
playground of the wealthy and prominent. At this time motor and sail
boat races and water regattas sponsored by the old Lake Placid Yacht
Club were major activities. Steamboat tours were also popular. Some
of the early steamers were the Mattie, Water Lily, Ida, Nereid and
Doris.
In 1895 the renowned Lake Placid Club, founded by Dr. Melvil
Dewey, State Librarian and originator of the Dewey Decimal
System, opened its doors in a modest farmhouse known as
“Bonnieblink.” Over 75 years it mushroomed into a vast resort
complex and is still a major factor in village economy. By 1904 it
had introduced the novelty of winter sports to the North American
continent. From this period, the growth and fame of the village as a
winter sports resort was rapid, leading to its selection as the site of
the III Olympic Winter Games of 1932. This was the first time the
Games had been awarded to the North American continent. The great
speed skating era of the village, which brought unprecedented
national publicity, lasted roughly from 1910 to 1925.
A list of those who have vacationed in Lake Placid over the past
century would yield a cross-section of the most eminent names in
America. Among the best loved of Lake Placid’s one-time summer
residents was the composer Victor Herbert, who wrote a number of
his popular operettas at his Camp Joyland.
For a time, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, large lumbering
operations in the surrounding forests, with log drives on the streams,
had a pronounced effect on village life. On Saturday nights when the
lumbermen came roistering in, the town took on somewhat of the
26
flavor of Dodge City and the rough Western frontier. During this
period lumber camps sprang up, traces of which can still be found in
forest clearings, and a small community was established at South
Meadows, little evidence of which now remains. Mercifully, passage
of the “forever wild” constitutional amendment and further
acquisition by the State of extensive forest lands in North Elba
silenced the lumberman’s axe.
After 75 years of church services held in private homes and
schoolhouses, the citizens banded together and raised money for the
first formal church building, dedicated in 1875. Known as the “White
Church” or Union Church, it served both the Baptist end Methodist
denominations and was in general use until shortly after 1915. It was
sold to the Grange in 1929. Now it stands idle end empty on the Old
Military Road.
Commercial enterprise on Main Street commenced in 1878 with
Frank Stickney’s store, also housing the first village post office, and
swiftly expanded as Joseph Nash released his lands for purchase. On
this street and in this era the industrialist Henry J. Kaiser began his
career as a photographer. The business section continued to grow and
today boasts many retail shops of high quality and national
prominence. The early Victorian hotels have vanished and beautiful,
modern hotels and motels have taken their place.
The village was incorporated in 1900, with John Shea as its first
president, and two trustees. Today’s Mayor, Robert Peacock of
pioneer North Elba stock, governs with four trustees. The village
maintains a municipal electric power plant, and water supply is
plentiful. The Town of North Elba, William J. Hurley, Supervisor,
controls the Park District which directs the Olympic Arena and
handsome new convention hall, municipal Craig Wood golf course,
and major sports meets and conventions along with the Chamber of
Commerce.
Once exclusively the resort of the wealthy and famous, Lake
Placid now attracts all classes of vacationists as new modes of access
and general prosperity have evolved. Sumptuous camps and estates,
quality hotels and courts are supplemented by numerous attractive
vacation homes, inns, rooming houses, cabin colonies and motels,
offering a wide range of accommodations for conventions and the
general summer and winter tourist trade. The railroad, first coming to
Lake Placid in 1893, has now discontinued passenger service, and
the old station is occupied by the local Historical Society’s museum.
Mohawk Airlines at Lake Clear Airport provides daily transport to
metropolitan centers, as do major bus lines. There is also a local
airport with unpaved runways of 2,500 and 3,500 feet.
27
The Northway has substantially reduced automobile travel time
to and from all urban areas.
Lake Placid offers some of the finest scenery in North America,
every variety of spectator and participant sport, both summer and
winter, and has the only bobsled run on the continent. There are three
movie houses. a cultural center for music, art and the theatre, and the
new $3 million Uihlein Mercy Center, with the most advanced
concepts of nursing care and rehabilitation far the aged in the nation.
The great new Alton W. Jones Cell Science Center will soon open its
doors.
A short distance away are the Whiteface Mountain Ski Center, a
number of other fine ski runs, the World War I Memorial Highway
leading to the summit of Whiteface and the entrance trails to the
mountains.
About 75% of North Elba’s area is owned by the State as part of
its Adirondack State Park “forever wild” lands, and the problems of
overpopulation and urbanization are nonexistent. Zoning ordinances
are strictly enforced and the vigorous watchdog policies of the Shore
Owners’ Association have been effective over a period of 77 years in
preserving the natural beauty of the island and mainland shores of
Lake Placid.
28
A local history primer
FROM THE PLACID PIONEER, SUMMER 1969
Your editor, as town historian, receives many inquiries on local
history during the course of a year. The following are typical. This
feature will appear from time to time in the Pioneer as an aid to the
understanding of our roots and growth.
1. When did the first settler arrive in the town of North Elba?
Elijah Bennet of Orwell, Vermont, arrived in 1800. He settled on
land now within the corporate limits of Lake Placid.
2. Was North Elba ever known by other names?
Yes, it was once called The Plains, the Great Plains, the Plains of
Abraham, Keene Plains, and lastly Elba.
3. How did “North” happen to be added to “Elba”?
When North Elba was set off from the town of Keene in 1849-50, the
residents learned there was another Elba in Genesee County, and
used the designation “North” to distinguish between the two.
4. Why was the town originally named Elba?
The settlement assumed this name from the old Elba Iron and Steel
Company, which established a rather large iron works here in 1809.
The company took the name from the island of Elba, which from
ancient times had been a rich source of minerals.
5. Who was the first supervisor of the town of North Elba?
John Thompson, of the pioneer Roswell Thompson family, which
settled here in 1824.
6. Did the state of New York build the first road into North Elba —
the Old Military Road?
No, this was a primitive road built (apparently prior to 1800) by
landowners of the great Macomb’s Purchase in St. Lawrence County.
It extended from Northwest Bay (Westport) on Lake Champlain
through North Elba to Hopkinton in St. Lawrence County.
7. When did the state take over the Old Military Road?
The Old Military Road was made a state road by a legislative act of
1810, and was an improvement and alteration of the old road from
29
Westport to Hopkinton. Road work was started by the state in 1810
and completed in 1816.
8. Was the Old Military Road ever used for military purposes during
the War of 1812?
No, it never saw military use and, contrary to a widespread belief, it
was not built by soldiers for use during the War of 1812.
9. If the Old Military Road was not used for military purposes, why
was it so called?
Because it passed through lands designated as the Old Military
Tracts. These were set up by the state as bounty lands for men who
would be willing to serve as a militia for guarding the Canadian
border.
10. What is the earliest tombstone in the North Elba Cemetery?
The earliest tombstone is that of Eunice Needham, a four-year-old
child who died here on January 2, 1810.
11. Was this the first death in the town?
No, the first to die was Arunah Taylor, who perished by cold in the
woods.
12. What was the first inn or boarding house to cater to tourists or
travelers in North Elba?
Iddo Osgood’s on the Old Military Road. It apparently occupied the
site of the later Lyon’s Inn, now owned by Guy Haselton, and was in
existence as early as 1833. Iddo Osgood settled in North Elba on
March 4, 1808.
13. When was the first post office established in the town of North
Elba, and who was the first postmaster?
November 19, 1849. The first postmaster was Dillon C. Osgood,
born in North Elba in 1819, son of Iddo Osgood.
14. Was there ever a permanent Indian settlement in the town?
No, but by tradition there was a large Indian summer village here.
From arrowheads and other Indian relics collected there in the past,
the area of the Rollie Torrance farm appears to have been the
location.
15. Is there any truth to the legend that Major Robert Rogers, of the
famed “Rogers’ Rangers,” destroyed this summer village at North
30
Elba in the absence of warriors — and that on their return the
Indians pursued Rogers and gave him battle on the banks of the
Bouquet River?
No one has ever been able to authenticate this obscure tradition. No
account of it appears in Roberts’ “Journals,” first printed in 1765.
31
Dates in Lake PlacidNorth Elba history
CIRCA 1965; UPDATED THROUGH 1981
The date when this “history calendar” was compiled is
uncertain — no date was written on the copy in Mary’s files — but
my guess is that it was made in 1965 and updated periodically until
around 1981. The last-dated entry is for April 25, 1965. Another
entry refers to the tenure of a local politician as extending through
1981 — but no mention was made of that same politician’s election
in that year to a higher position, one in which he served until 1995.
Yet another entry refers to the “new” Whiteface Inn of 1915 as “the
present building,” but that building was demolished in 1985.
— L.M.
JANUARY
January 1, 1937
The United States government inaugurated house-to-house mail
delivery in Lake Placid. Timothy Fitzgerald and Jack Shea were the
first carriers.
January 5, 1907
The first Lake Placid Board of Trade was organized, with George A.
Stevens the first president.
January 6, 1919
The great Main Street fire of Lake Placid occurred on this date. Four
wooden business buildings on the north end of the street were burned
to the ground. Mrs. Charles Buck fell four stories to the Mirror Lake
ice and died of her injuries, and four others were severely injured.
Mrs. John Crowley threw her baby 2½ stories. The child landed in a
snowbank and survived. It was the worst fire in the history of the
business section.
January 16, 1932
The Olympic Arena, built for the III Olympic Winter Games, was
officially opened and dedicated at an evening ceremony. Ground had
been broken for the structure on August 31, 1931, and the huge
building was completed in less than five months, just in time for the
Winter Games.
32
January 18, 1935
The A&P ad in the Lake Placid News featured some food prices that
are almost unbelievable today. Butter was 33¢ a pound, sugar 48¢ for
10 lbs., bread 9¢ a loaf, flour 21¢ for 5 lbs., and 2 lbs. of coffee for
35¢.
January 24, 1939
The Devlin Block at 2541 Main Street, housing apartments and a
restaurant, was destroyed in a three-alarm fire. Twelve people
escaped from the burning building. A fire had previously gutted the
interior in 1926. Built in 1903, the Devlin Block was one of the
pioneer structures on the east side of Main Street. It was formerly the
Town Clock Livery Stable. In its early years it housed from 30 to 40
horses and vehicles to transport visiting notables about the village of
Lake Placid.
January 26, 1924
Charles Jewtraw, a native of Lake Placid, won the 500-meter speedskating race in the First Winter Olympics, held at Chamonix, France.
He received the first gold medal ever awarded at an Olympic Winter
Games.
January 30, 1935
A birthday ball marking President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 53rd
birthday was held at the Olympic Arena, sponsored by 10 local
organizations. A birthday square dance was also held at the Grange
Hall. Proceeds were donated to the Infantile Paralysis Fund. This
became an annual affair held not only in Lake Placid but throughout
the nation during President Roosevelt’s lifetime.
FEBRUARY
February 3, 1914
Lake Placid’s very first Mid-Winter Carnival opened and continued
for three days. Elaborate events planned by the Board of Trade and
widely advertised were witnessed by large crowds. The railroads
gave special rates to those coming from the cities. The program
included a parade of decorated floats, toboggan and speed-skating
races, horse racing on Mirror Lake and folk dances by school
children.
February 4, 1932
Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt officially opened the III Olympic
Winter Games at Lake Placid. The first event held that opening day,
33
the 500-meter speed-skating race, was won by Jack Shea of Lake
Placid.
February 4, 1951
The Placid Memorial Hospital [now Adirondack Medical CenterLake Placid], one of the finest equipped in the North Country,
opened its doors to the public. It was built at a cost of $636,000,
largely contributed by the public.
February 7, 1922
The Lake Placid Hardware Company was started this date. The
business was originally the partnership of William Hovey Sr. and
Luke Perkins Sr. It has been housed in the same building since its
beginning in 1922.1 The firm installed the first oil burner in the
village, in the residence of Matthew Clark Sr. on Wilmington Road.
February 9, 1935
The first radio broadcast from a racing bobsled was made at Mount
Van Hoevenberg by Eugene Darlington, a General Electric engineer.
The broadcast was aired over Schenectady radio stations. Such a
broadcast had been suggested for previous races in Lake Placid and
Europe, but radio engineers had said it could not be done.
February 10, 1932
Hubert and Curtis Stevens, Lake Placid natives, won the gold medal
for the two-man bobsled race in the III Olympic Winter Games, held
at Lake Placid.
February 10, 1954
The first Pilgrim Holiness Church, which stood on the site of the
present church on Sentinel Road, was destroyed by fire. The church,
completed in 1902, was formerly St. Hubert’s Episcopal Church. The
building had been sold to the Pilgrim Holiness congregation in 1927.
February 11, 1915
The first North Elba Town Hall, which stood on the site of the
present building, burned to the ground. It was a steel-coated structure
originally erected in 1903. The fire was discovered at 5:30 p.m. as
1
The Lake Placid Hardware Store, 2487 Main St., was first run by Frank Walton,
who had moved the business from Mill Hill in 1906 to the desanctified St. Agnes
Church building. The hardware was closed in 1990. Part of it became a Ben &
Jerry’s Ice Cream store. As this note is being written in the summer of 2004, a
developer has bought the building and is altering it in such a way that its original
shape is unrecognizable from the exterior.
34
the Women’s Club was preparing a banquet in the building. At 10
p.m. the clock and fire-bell tower crashed through the roof to the
Opera House below. No town records were lost, as they were housed
in a fire-proof vault.
February 12, 1932
Despite evident anxiety on the part of Governor Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt rode the last mile of the Mount Van
Hoevenberg bob run during the III Olympic Winter Games. The sled
was piloted by Henry Homberger, an Olympic medalist from the
Saranac Lake Red Devils.
February 13, 1914
An earthquake caused buildings to tremble for several seconds all
over Lake Placid. The shock was most severe in Dr. Jackson’s office,
cracking the walls and causing many objects to crash on the floor.
February 14, 1925
A brilliant fancy-dress ice carnival and parade of floats took place on
Mirror Lake, with an exhibition of figure skating. Prizes were
awarded for individual costumes. The prize for the most artistic boy
was awarded to George Hart (now Dr. George Hart) for his Dutch
Boy costume.
February 15, 1918
The second Lake Placid Board of Trade was organized, with F.B.
Guild as president. This organization was the predecessor of the Lake
Placid Chamber of Commerce, which later evolved into the Lake
Placid-Essex County Visitors Bureau. The first Board of Trade was
formed on January 5, 1907, but ceased to function in 1916.
February 18, 1926
The first airplane to fly into Lake Placid in the wintertime landed on
Mirror Lake. A big orange and yellow Curtiss biplane, it was
equipped with skis. Winter guests enjoyed the unique thrill of skijoring behind the air monster.
February 19, 1919
The original George & Bliss boathouse, shop and garage, along with
many famous speedboats, were consumed by fire. The buildings
stood on the site of the present Lake Placid Marina, on Paradox Bay.
35
February 19, 1931
Miss Nellie LeRoux (later, Mrs. Leo Dashnaw) and Milford Dietz,
star skater of Saranac Lake, were crowned King and Queen of the
annual Like Placid Winter Carnival at the Palace Theatre. Jack Shea,
retiring 1930 Carnival King, presided at the coronation.
February 21, 1919
The first U.S. Eastern speed-skating races awarded to Lake Placid
were held on Mirror Lake. This was the biggest skating meet held in
the United States that year. Every senior event was won by Lake
Placid’s Charles Jewtraw, the new star of the speed-skating world.
February 22, 1922
On this day ground was broken for the erection of a new building at
2421 Main Street to house the meat market of Tobin and Webb.
February 22, 1927
Lake Placid’s first coronation of a King and Queen of Winter was
held on Mirror Lake. On this day also, in 1935, Ozzie Nelson and
Harriet Hilliard, of radio fame, were crowned King and Queen of
Winter by Lowell Thomas. Nelson and Hilliard later became famous
on TV in the “Ozzie and Harriet” serial.
February 25, 1918
The famous pioneer Henry Van Hoevenberg died at Lake Placid. In
1880 he had opened his famous log hotel on Heart Lake, known as
Adirondack Lodge, which burned down in the great forest fire of
1903. An inventor who held 100 patents, he later became the first
postmaster and telegraph operator at the Lake Placid Club. He was
famed for the suits he wore, made entirely of leather. The bobrun
mountain, Mount Van Hoevenberg, is named in his honor.
MARCH
March 5,1850
The electors of the new town of North Elba, which was cut off from
Keene on December 13, 1849, met at the Little Red Schoolhouse to
organize the town. John Thompson was elected the first supervisor,
Dillon Osgood was elected town clerk and justice of the peace, and
Simeon Avery was also elected justice of the peace. Martin C. Lyon
was elected “overseer of highways.”
36
March 20, 1922
Thomas F. Roland, father of Peter Roland, purchased the Homestead
Hotel from Charles Green. The Roland family operated this hotel for
over 50 years. The famous old Homestead stood on the site now
occupied by the Hilton.
March 23, 1943
A bill authorizing the building of a ski center on Whiteface Mountain
after the war was passed by the state Assembly.
APRIL
April 2, 1946
A wrecking crew started dismantling the Lakeside Clubhouse at the
Lake Placid Club.
April 10, 1929
Lake Placid was awarded the III Olympic Winter Games by the
International Olympic Committee at Lausanne, Switzerland. Godfrey
Dewey of Lake Placid was the village’s sole delegate.
April 12, 1925
The first mass was said by Father Daniel E. Cahill in the new brick
St. Agnes Catholic Church at the top of Stevens Hill (now called
Signal Hill).
April 23, 1905
The second St. Agnes opened its doors, and the first Mass was
celebrated. This was a white wood building that stood on the site of
the present church. The first St. Agnes, built in 1896, is now the Lake
Placid Hardware building.2
April 25, 1965
The last passenger and mail train of the Penn Central Railroad
arrived at Lake Placid, and service was discontinued.
April 30, 1940
The village board of trustees held a hearing for the budget for the
coming year. The budget was set at $59,000 for all expenses. Twenty
years later, in 1960, the budget was $654,000. [In 2005, the village
budget was $4.9 million.]
2
See earlier footnote in this chapter re. Lake Placid Hardware.
37
MAY
May 4, 1909
The Bank of Lake Placid was instituted and started serving the
people of Lake Placid.
May 6, 1935
The cornerstone of the new $300,000 addition to Lake Placid High
School [the north wing] was laid. Sealed in the stone was a collection
of articles that may prove interesting to future generations, including
III Olympic Winter Games material, 1934 coins, and school
yearbooks and programs.
May 6, 1952
A violent twister whirled through the upper part of the village, across
Mirror Lake and through the Northwood School area, causing
$25,000 in damages. A plate-glass window in a drugstore was
shattered, a glass-enclosed porch at the rear of a restaurant was
demolished, and a Main Street retail building lost half its roof.
May 7, 1854
Henry Thompson of North Elba reported that the ground was still
frozen hard, the ice was still on Lake Placid, and one of his roosters
froze to death during the night.
May 9: John Brown’s birthday
John Brown, the famous abolitionist, was born on this date in 1800.
On May 9, 1922, the first annual pilgrimage to his grave at North
Elba took place, with a large gathering of people from all over the
United States to honor his birth date. On May 9, 1935, about 2,000
people attended the unveiling of the bronze statue of John Brown and
an African-American boy at the Brown farm and grave. Conservation
Commissioner Lithgow Osborne accepted the statue on behalf of the
state of New York. Lyman Epps Jr., a Lake Placid man who had
sung at Brown’s funeral in 1859, again sang at the unveiling.
May 10, 1916
The Bank of Lake Placid moved into its new home, the present [NBT
Bank] building on Main Street. The structure was a year in the
building.
May 16, 1936
The cornerstone of the present Lake Placid Post Office was laid by
Mayor George C. Owens, preceded by a parade on Main Street led
38
by the Lake Placid High School band. Postmaster Fred Dennin was
chairman of the program.
May 20, 1884
Joseph V. Nash, founder of Lake Placid village, died. The Nash farm
had been subdivided and developed, becoming most of the upper part
of the village, and his farm home — known as the Red House — had
been the first inn for tourists in what is now Lake Placid.
May 20, 1909
The famous old Whiteface Inn burned to the ground. A new hotel
was erected on the site and opened in the summer of 1915. [That
building was demolished in 1985 to make way for a condominium
development.]
May 23, 1883
The first Lake Placid Post Office was established, and was located in
Frank Stickney’s store at 2431-2433 Main Street. Mr. Stickney was
the first postmaster. During the Klondike craze, Mr. Stickney left
Lake Placid for the gold regions. Word was later received that he had
been devoured by wolves.
May 26, 1891
The second post office was established in what is now Lake Placid
village. It was called “Newman Post Office” in honor of Miss Anna
Newman, and was located in George White’s general store, now the
Station Street Grill, at the corner of Station Street and Sentinel Road.
The Newman Post Office was discontinued in 1936 and combined
with the Lake Placid Post Office.
May 26, 1924
Victor Herbert, the famous composer of operettas, died suddenly in
New York City. He had been a summer resident of Lake Placid for
25 years, and his Camp Joyland, where he composed much of his
music, is still standing.
May 29, 1926
The Palace Theater first opened its doors. It was erected and
equipped at a cost of about $100,000.
39
JUNE
June 3, 1908
On this day the Great Forest Fires of 1903, which raged through the
Adirondacks for six weeks, came into the Lake Placid area. Starting
at Tableland Farm on Bear Cub Road,3 a fire raged southward to
Heart Lake, South Meadows, and up into the Klondyke region,
exploding a cache of dynamite stored there for lumbering. This fire
ended in the destruction of the famous Adirondack Lodge on Heart
Lake, the largest log structure in the world. Another fire swept from
Keene through Cascade Lakes Pass, destroying the forests on
Pitchoff and Cascade mountains. Miraculously, the Cascade House
hotel between the lakes was spared.
June 7, 1912
Local citizens were startled by the news of one of the most daring
burglaries ever perpetrated in Lake Placid. During the night, burglars
had entered the local post office, blown open the safe and made away
with booty of more than $2,000. The thieves were never caught.
June 10, 1909
Lake Placid High School entered its first track team into competition
in a meet with the Hopkins School, now known as Northwood
School. Hopkins won the meet.
June 13, 1903
The old Mountain View House on the Cascade Road was destroyed
by fire. Robert Scott, who began keeping a wayside inn in North
Elba around 1850, founded the historic summer resort hotel. New
York Governor Horatio Seymour was a frequent visitor at the
Mountain View House.
June 19, 1927
The first service was held at St. Eustace Episcopal Church on Main
Street, conducted by the Reverend Sidney Thomas Ruck. This church
originally stood on the Dr. George Hart property at the corner of
Victor Herbert Road and Lake Street [formerly Harbor Lane], where
it was known as St. Eustace-by-the-Lakes. The building was taken
apart, the windows and timbers were moved to the new site, and the
church was rebuilt as the present St. Eustace.
3
Now called Bear Cub Lane, County Route 26.
40
June 24, 1916
The present North Elba Town Hall in Lake Placid was dedicated and
opened to the public during the high school commencement
exercises, which were held in the Town Hall’s new auditorium. This
building replaced the first town hall, which burned down in 1915.
June 26, 1923
The taxpayers of Lake Placid village, in a public referendum, voted
to buy the Ackerman property on Mirror Lake. This property was
converted into our present village park, public bathing beach and
tennis courts.
June 30, 1939
Babe Ruth of baseball fame stopped off at Lake Placid and played a
round of golf on the Whiteface Inn golf course. During his stay in
town he visited local merchants and called on James Searles, golf pro
at the Lake Placid Club.
JULY
July 1, 1933
A new 18-hole golf course was opened at Whiteface Inn. Two years
in the making, it was designed by John R. Van Kiek, prominent golf
architect of Rye, New York.
July 2, 1909
One of Lake Placid’s largest summer hotels, the Ruisseaumont,
burned to the ground. It was never rebuilt. The hotel stood on a tall
hill overlooking Lake Placid, now the site of the Heimerdinger
family’s “Humdinger Hill” estate.
July 3, 1919
A huge Essex County “Welcome Home” celebration began at Lake
Placid for the soldiers, sailors and marines of World War I. Events
included a regatta of boats and floats on Mirror Lake, a street parade,
dances and ball games.
July 3, 1951
Parking meters were installed for the first time on Main Street in
Lake Placid.
July 4, 1886
The new Stevens House, replacing the first one destroyed by fire,
opened its doors. Located on Signal Hill opposite St. Agnes Catholic
Church, it became one of the most famous resort hotels in America
41
under the ownership of George and John Stevens. It was torn down
in 1947.
July 4, 1946
A welcome home celebration in honor of the World War II veterans
of Lake Placid was held. The program included a band concert
parade, baseball game, fireworks and a dance on the tennis courts of
the Grand View Hotel.
July 4, 1948
The first Fourth of July Lake Placid Invitational Ski jump was held at
Intervale, sponsored by the Junior Chamber of Commerce.
July 9, 1933
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, paid a
visit to Lake Placid. She called at the John Brown Farm and later
drove her car up the Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial
Highway.
July 10, 1811
The Elba Iron and Steel Manufacturing Company was incorporated
in Albany. This company operated a large iron works at Lake Placid
between 1809 and 1817. It was Lake Placid’s first industry, and it
was from this corporation that the town received its name.
July 11, 1899
The first post office at the Lake Placid Club was established, called
the Morningside Post Office. The first postmaster was Henry van
Hoevenberg, for whom the bobrun mountain was named. This made
a third full-time post office in Lake Placid; it was the only small
village in the country with three post offices.
July 13, 1942
King Peter II of Yugoslavia arrived at the Lake Placid Club with a
large party of personal aides for a 10-day stay at White Birches
cottage.
July 17, 1923
The first operation was performed in Lake Placid’s first formal
hospital. The case was an emergency — appendicitis — and Drs.
d’Avignon and Holcombe did the operating while young Dr. Sam
Volpert gave the anesthetic.
42
July 18, 1893
The Shore Owners Association of Lake Placid was incorporated.
This organization, which is still in existence and is made up of
property owners on the lake, erected the dam that controls the level
of the lake. They also built most of the mountain trails around Placid
Lake. They have been effective for over 88 years [now well over a
century] in preserving the natural beauty of the shores of Placid
Lake.
July 19, 1935
Whiteface Mountain Memorial Highway was opened to the public
with elaborate ceremonies. Many high-placed state officials were
present, including Lake Placid’s J. Hubert Stevens, a member of the
Whiteface Mountain Highway Commission. The first vehicle to pass
the gate was the ancient stagecoach that once carried passengers
between Paul Smiths and Port Kent. Driven by William Lamb of
Lake Placid, the passengers included J. Vernon Lamb Sr., J. Vernon
Lamb Jr., Mrs. E.L. Ware, Mrs. J.B. Williams, Mrs. J. Stanley
Lansing and daughter, and Mrs. Frances Russell, all descendants of
the first person to settle within the boundaries of what later became
Lake Placid village, Joseph Vernon Nash.
July 20, 1948
The Lake Placid Golf and Country Club was renamed the Craig
Wood Golf and Country Club for Lake Placid’s native son, Craig
Wood. Craig brought honor to Lake Placid by winning many golf
championships, including the United States, Canadian and British
opens.
July 21, 1923
F.S. Leonard & Company, a department store at 2435 Main St., held
a Saturday Thrift Sale. Gingham dresses sold for $1.39, and sweaters
for $2.98.
July 21, 1941
Fire destroyed the American House, one of the early hotels in Lake
Placid. It was located opposite the railroad station and was built in
1894 by three brothers, Matthew, John and James B. Hurley, the
latter the father of William J. Hurley of Lake Placid. The hotel had a
fine livery of 17 horses to transport city guests around the
countryside.4
4
At this writing, the stable still stands behind the metal hardware-supply building
erected on the American House site.
43
July 25, 1924
The Country Club golf course of Lake Placid, now the Craig Wood
Golf & Country Club, was officially opened with a golf tournament.
Robert Isham and Dick Tyrell tied for first place. Seymour Dunn was
the first president of the new country club.
July 27, 1913
Booker T. Washington, one of the great leaders of the Black race in
America, spoke at the North Elba Town Hall at a union service of all
local churches.
July 27, 1937
The new elevator shaft of the Whiteface Mountain Memorial
Highway was officially opened. James Shea, 77, former New York
assemblyman and father of the legendary Jack Shea of Lake Placid,
was the first to make a trip up the shaft. He was raised 300 feet in a
bucket. At the summit, Mr. Shea remarked that it was the first time
he had been on top of Whiteface Mountain since 1917.
July 28, 1923
The famous John Philip Sousa and his band of 85 gave a concert at
the Lake Placid Club.
July 29, 1923
New York Governor Alfred E. Smith arrived for a stay at the Stevens
House in Lake Placid, with an official party of 15.
AUGUST
August 1, 1882
The Westside Hotel on Placid Lake opened its doors under the
ownership of Oliver Abel. The building was torn down in 1901, and
a new hotel, Whiteface Inn, was erected on the site.
August 1, 1893
On this day the first railroad train to Lake Placid, with fare at 10¢ a
mile, rolled into the station, then a wooden building converted from a
house. The track was built by the Chateaugay Railroad Co. and had
been extended from Saranac Lake.
August 4, 1930
Workmen started building the Mount Van Hoevenberg bobsled run.
It was completed just 148 days later.
44
August 5, 1837
The first ascent to the top of Mount Marcy was accomplished by a
party of scientists and five Adirondack guides.
August 11, 1897
President and Mrs. William McKinley, accompanied by the vice
president and the secretary of war, visited Lake Placid. Thousands of
persons gathered to see the distinguished visitors. The party lunched
at the Stevens House before visiting John Brown’s grave.
August 12, 1939
Col. Charles Lindbergh landed at the Lake Placid Airport in his
Seversky pursuit plane. He was en route to Keene Valley to visit
friends.
August 14, 1923
The 8th annual Chauffeurs Ball was held at the Town Hall in Lake
Placid. Dancing continued until 2 a.m., and liquid refreshments were
free. Proceeds were turned over to the new Lake Placid General
Hospital.
August 15, 1929
The first Lake Placid Horse Show was held, under the auspices of the
Lake Placid Riding Club.
August 20, 1886
President and Mrs. Grover Cleveland were guests at the Grand View
Hotel5 in Lake Placid. Their honeymoon vacation at the hotel lasted
several days.
August 23, 1888
The first Methodist church at Lake Placid, a small wooden building,
was dedicated. Sixty persons joined the church that winter. It stood
on the site of the present stone Methodist church, called the
Adirondack Community Church.
August 24, 1935
The first Annual Flower Show of the Lake Placid Garden Club was
held at the Olympic Arena. The proceeds of $1,000 were donated to
the Lake Placid General Hospital.
5
M.M. later determined that the account in George Carroll’s 1968 book, “Lake
Placid,” upon which this note was based, was in error. The Clevelands actually
stayed at the Stevens House in 1886.
45
August 25, 1913
The first “Feast of Lanterns” took place at the Lake Placid Club.
Three thousand Chinese and Japanese lanterns glowed on the Club’s
lakefront. A hundred more lanterns decorated Forest Towers, setting
the chimes tower aglow. The main building was also outlined by
lanterns, and 100 boats and canoes decorated with lanterns moved on
the lake. More than 1,000 spectators were present.
August 28, 1948
World-famous songbird Kate Smith, a summer resident of Lake
Placid for many years, was guest of honor at a huge, old-fashioned
Adirondack party on the high school campus. Square dancing and an
outdoor barbecue were featured.
August 29, 1921
Father John J. Waters died at Saranac Lake. Father Waters was the
first Catholic priest to minister to Lake Placid and was responsible
for the building of the first Catholic church here. This was at 2487
Main Street; the building now houses the Lake Placid Hardware.6
The name St. Agnes was chosen as a tribute to Father Waters’
mother, whose name was Agnes.
August 29, 1925
The world-renowned violinist Jascha Heifetz arrived at Lake Placid
to spend several weeks at the summer home of Rudolph Polk.
August 31, 1931
Ground was broken for the construction of the Olympic Arena for the
III Olympic Winter Games.
SEPTEMBER
September 1, 1944
The Lake Placid Club is officially taken over by the United States
Army as a rest and redistribution center for World War II soldiers
returning from battlefronts.
September 2, 1929
The Benson Memorial Cross, placed in honor of the eight men from
Lake Placid who died in World War I, was dedicated. The 25-foot
Old English cross, constructed of native Adirondack stone, is located
on Mirror Lake, just below the Adirondack Community Church. The
cross was a gift to the Lake Placid American Legion from William S.
6
See earlier footnote on the transformation of this building.
46
Benson, retired president of the Tidewater Oil Co. and a summer
resident of Lake Placid. An Army infantry band from Plattsburgh
supplied music, and a Main Street parade featured the Black Horse
Troop from Malone and a detachment of soldiers from the
Plattsburgh Barracks.
September 5, 1922
School opened for the first time in the new brick grade and high
school building opposite the Town Hall. Registration was 658 pupils.
September 7, 1925
The great annual Labor Day exodus of summer vacationers from
Lake Placid drew a great many spectators to the railroad station.
Thirty-two Pullmans, one coach, three baggage cars and five engines
were required to transport the vacationers home.
September 12, 1935
This date marks the start of a huge, 3-day celebration at Lake Placid
of 50 years of conservation in New York state. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt gave a speech at the Olympic Stadium, then left for
Whiteface Mountain, where the new memorial highway was
dedicated. Events included a pageant depicting the history of
conservation in New York, a parade of game protectors on Main
Street, a sportsman’s field day and fly-casting contest, and a
dedication by Governor Herbert H. Lehmann of the second of two
memorials7 at Monument Falls, on the Wilmington road, to the
establishment in 1885 of the state forest preserve.
September 13, 1901
On this day Theodore Roosevelt was making the descent of Mount
Marcy, in the High Peaks south of North Elba, when a messenger
reached him with the news that President McKinley was dying. That
night T.R. set out to reach the president’s side; McKinley died while
Roosevelt was en route, making Teddy the 26th president of the
United States.
7
This reference to a 1935 dedication of “the second of two memorials” is odd. At
this writing, there are two memorial stones standing at Monument Falls: the 1935
memorial, and a centennial marker erected in 1985. Staff at the Department of
Environmental Conservation checked the memorial album from the 1935 event,
and no reference could be found in it to an earlier monument already standing on
the site when the 1935 monument was dedicated.
47
September 18, 1933
The Garden Club of Lake Placid was organized at the home of Mrs.
Milton Bernstein on Placid Lake. First officers were Mrs. Bernstein,
president; Mrs. George C. Owens, vice president; Mrs. H.H. Epstein,
secretary, and Mrs. Henry [Mildred, or “Mid”] Uihlein, treasurer.
September 20, 1899
A charter was granted for a Masonic lodge at Lake Placid. The first
Lake Placid residents to be initiated into the lodge were Howard W.
Weaver and Darwin Bruce. The Masonic Temple was first housed on
the top floor of the building at 2515 Main St.8
September 25, 1921
The brick pavement on Main Street was finally completed. A large
crowd was on hand to witness the final scene, the laying of the last
brick at the entrance to the Grand View Hotel. The brick pavement
now lies underneath the blacktop.
OCTOBER
October 1, 1918
North Elba went “dry” as a bone, as the people had voted on Nov. 6,
1917 to make the sale of alcohol illegal within the town, to take
effect on this date.
October 5, 1936
Today marks the passing of the little Averyville country
schoolhouse. The school, built in 1888, was sold at auction and is
now used as a summer cottage.9
October 13, 1925
John Drinkwater, the eminent English playwright and author of
“Abraham Lincoln” (1919), visited John Brown’s grave and was
much impressed with the home and relics of the great abolitionist.
October 15, 1900
Lake Placid became an incorporated village, with John Shea as
president, and Albert Billings and Frank Durgan as trustees. Charles
8
That building was constructed in 1901 as the St. Eustace Parish House, and it
served as a kind of community center until 1915.
9
The Averyville Schoolhouse still stands today, as this note is written, but it’s in
poor shape. It’s been years since the property has been maintained, and if nothing
is done soon, the building is likely to collapse.
48
Forbes was village clerk, with a salary of $75 a year. The only thing
done at the first board meeting was to borrow $500 for operations.
October 27, 1918
Clocks were turned back to standard time after Lake Placid’s first
experiment with Daylight-Saving Time.
NOVEMBER
November 2, 1923
The old wooden Methodist Church, purchased by D.W. Jenney to be
converted for use as a restaurant, was moved down Main Street to a
new location at 3 School Street. The building still stands and now
houses a discotheque.10
November 3, 1953
Matthew B. Clark was elected North Elba town clerk in a three-way
race. He served as town clerk through 1981.11
November 5, 1939
Admiral Richard Byrd purchased 10 locally bred sled dogs from
Natalie Jubin, Frank Sears and Clark Hayes. The dogs were later
taken on Admiral Byrd’s expedition to the Antarctic.
November 8, 1922
F.A. Sunderlin, the man who conceived and carried out the building
of a road to the summit of Pike’s Peak, arrived in Lake Placid. While
here he examined the feasibility of building a road to the summit of
Whiteface Mountain.
November 9, 1900
An 18-inch blanket of snow covered Lake Placid. Snow remained on
the ground from that date throughout the winter, making for 150 days
of continuous sleighing.
November 11, 1916
A huge Democratic victory parade was held in Lake Placid to
celebrate the re-election of Woodrow Wilson as president of the
United States. President Wilson was present in person and had
nothing but praise for the local efforts on his behalf.
10
A “sports bar” called “Wiseguys” currently occupies the building.
In November 1981 Matt Clark was elected supervisor of North Elba township,
a position in which he served from 1982 through 1985.
11
49
November 15, 1925
The Little Red Schoolhouse, known to every Lake Placid resident,
was moved from its original location on Sentinel Road12 to a new
location on the west side of Johnson Avenue north of Summer Street,
to be used as a home.13 It was used as a schoolhouse until 1915, and
in its early years served as a church, social and civic center. The first
official meeting of the new town of North Elba was held there. The
building still stands.
November 16, 1900
The house in which Phineas Taylor lived on the Cascade Road
burned to the ground. This was the first house in which John Brown
lived when he came to North Elba.
November 19, 1849
The first post office was established in North Elba, with Dillon
Osgood as postmaster.
November 19, 1906
This day went down in history as the beginning of electric lighting in
Lake Placid. At 5:20 p.m., village President Benjamin R. Brewster
started the massive wheel at the new power house, built at a cost of
$55,000, making the kerosene lamps on Main Street obsolete. A few
days later, all the buildings recently wired were connected to the
current. A fireworks display celebrated the event.
DECEMBER
December 20, 1935
The Adirondack Figure Skating Club was reorganized as the Lake
Placid Figure Skating Club. Sylvester O’Haire was elected as the
first president.
December 20, 1945
After a year of occupation by the U.S. Army, the Lake Placid Club
reopened its doors to receive the several hundred members and
guests eager to enjoy Christmas once more at the Club.
December 24, 1885
The first Stevens House was consumed by fire on Christmas Eve. It
was rebuilt and opened again in July 1886.
12
13
That portion of Sentinel Road is now called Newman Road.
Street address: 43 Johnson Ave.
50
The WIRD radio interviews
In May 1985, Mary MacKenzie prepared daily “interviews” on
North Elba and Lake Placid history for broadcast on WIRD, Radio
Lake Placid. Each day for three weeks, Susan Folta read a question
Mary had prepared, and Mary read her response script. These are
the “transcripts” of those “interviews.”
WEEK ONE
Monday
The first settlers of the area were Elijah and Rebecca Bennet,
who came here in the spring of 1800. Tell us about them, and why
they were not typical pioneers.
Well, of course, we must first take a look at who was the typical
pioneer of that day. He was, naturally, a New Englander from
Vermont, New Hampshire or Connecticut, and quite likely the
youngest son of a family, almost always a young man. He was
anxious to leave the family farm and strike out on his own.
It was just after the Revolution and the peace treaty with
England, and these New England farmers were just swarming across
Lake Champlain to the wilds of northern New York, which was then
the western frontier of America.
Elijah Bennet, however, in 1800 was an old man by the
standards of that day. He was 46, and his second wife, Rebecca, who
came with him, was 36.
Also, Elijah was a cripple. He had fought in the Revolution with
the Continental Army, and a musket ball fractured the bones of his
left arm at the famous Battle of Bunker Hill. This left arm hung
useless the rest of his life.
Elijah was born in Connecticut in 1754 and joined up in the
Revolution from there. He first married Sarah Tuttle in Connecticut.
She died at an early age, leaving him with five young children to rear
alone. After the war, he moved to Orwell, Vermont, which is just
across Lake Champlain from Ticonderoga, and there he met his
second wife, Rebecca Baker, whom he married in 1792.
Rebecca and Elijah continued to live in Orwell for 8 years. But
in 1800 they sold all their land, and early in the spring of that year,
with the ponds and lakes still locked in ice, they came across Lake
Champlain, bound for what is now Lake Placid. The state of New
York had put its Adirondack lands up for sale, and there was a rush
into the area by those who had what was then called “New York
fever.”
51
Rebecca and Elijah came alone. Apparently Elijah’s children by
his first marriage were all grown and married. The Bennets settled
near our Lower Mill Pond and cleared their land for farming. Elijah
was also a blacksmith and probably plied his trade here when other
settlers arrived.
By 1810 the Bennets had seven children, all born at Lake Placid.
Considering that they had no children born to them in 8 years in
Vermont, we can only say it must have been the mountain air.
Elijah died here in 1830 and was almost certainly buried in Lake
Placid, but no gravestone for him has been found. He died in
wintertime, and was probably buried near his house. His entire
family then returned to Vermont.
It is interesting to note that Mirror Lake was once called
Bennet’s Pond, for Elijah Bennet. It was known as such for 75 years,
until it was rechristened Mirror Lake in the 1870s.
Tuesday
When Elijah and Rebecca Bennet and the other early settlers
arrived here, what did they find?
There was no way of knowing, of course, exactly what the town
of North Elba looked like when the first settlers moved in from 1800
to 1810. Unfortunately, no diaries or journals have been found from
those early years. But there are plenty of hints and indications in old
surveys and from other historical sources.
For some reason, people tend to envision our primeval forests as
dark and gloomy and forbidding, with towering pine trees and dismal
spruce swamps. This was certainly not true of the northern
Adirondacks. It was actually a vast antique hardwood forest —
predominantly maple, beech, ash, birch and elm, with a few stands of
pine and other evergreens.
North Elba still is — and certainly was then — a very beautiful
place. The mountains, of course, were the same then as now. The
streams and lakes were sparkling and pure, and of course teeming
with fish, particularly trout, and water animals. The very earliest
printed reference to Lake Placid is contained in Spofford’s Gazeteer
of 1813, which says that it was “well stored with fish.” This must
have been of great importance to the first settlers as a source of food.
It was very wild country, and the animal population was quite
different from what we have today. There were plenty of moose,
wolves and panthers, all of which became extinct in the Adirondacks
long before 1900 — although there are some who say there are still
panthers in the wildest, most remote regions of North Elba. In fact,
the Mohawk Indians had a large summer village here for many years,
52
coming up from the Mohawk Valley to harvest beaver, because
everybody in Europe wanted a beaver hat. The beaver, too,
eventually became all but extinct in the Adirondacks, but were
reintroduced by the state of New York. The Indian village was long
gone by 1800, but there were still a few lone Indians wandering the
woods who occasionally drifted into North Elba.
The deer population was smaller than it is today, although
today’s hunters might not believe it. Deer do not prosper in dense
forest land. There is an account in 1827 of two community deer hunts
at North Elba, and this is apparently the way deer were hunted.
Strangely enough, the first settlement here in North Elba was
called “the Plains of Abraham,” or sometimes “Keene Plains,” or just
“the Plains.” This conjures up a vision of flat prairie land, which
could not have been the case. But we must remember that this first
colony was located on the great tableland just south of Lake Placid
village. There were many beaver meadows there, and in any event by
1810 much of the forest had been cut down.
After all, which of us would not like to go back in time and see
our town as it was 200 years ago? The delights of exploration would
be very great.
Wednesday
How did the early settlers arrive in Elba? Did they have a trail
existing, or did they forge a trail?
The first settlers in North Elba, beginning in 1800, were
exceedingly lucky. There was already a primitive wagon track
passing through our town to give them access. This began at
Westport on Lake Champlain and went all the way to Hopkinton in
St. Lawrence County. Surely, without such a road, it would have
been extremely difficult for our early settlers to have found a way
through the mountain fastnesses and moved their possessions to Lake
Placid.
This primitive wagon track came into existence in this way.
After the Revolution, the state of New York — like all the other
original states — found itself very poor, deeply in debt and with little
revenue to carry on the business of statehood. It was imperative to
sell its unappropriated lands, much of it situated in the northern
frontier, which was not yet settled. In 1792 the state sold to
Alexander Macomb a huge tract of land, almost 4 million acres, in
St. Lawrence County for the paltry sum of 16 cents an acre. The land
was divided and passed into the hands of several men who were
anxious to have it colonized. They therefore built a road, if one can
call it such today in this age of superhighways, all the way to Lake
53
Champlain to facilitate travel across the Adirondack wilderness to St.
Lawrence County.
It’s interesting to note that in 1809 the bridge across the Saranac
River on this road, in the town of North Elba, was carried away by a
flood.
The road was originally called the Northwest Bay Road, because
Westport was known as Northwest Bay at the time. Probably many
of you have seen the historical marker near the Olympic ski jumps
commemorating this old road. It eventually became known as the
Old Military Road, not because the military ever used it, but because
it passed through the Old Military Tracts.
There is always a romantic appeal, I think, in old roads, and
certainly this is not lacking in the Old Military Road, the first road to
cross the Adirondack wilderness. Most of it is still in existence —
and still in use — today. Of course, part of it in North Elba and
Saranac Lake is still called Old Military Road. The rest of it, all the
way to Hopkinton in St. Lawrence County, now bears bureaucratic
road numbers.
A part of it in North Elba and Keene came to be called the Old
Mountain Road. This, too, is still in existence, although it has been
closed to automobile traffic for some 50 years. It is used by hikers
and skiers today.
Thursday
Describe for us what life was like here prior to 1815.
Well, as I’ve said before in this history series, we don’t have any
old diaries or journals or newspaper accounts to tell us about the
daily existence of the pioneers in North Elba.
We do know that it was a farming settlement, and the farmers
must certainly have lived in the primitive manner of all pioneer
outposts of America in that period. It could not have been any easy
life — although, not knowing of the great inventions and luxuries we
have today, they would not have considered their lives to be backbreaking and difficult. They were all in the same boat.
The soil of North Elba was productive soil. The hardwood
forests had made it rich and fertile. The farmers were able to raise a
good deal of their food, especially excellent potatoes. This has
always been fine potato country, and because of this Cornell
University chose it for their experimental potato farm some years
ago. North Elba was also eminently suitable for grazing, and the
pioneer farmers had cattle and sheep. The great maple stands
provided maple sugar, which they used in place of cane, and also
vinegar.
54
They certainly must have done a great deal of hunting and
fishing, which added to their food supplies, and probably also made
some real money on trapping fur-bearing animals.
Their income was greatly enhanced by the establishment of an
iron works here in 1809. This was a rather large industrial complex
for the time and place, and many found work as bloomers, miners
and the like. The iron works required tons of charcoal, as iron
making still employed the old Phoenician method, and so the farmers
went into the business of charcoal making and earned 3 cents for
every bushel they sold. They also sold produce to the iron-works
people.
In fact, the little colony became quite prosperous. There was a
log schoolhouse here very early, and regular church services,
although no formal church was built for some time. There was
probably also much social activity in the form of the usual barn
raisings, quilting bees and community deer hunts.
Many of our farmers took part in the famous Battle of
Plattsburgh in 1814, during the War of 1812, and one of our men
died of battle wounds.
This prosperity continued until that great tragedy of 1816, the
year without a summer, and this we will tell about tomorrow.
Friday
Tell us about the year without a summer, 1816.
[This item is missing from Mary MacKenzie’s files. She had
already written much on this subject, however, by the time she gave
these radio talks — see the chapter in The Plains of Abraham entitled
“Year Without a Summer,” originally written for the Summer 1972
issue of Adirondack Life magazine.]
All of this was to spell the end of the first colony at Lake Placid.
Saturday
Tell us about the exodus of 1817, when most of North Elba’s
settlers left the area. When did settlers start returning to the area?
We have talked for several days about the first busy and
prosperous colony at North Elba on the outskirts of Lake Placid, and
then yesterday about the great tragedy that befell it in 1816, the year
without a summer, when the crops died and people faced starvation.
That, and the closing down of the iron works, spelled the end of that
first colony.
It was, indeed, a time to go. A great exodus from the little
settlement began, and from the Old Mountain Road went the farmers
and the ironworkers hauling their scant possessions to greener
pastures. We have little knowledge of where the majority of them
55
went. Once in a while some of their descendants turns up in Lake
Placid, looking for their roots, and I learn something about these
pioneers. Many of them eventually joined the great American trek
westward that ended in California.
A handful remained at North Elba for a few years. A man by the
name of Eleazer Darrow operated the mills and blacksmith shop of
the ironworks for himself until the late 1820s. The Elijah Bennet
family hung on until Elijah’s death in 1830 and then returned to
Vermont. A few farmers stayed on several years, including Dan
Brooks Jr., who died here in 1821. His grave can be found in the
North Elba cemetery.
North Elba became a ghost town, and a ghost town it would
remain for almost 30 years. A few new settlers occasionally drifted
in, with no more than 10 families in residence at any one time. One
of these was Roswell Thompson, who came in 1824. Some of his
descendants are still living in Lake Placid. They are our oldest
pioneer family. Another was Simeon Avery, who settled Averyville
in 1819.
Only one member of that first colony remained permanently. He
was Iddo Osgood, who owned a large tract of land here and became a
most prosperous farmer and the town’s leading politician. He died in
1861, after living for 53 years in North Elba. All of his children then
moved away.
After the exodus of 1817, Garret Smith, a wealthy politician of
Peterboro, New York, and one of the largest landowners in New
York state, began to acquire land in North Elba. By the 1840s he
owned a large part of our town., but for some reason in all those
years he seemed to have no interest in selling lots. In the 1840s he
suddenly threw them open for sale. It was then that many new
settlers converged on North Elba. Garret Smith’s Negro colony was
established, and our township came alive again.
WEEK TWO
Monday
When was the first survey made of the area?
The story of the early surveys up here in the northern
Adirondacks is a fascinating one. First of all, everyone who owns
land in Lake Placid of North Elba has probably noticed in their deeds
the fact that their property is located in either Township 11 or
Township 12 of the Old Military Tract.
What was this Old Military Tract, and how did it come into
being?
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Well, the Old Military Tract is located in parts of Essex,
Franklin and Clinton counties. It goes way back to the days just after
the Revolution. It was set up by the state in 1786 as bounty lands for
soldiers, and it was surveyed as a whole in 1787 by Surveyor Tappan
but was not then divided into individual great lots.
There wasn’t a single soldier who wanted any part of what he
thought was a savage, mountainous and frigid Siberia overrun with
wolves. The state eventually had to satisfy the bounty claims from
another military tract down in the Finger Lakes area.
Beginning about 1800, people began to think this wasn’t such
bad country after all, and they began to drift into this Old Military
Tract in northern New York, which included North Elba. The state
immediately acted to divide it into separate lots in order to convey
titles. They sent surveyor Stephen Thorn up to North Elba in 1804
and 1805, and he divided Township 11 and the northern part of
Township 12 into individual lots of about 200 acres. Incidentally, he
found quite a few settlers — who might be called “squatters” —
already on the land.
The southern part of Township 12 in North Elba, which is still
today a wilderness and includes some of the High Peaks area down
to Indian Pass, was surveyed by John Richards in 1812. Imagine the
difficulties he must have encountered. Our southern part is still
extremely rugged, but at least there are a few trails, and meets
hundreds of hikers and mountain climbers on a summer day.
Richards and his crew had to travel a completely unexplored and
almost impenetrable mountain wilderness. But Richards was a tough
character. He was still tramping rough terrain in his old age and lived
to be 85.
Stephen Thorn’s 1804 survey map of North Elba is very
interesting and revealing, and perhaps tomorrow we can discuss how
our community and bodies of water got their names.
Tuesday
In what year was the first map made of the area, and how did
Lake Placid and North Elba and our bodies of water get their
names?
The first map of North Elba was made in 1804 by surveyor
Stephen Thorn, but it was never published. I was lucky to find it in
the archives of the state Secretary of State.
It is very interesting indeed. Every pond and lake and stream is
named, but except for Placid Lake, they all have different names
today. For instance, Mirror Lake was then labeled Bennet’s Pond,
Echo Pond was Duck Pond, Connery Pond was Sable Pond. Moody
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Pond over at Saranac Lake was Pine Pond. And strangely, the
surveyor shows three ponds known as Long, Round and Spruce,
connected by outlets, for our present-day McKenzie Pond. Either the
surveyor made an error, or McKenzie Pond with its three bays was
once divided.
As for our streams, Chubb River was labeled in 1804 as Pond
Creek, Ray Brook was Beaver Meadow Creek, and Whiteface Brook
was Mill Creek. The Au Sable River was identified as River Sable.
Even the islands of Lake Placid bore different names. Buck,
Moose and Hawk, in that order, were then Moose, Hawk and Little
islands.
Of all the names for bodies of water on this map, only one still
survives: Lake Placid. We will probably never know who christened
the lake. It could have been surveyor Thorn, or it could have been the
first settlers.
Our present names evolved over a period of time, and we have
no explanation for some of them. Chubb River honors Joseph Chubb,
and early settler. As for Mirror Lake, it was known as Bennet’s Pond
for almost 75 years. An 1870s guest at Brewster’s Hotel, Miss Mary
Monell, used the delightful and fitting name of Mirror Lake in a
poem she wrote in the hotel register. That caught on locally and
became official.
As I have said before in this series of talks, the first settlement at
North Elba was called Plains of Abraham. When the Elba Iron
Works moved in here in 1809, the settlement adopted the same name
of Elba, after the island of Elba, which had rich iron deposits from
ancient times. But when the first post office was established here in
1849, it was learned there was another Elba down in Genesee
County, and the “North” had to be tacked on here.
When the first post office was established in our present village
in 1883, it was given the name Lake Placid, and in 1900, when the
village was incorporated, it, too, was given this designation.
Wednesday
How and when did the tourist industry start in North Elba?
The tourist industry started here in the town of North Elba much
earlier than anyone realizes. It probably dates back to about 1845,
140 years ago, but it might be even earlier than that.
In any event, there was an inn and tavern for travelers here at
North Elba as early as 1833, known as Osgood’s Inn. How frequently
it was used in that long-ago era, and by whom, is anybody’s guess.
But we have a pretty good idea of its clientele in 1849 from a diary
of that year. The diarist was Richard Henry Dana, famous author of
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“Two Years Before the Mast.” Dana stayed at Osgood’s Inn for
several days in June 1849 during a mountain-climbing trip. His diary
says, “I wondered what guests he could have, but both nights we
were there his house was full.” The guests included a hunter and a
fishing party.
All during the 1850s there are accounts in books and letters of
visitors from the outside world. In a letter of September 1858, Ruth
Brown Thompson, John Brown’s daughter, mentions that her
husband climbed Mount Marcy with some gentry from Middlebury
College. She said, “He has been two trips as guide this summer and
$13 in that way. There never was so many visitors here before as
there has been this summer. A gentleman and lady came all the way
from Boston on horseback, just for the scenery I suppose.”
There were quite a few North Elba farmers, incidentally, who
went into the business of guiding during this period, because of the
influx of hikers and climbers.
To sum it up, there is plenty of evidence that artists, writers,
mountain climbers, hunters, fishermen and the like were discovering
North Elba quite some years before the Civil War. Tales of the
beautiful scenery and the adventurous pursuits to be found here seem
to have spread by word of mouth, because few travel books on the
Adirondacks were being published at that time.
There are numerous accounts of tourists during the early 1860s,
of boating and camping on Lake Placid, of climbs up Whiteface from
our side, fishing in Lake Placid and Ray Brook, and especially of the
wonderful wildlife to be found in what is now the village.
Of course, following the Civil War, a very substantial influx of
tourists began, and that set us firmly on the road to fame and
popularity.
Thursday
What were some of the earliest inns in North Elba?
The very first bona fide inn at North Elba was Osgood’s Inn on
Old Military Road, near the present Uihlein Mercy Center. It was
owned and operated by Iddo Osgood, who came here in 1808. I have
been able to trace it back to 1833. Archibald MacIntyre’s journal
states that in that year he and his party stayed there for a couple of
days. Richard Henry Dana’s diary also describes a stay there in 1849.
He says, “Mr. Osgood has a good farm with large barns and
outbuildings, and keeps tavern.”
This appears to have been the only real inn during those very
early days. But the farmers of North Elba discovered there was good
money to be made form tourists who suddenly began to appear on
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their doorsteps in the late 1840s, looking for a place to stay. Many a
North Elba farmhouse became a haven for travelers.
One of these farmers was Robert Scott, who moved into North
Elba in 1840. It was not long before he began accommodating
tourists at his farmhouse adjacent to the present Craig Wood golf
course. J.T. Headley gave an enthusiastic account of a stay there in
the late 1840s. He said, “I had never heard of it before, and am
surprised that its peculiar location has not attracted more attention.”
He then went on to describe the sublime view of the High Peaks from
the little clearing. A large addition was later put on this house,
creating a small hotel that could house 40 guests, known as the
Mountain View House. All during the late 1800s this was an
enormously popular little hotel and was a favorite stopping-off place
of New York Governor Horatio Seymour. Unfortunately, the hotel
burned down in 1903.
Another early inn was Lyon’s Inn, also called North Elba Hotel,
which Martin Lyon opened in 1864. The building still stands on Old
Military Road and is owned by Peter Moreau, who calls it the
Stagecoach Inn. It was indeed a real stagecoach inn, being a routine
stop on the old stage line that ran between Elizabethtown and
Saranac Lake. Lyon’s Inn was a popular retreat for vacationers and
was visited by such notables as Seneca Ray Stoddard, the famous
Adirondack photographer, and Verplanck Colvin, who conducted the
great Adirondack wilderness survey. Lyon’s Inn went out of business
around 1900.
Another true hotel in this period was Hanmer’s Hotel, built
about 1868, which burned down in 1873. It appears to have been
situated near the present Olympic ski jumps.
In the late 1800s other places of accommodation sprang up in
North Elba, such as Wood’s Farm, the Ray Brook House and Henry
Van Hoevenberg’s great Adirondack Lodge. But by then the village
of Lake Placid had come into being, with its great hotels, and that is
another story.
Friday
If you were to select one person as the one who most shaped the
future of Lake Placid, whom would you choose?
We have seen from our earlier talks that the first settlement in
North Elba was on the outskirts of the present village of Lake Placid.
The village itself was rather late in developing, and if I had to select
just one person who most shaped its future, I would have to say it
was Joseph Vernon Nash.
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Joe Nash was born in Duxbury, Vermont, and in his childhood,
the family moved to Willsboro here in Essex County. When Joseph
was 14, in 1840, the Nashes took up a farm in North Elba.
Up until 1850, no settlement had been made in what is now the
incorporated village of Lake Placid. In that year Joe Nash, now 24,
was looking all over North Elba for a choice piece of land for himself
because he was about to marry Harriet Brewster and become a family
man. He found that choice land on the west side of Mirror Lake,
miles from the nearest neighbor, and promptly bought it. A little later
he bought an adjoining great lot. Altogether he paid the unbelievable
sum of $480 for a piece of land that today includes all of Main Street
from the Hilton down to the high school, all of Grand View Hill and
some of Signal Hill.
Joe first built a cabin on the lake shore, then started to farm his
land and raise cattle and sheep. A few years later he built a modest
house where the Lakeside Motor Inn annex of the Hilton now stands.
It was painted barn-red and was ever after know as “Nash’s Red
House.”
This was a time in the 1850s when tourists were becoming ever
more numerous in North Elba. It did not take them long to discover
Joe Nash’s beautiful spot, and they began to pound on his door,
seeking bed and board. Joe put an addition on his house, and the
famous Nash’s inn was born. It catered to many artists, writers,
sportsmen and just plain vacationers for a quarter of a century.
In the 1870s, Joe ceased farming and innkeeping. He had begun
to realize the potential of his great tract of land and started to sell off
lots for the erection of hotels, residences and stores. He even gave
away some lots to induce people to build. Main Street came into
being, and a village swiftly developed. Today, the old Nash farm
constitutes almost the whole upper village.
Many others helped to shape the future of our community, in
particular the Brewster family, but surely it is Joseph Nash who
deserves the title of father, founder and number-one promoter of
Lake Placid village.
Saturday
What and where are the earliest buildings that still stand?
Where is the earliest gravesite?
Yesterday we talked about Joe Nash and his famous Red House,
which was the first house built in what is now Lake Placid. It is very
sad that this historic building was demolished in 1961 to make room
for the Lakeside Motor Inn. It was a landmark well worth preserving
and lay at the heart of our municipal history.
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All the oldest buildings still standing are, of course, located
outside village limits in the town of North Elba, because that is
where the first settlement took place. Unfortunately, most of the very
early landmarks were lost to fire or torn down by less-aware
generations. But there are two left from the late 1840s. One is the
Little Red Schoolhouse that stood on Sentinel Road extension. It was
moved to Johnson Avenue in the 1920s and converted into a private
home. In this old schoolhouse was held the first town meeting in
1850 after North Elba was set off from the town of Keene.
The central part of the Heaven Hill home of Henry Uihlein is the
second building from the 1840s, but it has been substantially
remodeled.
The possibility exists that the east wing of Peter Moreau’s
Stagecoach Inn, which was the old Lyon’s Inn, is even older. It could
be the original Osgood’s Inn, but there is a great deal of doubt about
this. In any event, it would date from at least the early 1850s.
Another old schoolhouse still intact is the one opposite the
entrance to the Adirondack Lodge Road. It has also been converted
into a private home, and the evidence is that it was built in the early
1850s.
Another building from the same period is the old house just
opposite the Olympic ski jumps at the entrance to Riverside Drive.
Next is the John Brown farmhouse, which was completed in
1855.
I believe the remainder of our older buildings still standing, both
inside and outside village limits, date from the 1870s and 1880s.
That is about the extent of my knowledge. I certainly would be
glad to hear from anyone who knows of other early buildings I
haven’t mentioned.
The earliest headstone is in our North Elba cemetery and marks
the burial place of little Eunice Needham, who died on January 2,
1810, at the age of 4 years. The next earliest headstone is 1816.
Other pioneer settlers must surely have died between 1800 and 1816,
but their burial places are unmarked.
WEEK THREE
Monday
What were some of the early hotels in the village of Lake
Placid?
We’ve brought out in our little history talks that Lake Placid
village did not really start up until the late 1800s. We told how
Joseph Nash started a farm in 1850 in what is now the village and
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opened a little inn called Nash’s Red House. That was the first
accommodation for tourists in Lake Placid village.
In 1871 Nash’s brother-in-law Benjamin Brewster built the first
real hotel. This stood about where Dr. Robert Madden’s house is,
near the Mirror Lake Inn, and was called simply Brewster’s. It was a
very primitive, two-storied structure of unpainted clapboards with
only 10 bedrooms, a leaky roof and no plumbing. The mattresses
were filled with cornhusks and hay. But it was enormously popular
— the guests were more interested in the grand scenery outside.
Brewster’s flourished, became known as Lake Placid Inn and in time
grew into a large and handsome Gothic structure that dominated
Signal Hill until it burned down in 1920.
Joe Nash built our second hotel in 1876 opposite the present
Catholic Church, calling it the Excelsior House. He sold it in 1878 to
John Stevens, who renamed it the Stevens House and brought in his
brother George as partner. But it burned down on Christmas Eve in
1885. The Stevens brothers immediately started to rebuild in the
spring of 1886 and again were visited with disaster. Two-thirds of
the building was up when a local whirlwind blew the whole thing
down. Almost the entire village pitched in to clean up the rubble and
help rebuild, and a fine new Stevens House opened on July 4, 1886.
With additions, it became an elegant example of Second Empire
architecture and one of the most famous of Adirondack hotels.
Many other hotels followed in the late 1800s, some of them
large and luxurious, others starting out small and ending up big.
There were the Allen House and Mirror Lake House, which stood on
the hill opposite the Community Church. Above them was the
famous Grand View, where President Grover Cleveland spent his
honeymoon. This was torn down about 1962 to make way for the
Holiday Inn that now stands on the same spot. There were the
Lakeside, Forest View, American House, Northwoods Inn and the
Homestead, just to name a few. Up on Lake Placid were the
Whiteface Inn, the Ruisseaumont, Castle Rustico and Undercliff. I’ve
been able to count about 30 of them here in this great age of hotels,
which had its heyday into the 1920s. Many of these burned down,
and it’s a wonder they all didn’t because they were all more or less
firetraps.
All of those hotels are gone now, with the exception of two —
the Mirror Lake Inn, and the St. Moritz — and they scarcely
resemble the small establishments they once were. The old
Whiteface Inn was torn down only last month.
That was Lake Placid’s golden age of hotels, and we will never
see its like again.
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Tuesday
Who were the patrons of the early resorts, and what was their
summer like?
The people who came to our early hotels were mainly those of
wealth and leisure — leaders of industry, and sportsmen. But there
were also many writers, artists, men of the professions and college
people like President Parker of Yale University. It was a mixture of
intellectuals and industrialists and the idle rich. They didn’t come for
just two weeks, but usually spent the whole summer here.
Women were not very physically active in those days because of
their weighty and confining dress. They lolled around or strolled,
they boated and played some mild tennis and croquet. Hay rides were
very much the thing. And of course there were concerts and grand
balls on Saturday night, and costume balls. The bolder women
sometimes mountain-climbed with the men, but they were not very
welcome. One man who climbed Whiteface with two ladies
complained bitterly that most of his time was spent in unhitching
their skirts from logs and branches. And of course the ladies had to
be carried across every stream.
The men were really into hiking, mountain climbing and fishing.
Tennis was popular, and bowling, and we had three golf courses
before 1900. Swimming was not much of a sport then. There were, of
course, no heated swimming pools, and the waters of Mirror Lake
and Lake Placid are notoriously chilly.
Baseball was also popular, and teams were made up from hotel
guests. I have seen an ancient photo of a baseball game being played
on the tennis courts of the old Stevens House. The men of one team
were what is called today “in drag.” They were dressed in women’s
clothes — the enormous hats and extravagant dresses of the Gay
Nineties. Apparently this sort of thing was served up for the
amusement of guests.
But the big thing was boating. Most hotels had a boathouse on
one of the lakes, and these were stocked full with canoes and
guideboats. Guests of Whiteface Inn and the Ruisseaumont vied
against each other in an annual guideboat race until both hotels
burned down in the same year, 1909.
Of course, people also enjoyed boat rides on Lake Placid on the
old steamers. And then there were annual Festivals of Lanterns and
flotillas on both lakes. They would decorate canoes with Japanese
lanterns, and scores of boats would float in unison over the lakes,
like fireflies on a summer evening. It must have made a lovely
picture.
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Summer vacations then were leisurely and moved at a slower
pace than they do today.
Wednesday
I’ve heard about the great summer colony of the old days apart
from the hotels. What was that like, and who were some of the
famous people who came here?
There was a great deal more to Lake Placid in the early days
than just the hotels. Hotels alone did not create the great summer
resort of Lake Placid.
Well-to-do people began to build summer homes here toward
the end of the 19th century. The first ones were up on Lake Placid
beginning in 1872. These places on the lake were called camps, no
matter how palatial they were, and they’re still called camps. By
1920 there were nearly a hundred of them on the big lake. Many fine
summer homes were also built on Grand View and Signal hills. I
believe the oldest one still standing is the house built by Mr. Crosby,
now the Episcopal rectory. The noted biographer Gamaliel Bradford
very early built on Grand View Hill. His name is perpetuated in
Bradford Street near the Holiday Inn.
These people added enormously to the economy and excitement
of the growing village and gave a very pleasant flavor to our
reputation and social life. There were captains of industry whose
names are unfamiliar today, and by the 1920s there were people like
Florenz Ziegfield and his movie-star wife Billie Burke, Justice
Charles Evans Hughes, those great masters of humorous fiction Ring
Lardner, Montague Glass and Damon Runyon, as well as Charlie
Chaplin’s sons and the Wall Street Wonder, Jesse Livermore.
One aspect has been almost forgotten. For some years many
greats of the music world congregated at Lake Placid in the
summertime. There were the renowned violinists Jascha Heifetz,
Mischa Ellman, Rudolph Polk and Efram Zimbalist. Zimbalist rented
a house here and had with him his equally famous wife, opera star
Alma Gluck, and his son Efram Zimbalist Jr., whom we know today
as a TV personality, and of course his granddaughter Stephanie
Zimbalist stars as Laura in the popular TV series, “Remington
Steele.”
Metropolitan Opera star Rosa Ponselle and the great
Philadelphia Symphony conductor Eugene Ormandy, who died only
this spring, summered here for years, and of course that beloved
composer of operettas, Victor Herbert, was here for 25 years.
Out in Averyville the distinguished pianist Clarence Adler had a
summer music school and colony, attracting scores of the world’s
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famous musicians. His son Richard Adler, who spent his boyhood
vacations in Averyville, went on to compose the music and lyrics of
the successful “Pajama Game” and “Damn Yankees.”
Of course we are still a great summer resort, but much of the
grandeur and glamor of the old days is lacking.
One of the great diversions in Lake Placid used to be gathering
at the railroad station on Labor Day to watch the long, long streams
of cars chugging out and carrying away the summer colony.
Thursday
When did the Lake Placid Club come into existence? Who
founded it? What was it like?
The Lake Placid Club was born in 1895. Its creator was Melvil
Dewey. It has been said that the Club was “sired by a sneeze,”
because Melvil had hay fever and his wife had rose cold, and that
decided them to start some sort of enterprise in the pure air of the
Adirondacks.
Melvil Dewey was not a rich man to begin with. He was an
intellectual who had already contributed much to literate America.
He had, among other things, founded the American Library
Association and invented the famous Dewey Decimal System. He
was also New York’s state librarian.
The Deweys purchased 5 acres of land on the east shore of
Mirror Lake with the idea of setting up a private summer club where
intellectuals like themselves could vacation compatibly. Their first
clubhouse was an old farmhouse on the property called Bonnieblink,
with only one bathroom, and the first year they had but 30 memberguests. Such was the amazing success of Dewey’s dream that by the
1920s the Club had 9,600 acres, 365 buildings and close to 800
employees. The place grew like Topsy, and while it inevitably
became a haven for families of wealth and high social standing, it
always continued to stress intellectual values.
The old Lake Placid Club was like no other place in America,
and it is not ever likely to be duplicated. Its very exclusiveness was a
status symbol that drew a huge membership. And then it was a little
city in itself, with shops, an excellent library, a movie theater, an
orchestra, its own chapel, a day-care center for children, and
numerous local farms where it raised much of its own produce. To
say nothing of complete sports facilities.
It was unique, and its uniqueness was due to the fertile brain of
Melvil Dewey, who dreamed up all sorts of unusual activities to
entertain his guests. They were encouraged to participate in amateur
dramatics such as the outdoor Arden Theater and the annual Iroquois
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Indian Council and the unusual Christmas and New Year
celebrations. And the guests had a great time, even though they
bridled at Dewey’s Simplified Spelling and some of the rigid rules.
Melvil was death on liquor and tobacco, and both were prohibited for
most of the Club’s history, although what guests did in their own
rooms was not very thoroughly investigated.
Melvil always said he would never provide a bar for men. The
women, he said, could come with their children and be amused and
protected. The men, he said, could come on weekends and pay the
bills. His philosophy paid off. The Club was a great family place and
got along for most of its history without a bar.
Places like the old Lake Placid Club have moved into the realm
of history, but we can take great pride in that unique establishment
that contributed to our success for some 80 years.
Friday
When did Lake Placid also become a winter resort, and how
important was it in the early days?
Our history has been one of change and progression. We have
been a successful community because we have never stagnated, and
because we have had men of vision who were willing to gamble on
novel undertakings. Think of those pioneer North Elba farmers who
built the first inns and set us on the road to fame as a summer resort.
We are still changing, branching out into new fields and attracting
new people and endeavors.
But there was one thing above all that was to change our image
for all time, and that was the winter of 1904-1905. As I mentioned
yesterday, Melvil Dewey founded the Lake Placid Club in 1895. It
was a very small club at the start, housed in an old farmhouse, and it
was of course only a summer resort, like all other places in America.
Frisking about in the snow was not a notion that had appeal for many
people.
In the fall of 1904 Melvil Dewey had a brilliant idea. He decided
to keep his Club open for the coming winter. He ordered 40 pairs of
hickory skis from Norway, because not a pair could be purchased in
America.
Ten brave men and women came to the Club to share that
suicidal mission of a winter vacation in the Adirondacks. They skied,
skated, tobogganed and snowshoed, the women’s petticoats sweeping
the drifts. They had a wonderful time, and the next year so many
people came that the Club had to build a winter clubhouse, and that
was the start of their building boom. And so Lake Placid became
America’s pioneer winter sports resort, and today we are the oldest
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one in the nation. Other communities were inspired by our success,
and so Americans took to the ice and snow with enthusiasm.
Our growth as a winter resort was phenomenal. By the early
1920s the Club would have a thousand bookings. Ski jumps, trails,
ice rinks and toboggan runs were in existence, and all kinds of
competitions were being held. Some enthusiastic local men had also
promoted speed skating, and a remarkable group of Lake Placid boys
were developed into speed skating champions. Those were exciting
times, and we were suddenly world-famous. In 1922 a Swiss
newspaper was referring to St. Moritz as the “Lake Placid of
Europe.”
I think it should be mentioned here that a big reason for our
success as a winter resort has been a great civic spirit and the efforts
of volunteers. Volunteerism has been a tradition in Lake Placid,
handed down from generation to generation like the Olympic torch.
It continues today. All we have to do is take a look at the 2000 Club.
If the past is any yardstick, they will surely triumph.
Saturday
Why was Lake Placid selected as the site for the 1932 Winter
Olympics?
If I were allowed only one answer to this question, I would say
very quickly, “Godfrey Dewey.”
There are other answers, of course. First of all, usually but not
always, a place is selected for the Winter Olympics because it has the
necessary sports facilities. There have been exceptions. Squaw
Valley is a good example of a place that really had nothing to begin
with but a lot of snow. They provided facilities after they were
awarded the Games (1960), but never did build a bob run.
Secondly, experience in staging competitions carried a great deal
of weight, and Lake Placid had plenty of that.
But most important, the International Olympic Committee does
not seek out a community. There is lively, competitive bidding,
especially in modern times, and a lot of work and time has to be
devoted to preparing a bid and getting some sort of promise of
financial backing. The bid is really a basic feature in being awarded
the Olympics, and that’s where Godfrey Dewey comes in.
Godfrey Dewey was the son of Melvil Dewey, who founded the
Lake Placid Club. He grew up at the Club, participated in all the
pioneer winter sports and became acquainted with many people
active and influential in winter sports. Godfrey was a brilliant,
imaginative man who also had a great deal of shrewd practicality in
his make-up. As early as 1927 he began to think that Lake Placid was
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perfectly capable of hosting a Winter Olympics. In 1928 he went to
the Winter Olympics at St. Moritz as manager of the U.S. ski team,
inspected all the facilities over there, and cultivated friendships with
the right people.
In 1929 he approached the local Chamber of Commerce and the
village fathers and convinced them that Lake Placid had a chance for
the 1932 Olympics. As a result he sailed for Europe, a committee of
one, to present a bid to the International Olympic Committee. Six
other sites in the United States were also contenders.
I think often of that solitary figure boarding the Ile de France on
an errand that was less than hopeful, carrying a hastily drawn-up bid
and a few sketches. A great contrast to the 16-man team on hand in
Vienna for the 1980 bid, armed with crates of material. Godfrey
Dewey nailed down the 1932 Olympics for Lake Placid singlehandedly.
So there were three things that really led to the awarding of the
1932 Games to Lake Placid: our existing facilities, our experience in
staging competitions, and Godfrey Dewey. I like to think that
Godfrey Dewey was the key. It seems to me that, above all, it was his
vision, his persistence and his know-how that won the day.
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Essex County anecdotes
DATE UNKNOWN
That great philosopher Henry Thoreau once said, “I have
travelled a great deal — in Concord, Massachusetts,” And I always
like to say, “I have travelled a great deal — in Essex County.”
Two years ago I decided to write a Gothic novel on the order of
Daphne DuMaurier’s “Rebecca.” Now, as we all know, Gothic
novels usually take place in desolate, brooding old English castles or
mysterious baronial manor houses. Where in the Adirondacks could
a Gothic tale unfold? I jumped in my car and drove around the
county for three days. And of course I found the ideal spot. Where
else would it be but the beautiful lonely uplands above Keene, with
their mysterious aura of the past?
The moral, ladies and gentlemen, is that anything can take place
in Essex County — and, chances are, it already has. It has often been
said that Essex County has more history than any other county in the
nation, and I believe it.
I am a collector of historical trivia about Essex County.
For instance, it has some of the oldest rock on the face of the
earth, and two of the most famous fortresses of colonial and
Revolutionary times. It had the very first telephone line between any
two communities in the United States, and the second one in all the
world. The second steamboat in all the world was launched on Lake
Champlain, and the iron for the plates of the famous ship “Monitor”
came from Mineville. Ten sled dogs bred in Lake Placid went to the
South Pole with Admiral Byrd, and at least 10 presidents of the
United States have set foot on county soil.
It has a wild beauty almost unsurpassed, the largest titanium
mine in the world, the only bob run on the North American
continent, the highest mountain peaks in New York State, and, last
but not least, the highest unemployment rate to be found anywhere.
This list could go on and on, but we must get on with our story.
The history that took place on Lake Champlain in the early days
is highly interesting, but tonight we are not going to talk about
Frenchmen, Englishmen, Indians and Americans chasing each other
up and down the lake. This is not technically Essex County history,
anyhow, but national history, because the history of a region does not
really begin until the first permanent settlers move in.
The man who really got things going in Essex County was
William Gilliland, born in Ireland in 1734. He was born poor but
received a fair education. Poor Will made the mistake of falling in
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love with an aristocratic girl, Lady Betsy Eccles. Betsy’s parents
shipped her off to the provinces, and Will thereupon left Ireland via
the British Army and was promptly sent to the American colonies.
Upon his discharge, he moved to New York, worked for a wealthy
merchant, and true to form fell in love with the merchant’s daughter,
Elizabeth. He not only won her, but an impressive dowry of £1,500.
Will began to fancy himself living on a baronial estate such as
he had seen in Ireland, and bought for a £100 about 2,000 acres along
remote and almost inaccessible Lake Champlain. He added to this
lands bought from British ex-soldiers and eventually possessed over
20,000 acres around the mouth of the Boquet River.
He hired mechanics and laborers in New York, and with wives,
a minister and a Negro servant aptly named Ireland, they all set off
for the great wilderness on May 10, 1765. In Albany they picked up
drovers, oxen, cows, calves and one bull. And the motley crew
proceeded up the Hudson in four bateaux for Fort Edward.
Fortunately for us, Will kept a careful diary of all their
adventures, and he may have been the first man to call this country
“the howling wilderness” — a term which, I might add, is still in use
today, especially when the summer tourists arrive.
On June 8, the party finally arrived at the mouth of the Boquet,
now Willsboro. The spot was ideal. It had fertile land, fish and game,
timber, and streams for mills. The men set to work, and soon land
was cleared, crops planted, maple syrup harvested, roads built and
mills erected. More settlers came in, and Will began to coin money
on loans and leases to his tenants.
He became, sad to tell, a complete autocrat and held his
colonists in a sort of slavery, often calling on the British garrisons at
Ticonderoga and Crown Point to back him up. Besides, he had
himself appointed a justice of the peace. His tenants finally rebelled
and drew up a resolution that all the people of the colony would
make the laws and regulations. Somehow or other they got Will
himself to sign. Truth to tell, he did not care very much. He and his
friend Philip Skene down at Skenesboro, now Whitehall, had cocked
up a grandiose scheme that would give them untold power. They
planned to merge their two colonies and create a huge private
province. Skene was to be governor, and the capitol was to be Crown
Point.
It was a great idea, but it never got off the planning board,
because war came to Essex County. And as the battles began to rage
up and down the lake, Will sided with the patriots – very shrewdly,
as it turned out, because soon the Americans had wrested Crown
Point and Ticonderoga from the British. But it was to spell the end
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for Will’s colony, because the wild colonial boys took his cattle and
went through his crops like wild hogs. The British did also.
Willsboro was now almost in ruins, and the settlers ran for their
lives. Will sat out the war in Albany, and when he returned he found
everything gone — wrecked, stolen and burned out. He tried to make
a new start, but piled up enormous debts and was sent to debtor’s
prison for six years. When he returned to live with a son-in-law at
Essex, both his possessions and his mind were gone. He began to
wander madly about the countryside as if he still owned it. One
winter day he set out to visit a friend in Vermont. They found him a
few days later on Coon Mountain, frozen to death, his hands and feet
worn to the bone from crawling on the icy ground.
I often visit William Gilliland’s grave in the cemetery at Essex.
His pioneer spirit seems to linger there. In fact, I spend a great deal
of time in county cemeteries. The past is laid out there for all of us to
read. I love those cemeteries.
There is one phenomenon there that never fails to move me.
Today we are a nation of widows, but back in those times we were a
nation of widowers, for wives died early, mostly from complications
of childbirth. You will find a man buried among a little harem of
wives, sometimes as many as three or four. Which reminds me of old
Ebenezer of Lewis, who was one of these unlucky ones. His first
wife died, and then he married a second who went to the great
reward, and then he married a third. Came the day when the third
also passed away, and Ebenezer was again standing beside an open
grave, watching the coffin being lowered into the earth. An old friend
came and stood beside him. “Ebenezer,” he said, “the Lord has
sorely tried you. This is the third he’s taken away now, and it don’t
hardly seem right.” And Ebenezer turned and said testily, “Well, the
Lord ain’t got the best of me yet, I can tell you, ’cause as quick as he
takes one, I take another.”
There is another grave I often visit — that of the Reverend
Cyrus Comstock, in the little Congregational cemetery of Lewis. He
came into the county in 1810 as a circuit rider, and finally settled in
Lewis. There was not one town in the county, not one settlement, that
he did not serve. He preached in remote places, ministered to the
poor and the sick, and during that terrible year of 1816, known as the
year without a summer, he used his own money to save many of the
inhabitants from starvation. He was the founder of many churches in
the county.
Father Comstock was not in Essex County very long when he
suddenly appeared on its horrendous roads in a strange new wagon
contraption of his own invention. At first it was called the Comstock
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wagon, and after a while the buckboard wagon. It is ironic that it was
this invention of his hands and brain that brought him to his death.
One day in 1853, while rounding a sharp turn near Willsboro Falls,
he was thrown from his wagon and died from his injuries.
I have tried for years to find out if Father Comstock actually
invented the very first buckboard. Nobody seems to know. The
answer is not to be found in encyclopedias or from word detectives,
for I have tried them all without success. If anyone can give me the
answer, I will be delighted — because if Father Comstock truly
invented the buckboard, then I will have another item of Essex
County historical trivia to add to my collection.
Then, of course, there was that other famous Lewis character,
the legendary strong man, Joe Call, also called the “Lewis Giant.” He
was only 6 feet tall and weighed less than 200 pounds, but could
perform astounding feats and was an unbeatable wrestler. Legend
says he was double-jointed and had two sets of teeth. He was one of
the North Country boys who sent the British running from
Plattsburgh in the War of 1812. It is said he could lift a one-ton
cannon, and that he once served cider to thirsty troops from a huge
barrel carried on his shoulder.
Every would-be wrestler challenged him, and Call made
mincemeat of them all, raising them in the air with one arm and
dancing about with them at arm’s length. One time a former British
grenadier appeared at Lewis, boasting he could lick any deleted
Yankee, even the great Joe Call. During the match he tried to kill
Joe, and ended up crushed to death by Joe’s bare hands.
Another time a professional English wrestler came to Call’s
farm to arrange a match with him. Call was plowing a field at the
time. Not recognizing him, the Englishman asked where he might
find the famous Lewis giant. Joe picked up his plow with one hand
and pointed it at the house, whereupon the Englishman took off for
the Canadian border.
It is said that Joe received so many challenges from abroad, he
went on a world tour, winning many prizes. He returned to Lewis in
1834 and almost immediately died — from, of all things, a carbuncle
on his neck. A book about his exploits was published in Connecticut
in the early 1840s.
Joe Call is Essex County’s great folk hero. The tales about him,
like Paul Bunyan, are endless, and new ones seem to surface every
year. Of course, you will believe all of them if you are a true citizen
of Essex County.
But to get on with our story. William Gilliland was dead, though
his descendants lived on to help settle Essex County. It was still wild
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and unexplored country. And then a great event occurred. It was
called “New York Fever,” and it was a part of the great Yankee
Exodus. New York was then the western frontier, and people from all
the New England states began to pour in on a great tide of
immigration. Villages sprang up everywhere, as far west as Lake
Placid. There were mills and forges and taverns and schools and
churches …
This appears to have been meant as the beginning of a larger
composition, but this is all that was preserved in Mary MacKenzie’s
files.
74
Peru Mountains
First name of the Adirondacks
DATE UNKNOWN
The Adirondacks were once called the Peru Mountains. This is
their earliest name, given by the French in allusion to their supposed
mineral treasures of gold and silver. The village of Peru in Clinton
County, and Peru Bay on Lake Champlain, perpetuate it.
But before they received their final and lasting name, the
Adirondacks were given many other titles by early writers and
geographers. Mountains of St. Marthe is one, Sacandaga Mountains
another, both unexplained. Clinton’s Mountains was also proposed,
in honor of DeWitt Clinton.
One of the oldest names was Corlear’s Mountains, the Indian
corruption of van Curler. The name Corlear was also once applied to
Schenectady and Lake Champlain. The Dutchman Arendt van Curler
was a founder of Schenectady and a great favorite of the Mohawks.
His Indian friends called him Corlear. He was drowned in Lake
Champlain en route to a truce talk, in attempting to make peace
between the French and the Iroquois.
Burr’s Atlas of 1829 calls them McComb’s Mountains. This was
probably in honor of Major General Alexander Macomb, the
American hero of the Battle of Plattsburgh, though it may have
derived from his father, Alexander Macomb Sr., who made the great
Macomb’s land purchase in the northwestern counties of New York.
Still another name is Brown’s Mountains, after a John Brown of
Providence, R.I. — not the same man of North Elba and Harper’s
Ferry fame — who bought large acreage out of the Macomb
Purchase near the headwaters of the Black River.
The mountains were further called the Aganushion Range, after
the Iroquois word for long house, and the Black Mountains, which
Charles Fenno Hoffman explained as deriving from “the dark aspect
which their sombre cedars and frowning cliffs give them at a
distance.”
In 1837, a proposal was made to call them the Mohegan
Mountains for the ancient aboriginal name of the Hudson River and
an Indian tribe at the site of Albany.
In this same year Professor Ebenezer Emmons, the state
geologist, while working on the first survey of the region, chose the
name of Adirondack for that particular cluster around the upper
Hudson and Au Sable rivers. In Assembly Document 200 of
February 20, 1838, he explained his choice as “a name by which a
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well-known tribe of Indians who once hunted here may be
commemorated.” The name was promptly adopted, soon displaced
all others, and came to apply to the entire range of mountains in
northern New York.
76
Location of Elba Iron Works
May 27, 1963
Mr. Warder Cadbury
One Arsenal Square
Cambridge 38, Mass.
Dear Mr. Cadbury:
I am certainly most embarrassed that you had to send me the
postal card. I received your book, letter and Fort Blunder article back
in April, and am most grateful. I can only plead an unusually busy
month. With too much community work, my job and my home, I find
it rough going at times.
I will try to keep this letter within bounds, although I have a
great deal to tell you.
First, I believe I have finally located the precise site of the old
Elba Iron Works. It occurred to me to interview Roy Conoboy, our
former Electric Superintendent, who spent probably 40 years down at
the powerhouse, near which some said the iron works were located.
This has turned out to be true. Roy and I went down and investigated
the spot. He said in all his years of working around the lower Mill
Pond and the powerhouse, he found only one spot where there was
scoria. In 1940 a grove of pines was planted on this spot, and to the
casual eye there is not a trace of scoria. The pines are large now, and
deeply rooted, growing very close together, and there is a thick
carpet of needles covering the ground. However, with a little digging,
we found a great many chunks. I brought home a large one, which is
very heavy, and a few small pieces. I’ll mail you one so you can
arrive at your verdict of whether this is really iron ore slag.
This is located on property now owned by Mrs. Dorothy Dunn, a
few hundred feet up the river from the powerhouse, and on the other
side of the river from it.
To further clinch the matter, Roy tells me that as a boy he spent
a lot of time playing on the Chubb River (circa 1905), and he
remembers an old, rotting wooden dam a little way up from the
scoria. At that point the old road also crossed the river, and there was
a bridge there, and old logs that shored up the bank in back of the
scoria. In 1905 the village tore out the old wooden dam, built a new
dam at the spot. Quite some years afterward, the old bridge went out
and a new one was built nearer the powerhouse. This necessitated
building a new road, but there are still traces of the old road going
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through the pine woods where the slag is. The old shoring logs are
gone. In the quotes from Winslow Watson’s “History of Essex
County” that I am enclosing, you will note he mentions in 1869 there
was a “decayed dam” at the spot. I have no doubt the wooden dam
Roy remembers was the iron works dam, for there was never any
other industry located at this point that would require a dam. There
was only a slaughterhouse in the early 1900s.
Furthermore, the Shore Owners Association of Lake Placid
booklet of 1924 says, “The earliest settlers in the immediate
neighborhood were connected with an iron furnace and forge in the
hollow below Newman [the local name for the lower part of town —
MM], the remains of which are still clearly visible.” This places the
works where I have described them.
Also, O’Kane says in his “Trails and Summits of the
Adirondacks” (Houghton Mifflin–The Riverside Press, Cambridge,
1928), “The way to this development was paved by an earlier
enterprise at North Elba. About 1800 iron was discovered there, and
9 years later the Elba Iron & Steel Manufacturing Company bought
water power rights on the outlet of Lake Placid and attempted
manufacture.”
O’Kane goes on to tell the story of the Tahawus mine, and it
seems to me he has a thing or two to say I haven’t read before.
Incidentally, I have always found this little book a delight. On the
surface it appears to be just another book describing wilderness trails,
but interspersed are historical nuggets of no little value.
Which brings us now to your footnote 4 in the Fort Blunder
story, in which you state that the forge was in Lot 237. This is rather
a grave error, for Lot 237 is miles away from the powerhouse
location, to which all the evidence points. Lot 237 has never, to my
knowledge, been remotely considered as the location of the works.
This is in the vicinity of Paradox Bay of Lake Placid. The works are
definitely in Lot 280. I am quite certain they are not in Lot 260,
which adjoins lot 280 in this vicinity. You will deduce from this that
the works were actually not very near Lake Placid Lake — at the
very least, 2 miles away. Lest the various names of the river confuse
you, I will say that the river at the site of the works is a confluence of
the Chubb and the outlets of Mirror Lake and Lake Placid. A little
further down, the confluence joins the west branch of the Au Sable.
You probably have had access to Ebenezer Emmons’ “Geology
of New York, Survey of 2nd Geological District, Albany, 1842,” and
know that this is the first book to describe the Adirondack region
(High Peaks area). Of course, he has a complete description of the
geology of the Tahawus mine, but do you know that he mentions the
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Elba Iron Works on several occasions? Speaking of the Indian Pass,
he says,
This pass may be approached in two directions: First, from
the Adirondack iron-works, from which it is distant about 5 miles.
The other route is from the Elba iron-works and is merely a
footpath the course of which is followed by the assistance of
marked trees. The general direction is south, and we have to
thread up a branch of the Au Sable near to its source. The
distance on this route is about 10 miles. … In either case the
whole journey has to be performed on foot, as it is impossible for
any vehicle or domestic animal to reach this depression in the
mountains which has been denominated as above.
In Keene, there are also several veins of iron, but none that
promise much. At Long Pond, on the side of the mountain which
has been exposed by the slide already noticed, is a vein, the ore
from which was tried at the Elba iron-works, and proved
worthless, in consequence of being highly charged with pyrites.
These are the earliest printed references to the Elba works that I
have seen.
We will now come to the subject of a settlement. This is, I know,
your major concern, and one concerning which we have such
pitifully meager evidence. Now we may be able to pinpoint the
location of the cabins or houses occupied by the iron works owners
or managers. In my search [over] the past month, I was told that Ida
Lockwood knows where these houses were located. Mrs. Lockwood
is a hard person to pin down, as she spends the winters in Florida, the
spring and fall in New Jersey, and only the summer in Placid. As she
will not arrive here until July 1, I am writing her to see if she can
supply any information. So often these rumors turn out to be
unfounded.
As to whether there were settlers here when the iron works
opened in 1809, how are we going to find out? There are conflicting
reports. Some writers say that the iron works brought the settlers.
Others say the settlers were already here. How to resolve this?
Perhaps you know the answer. Do you know whether the iron works
were named after the settlement, Elba? (Tradition has it that the
hamlet was first called Elba, but the settlers learning there was
another Elba in the southwest part of the state changed it to North
Elba.) Have you a record of the formation of the company, which
would throw light on this? If the works were named for a settlement,
then of course there were people here.
We know that people came in after the advent of the Iron Works
— Iddo Osgood, for one, and Simeon Avery in 1819. Roswell
Thompson, father of our famous Thompson family of 10 boys and 1
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girl (this is the Thompson family so closely connected with John
Brown), is said to have come in the early 1800s. The Thompson
family has been my special project since the death last fall of Mrs.
Ethel Wells, who was working on it. I have a lead out now in New
Hampshire, which may tell me when the Thompson family arrived
here. I was much excited to read in the David Henderson letter of
1826 that a Thompson accompanied the party to Tahawus, and
reading in Winslow Watson that his name was Dyer Thompson, I felt
that at last I had learned the name of Roswell’s father. However,
O’Kane mentions that Dyer Thompson was McIntyre’s nephew, so
there would be no relationship.
There was, of course, definitely a settlement here in 1826, at the
time of the Henderson letter. It was not, however, a closely knit
settlement. Houses and farms were widely scattered throughout the
town of North Elba.
I am enclosing some notes from Watson’s history, which
contains the only detailed description of the early settlement which I
know of. I am curious to know why, in footnote 4, you quoted
Watson’s “Transactions of the N.Y. State Agricultural Society,”
instead of his “History of Essex County.” I am not at all sure that the
“History” is entirely accurate, but at least it gives us something to
chew on.
By a strange coincidence, just before I received your letter of
April 25 and article, I had written a story for the Lake Placid News
on the terrible winter of 1816, based on the Watson material, and
comparing it with the past winter, which was also one of great
hardship.
I am returning the Fort Blunder article, which I enjoyed
tremendously. It is a scholarly article, and brimful of intriguing
information. You have done a masterly job of research. I do hope this
is published soon, as it will add much to our Northern New York
lore. And I hope that before it is completed I can be of more help to
you regarding the Elba settlement. I was interested in Duncan
Fraser’s letter attached. When I was in Johnstown last month, I
wanted to see him, but his wife told us that he was quite ill in an
Albany hospital. It sounded rather serious.
I cannot thank you enough for sending the Wallace Guide. I had
never before read the Henderson letter in its entirety and did not
know it had been printed in a Wallace Guide. It has added much to
my knowledge. Since this is a duplicate, could I purchase it from
you? Let me know what you would want for it. My Wallaces’ are the
1887 edition and the first of 1872. The latter is bound in the same
volume with “Summering in the Wilderness.” I understand this is a
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rarity and not often found — although I believe I recall seeing this
same edition at Blue Mountain last summer, when Mr. Verner was
kind enough to let me have access to the library. These are both the
ordinary guide books and do not contain the historical data of the
1896 edition.
Do forgive me for this long, rambling letter which I have forced
upon you. But now you see where my great interest lies: in the first
years of North Elba, when the real pioneers arrived. I seem to be the
only one here who has that interest, for the others are content to
remain with the years 1840 on. It is a real challenge, and I shall
continue to dig. I am greatly hampered by the fact that the earliest
records of the town of North Elba (then a part of the town of Keene)
were kept with the town clerk in the village of Keene and were
destroyed by fire many years ago.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Seymour MacKenzie
81
Osgood’s and Lyon’s inns
The story of Iddo Osgood’s inn, and the question of whether
Osgood’s and Lyon’s inns were one in the same, was long the subject
of Mary MacKenzie’s queries. We’re including several items found
in her files on the subject. They show the facts she uncovered as she
went along, and the evolution of her opinion on a central question in
North Elba history.
May 17, 1971
Mr. and Mrs. Guy Hazelton
Old Military Road
Lake Placid, New York
Dear Guy and Mil,
I am glad to tell you what I can about the history of the old
“Lyon’s Inn” that you now own and occupy.
It is very difficult to say how old the house really is, either the
“old” part or the “new.” The “old” part is, of course, the east section,
toward the pond, which has a cellar under it with stone walls and sills
of hand-hewn timbers. Only an expert, after a thorough inspection,
could place an approximate age on either part. I once took William
Tyrell, of the state historian’s office, through the cellar, and he
commented that, at a casual glance, it appeared to be very old.
Perhaps we can surmise some things from historical facts. The
first owner of the Great Lot upon which the inn is situated was Iddo
Osgood, who obtained letters patents from the state. He came to Lake
Placid (or North Elba) in 1808 and died here in 1861, aged 82. He
was a very substantial farmer, and politically important in the county
— town supervisor for several terms, justice of the peace, overseer of
the poor, etc., etc. I do not know the location of his first house, but I
have a record of church meetings being held in his home in the
1820s. In any event, he was running an inn here as early as 1833, and
continued to do so until his death in 1861. It is possible (and I
strongly suspect) that his inn in 1833 was the “old” part of your
house. The place was always called “Osgood’s.”
In 1849 Iddo’s bachelor son, Dillon, a Congregational minister,
was appointed North Elba’s first postmaster. I think we can definitely
say this first post office was located in the “old” part of your
building. A map of North Elba, dated 1858, locates a building at
what appears to be exactly the same spot as yours. The stage from
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Elizabethtown stopped with the mail and, of course, many travelers.
In 1849 the inn was the stopping-off place of Richard Henry Dana
[Jr.], famous American author of “Two Years Before the Mast,” who
afterward wrote a story of his trip to North Elba entitled, “How We
Met John Brown.”
The post office was located in the inn until 1853, when it moved
elsewhere for a few years. After Lyon bought the property from
Osgood, the post office was again moved back there, where it
remained until 1888.
After Iddo’s death in 1861, the property came into the
possession of his son, Daniel D. Daniel sold to Martin Lyon on April
1, 1864. Actually, legal title of record was in his wife, Amanda Lyon,
and their daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Hiram Lusk.
Martin Lyon must have made extensive additions to the inn,
which usually was known simply as “Lyon’s Inn,” although maps
and travel books of the period refer to it also as “North Elba Hotel.”
It was then that it became a famous stagecoach stop and mail drop on
the weekly, and then bi-weekly, run between Elizabethtown, Essex
County, and Merrilleville, Franklin County. (Incidentally, Old
Military Road, which runs past its door, has been in existence since
before 1800.) In its heyday, it put up for a night or a week many an
early traveler and tourist. By legend handed down in the Lyon
family, it was the stopping place of one of Brigham Young’s wives,
who was fleeing either her polygamous household or the clutches of
the law, which at that time was hunting down, imprisoning or driving
into exile polygamists of the Mormon faith.
The building also housed during this time a tavern and general
store. John Stevens, in recalling his arrival in North Elba in 1878,
said of it, “here elections were held, people gathered for sport and
horse trading, drank hard cider and sometimes other liquids of a
more stimulating character.”
Lyon sold the property to Herbert A. Fisher, who also ran it as
an inn and was postmaster there in 1888 and 1889. The property was
afterward sold to Chancellor Day of Syracuse University, who
occupied it as a summer home for many years. The chancellor kept a
cow and raised vegetables on the place. I believe it must have been
he who completely renovated the old building, covering up the old
beams and installing the Georgia pine walls, etc., etc. As I recall it,
Dr. d’Avignon made very, very few changes — and only minor — in
the overall physical setup after he acquired the place.
Strangely enough, I have never come across any pictures of the
inn during the time it was owned by Lyon or Fisher, not even in any
of the old guidebooks. By the time the photographers were getting
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around to this area, “Lyon’s” had passed its peak of popularity, as
modern and rather grand hotels began to rise on the shores of Mirror
Lake. If we could find any such pictures, we might have a fairly good
idea of when some of the additions were made.
I am told a large barn once stood on the field to the west of the
inn — and also that there were two summer cottages located on the
knoll on the back of the property, but I have not been able to verify
this.
Best regards.
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Letter re. Iddo Osgood,
Nathan Sherman
November 15, 1976
Bill Roden
Diamond Point
New York 12824
Dear Bill Roden,
I, too, have long had an interest in the Cedar Point Road, and I
do appreciate receiving the Assembly Report of March 5, 1833.
Since you have been in touch with [Adirondack Museum researcher]
Warder [H. Cadbury], you doubtless know that Thorne Dickinson did
a splendid job of determining the original route, and that his
excellent map and report are on file at the museum library in Blue
Mountain [Lake].
Yes, I can help you with background on Nathan Sherman of
Moriah and Iddo Osgood of Keene, road commissioners. When these
old road districts were set up in the 1800s, leading citizens of
surrounding towns were chosen as commissioners, to handle tax
moneys and details of construction. Nathan Sherman and Iddo
Osgood were two such men.
Nathan Sherman came to Essex County in 1802 from Clarendon,
Rutland County, Vermont, with his wife and two sons, the youngest
being less than a year old. He was a farmer and located on a site a
little south of Moriah Corners in the township of Moriah. Moriah
Corners was then a busy little settlement about two miles west of the
present village of Port Henry (Port Henry did not then exist). He
became a prosperous farmer and prominent in community affairs,
and held the offices of supervisor, justice of the peace and town
clerk, among others. In later life he moved to a farm near Rochester,
N.Y., where he remained until his death.
Nathan had three daughters and three sons— Laura, Olive and
Mary Ann, and Harry, Alfred and George. George Sherman, of
course, became very rich and prominent in the Port Henry area, with
vast interests in sawmills, railroads, iron mining and manufacture. He
was one of the original partners in the great Witherbee, Sherman iron
interests.
85
A rather sketchy biography, but you may be able to get more
information on Nathan from the Port Henry Public Library. They
have quite a historical collection.
Iddo Osgood was a citizen of rare parts. He lived on the outskirts
of what is now the village of Lake Placid. This is now in the
township of North Elba. At the time the Cedar Point Road was
a’building, North Elba was part of the town of Keene — thus, Iddo is
described as “of Keene.” But he was actually Lake Placid’s own, and
one of my favorite characters.
Iddo was born in New Hampshire in 1779. He settled in North
Elba March 4, 1808, at age 28 and farmed most successfully on a
large tract of land he purchased from the state of New York. He was
one of the early settlers at Lake Placid. Married three times — to
Clarista, who died in 1816; to Prudence, who died in 1831, and lastly
to Mary P. Three sons: Daniel D., Dillon and Dauphin. Two
daughters: Tryphena Osgood Peacock and Daphne Osgood Porter.
Iddo was always known here as “Squire Osgood.” He was a lay
minister and, there being no formal church at North Elba, he
conducted church services in his home. He also had his finger in
every political pie in his neck of the woods, and always pulled out a
plum. He was supervisor of the town of Keene for many years,
justice of the peace practically all his life, and held heaven knows
how many other municipal offices, such as overseer of the poor. His
sons Dillon and Daniel also were prominent in public affairs —
Dillon, who became a Congregational minister, was North Elba’s
first postmaster; Daniel was town clerk, justice of the peace and
overseer of the poor.
’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good. When North Elba
became almost deserted in 1817 because of the frigid summer of
1816 (“year without a summer”) when all the crops died, and
because of the closing of our iron works, Iddo began to flourish like
the green bay tree. One of the few people who remained in North
Elba, he appropriated to himself all the deserted farms and became a
very prosperous farmer indeed.
Iddo also opened the first inn for travelers at North Elba, on the
Old Military Road. The earliest mention I have found of this is of
Archibald McIntyre and party stopping there in 1833 while visiting
Cascade Lakes. Many early Adirondack visitors put up there over a
long period of time, including Richard Henry Dana [Jr.], famous
American author of “Two Years Before the Mast.”
Too, Iddo was a wolfslayer. He augmented his many-splendored
income by collecting bounties on the wolves he caught or shot. For
instance, in the year 1831 it is recorded he collected $20 in bounties
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from the county of Essex, a handsome sum for that era.
Furthermore, he was in charge of lumbering, guiding and other
jobs at Archibald McIntyre’s iron mines at Tahawus [also known as
McIntyre or Adirondac, no “k,” in Newcomb township] — and this is
probably one reason why he was chosen as a Cedar Point Road
commissioner. An interesting statement by Iddo appears in “The
Story of Adirondac,” recently republished by Adirondack Museum,
on pages 38-40. His spelling was pretty awful and did not match his
talents at turning a dollar.
Iddo died at North Elba December 31, 1861, age 82 years, and is
buried in our North Elba Cemetery. Beside him lie wives Clarista
and Prudence and son Dillon. The rest of the Osgood family left
North Elba well over 100 years ago.
I do not know to what use you will put this saga of Iddo, but if it
is to appear in published form, I would have to make the following
request. It has taken me many years to piece his biography together,
mostly from ancient manuscripts and unpublished sources, and it will
appear for the first time in the history of Lake Placid I am now
writing. Therefore, I will have to ask that if you present it to the
public in any form, you give me a personal credit as the source of
your knowledge. I feel you will understand my position and will give
me a statement to that effect.
I am not similarly concerned about the Nathan Sherman data I
have given. That has already been published in Smith’s “History of
Essex County.”
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Notes: Osgood’s Inn, 1984
When Iddo Osgood first opened his inn at North Elba is
unknown. It certainly was the first inn in town. The first mention I
have been able to find is contained in Archibald McIntyre’s journal,
found in the library of the Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain
Lake, N.Y.
In October 1833 McIntyre paid a visit to North Elba and his old
ore beds at Cascade Lakes, accompanied by several associates and
guides Holt, Carson and Scott of Keene. Leaving the settlement
called McIntyre at the Adirondack mines [in Newcomb] on October
21, they traversed Indian Pass and camped a mile north of the notch.
On the 22nd they arrived in Elba and put up at Iddo Osgood’s inn.
On the 23rd they proceeded to Cascade Lakes.
Friday the 25
Returned to Osgoods.
Saturday the 26
Left Mr. Osgoods for McIntyre at 8 A.M.
In his article, “How We Met John Brown,” in the Atlantic
Monthly of July 1871, Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of the famous
“Two Years Before the Mast,” mentions staying at Osgood’s Inn.
But a good description of the place is contained in “The Journals of
Richard Henry Dana Jr.,” edited by Robert F. Lucid (Belknap Press,
1968, copyright Massachusetts Historical Society), as follows:
June 23 [1849]. We sent Tommy and his mules to Osgood’s,
a regular tavern about 3½ miles below to stay until our return.
June __. Taking a kind leave of the Browns, we got into the
wagon & rode to Osgood’s. It was a comfort to be carried by
something else than our own legs.
At Osgood’s we found our carpet bags, & we [were] relieved
eno’ to have a regular wash & shift of clothes, with something like
a toilet. The afternoon we spent in rest & reading some foolish
love stories from an old copy of the Ladies’ Magazine, & after tea
went early to bed, having made arrangements to visit White Face
& Lake Placid tomorrow.
Mr. Osgood is a deacon, a man of some property, about
$8000, has a good farm, with large barns & outbuildings, & keeps
tavern. I wondered what guests he could have, but both nights we
were there his house was full. A wagon drives up with two men
bound to Keene, from the Pacanac [apparently this meant
Saranac] country, then a youth strays in with his rifle wh. He has
taken with him on an errand of 10 miles, thinking he might meet a
88
deer, & then some people from below on a fishing excursion, & so
it goes.
From the foregoing, it would appear that Osgood’s Inn was a
busy, popular and well-known stopping place.
It will be noted that the state patents to Iddo Osgood of Great
Lots 85 and 86, Township 12, Old Military Tract, are dated 1847 and
1854. This means nothing. In the early years of the 19th century, the
state sold its property on long-term contracts or mortgages, and did
not issue a patent (or deed) until the amount was paid in full. This
was the case with a number of properties in North Elba. The
payments often extended over a period of 50 years.
It is reasonable to assume that Iddo Osgood first acquired these
lands shortly after he arrived in North Elba in 1808. There is no
record of his ever living anywhere else. On what part of these lands
his first dwelling place was situated is unknown. The first mention of
Osgood’s house is in the famous letter from David Henderson to
Archibald McIntyre, dated at “Elba, Essex County, N.Y.” October
14, 1826. Henderson states, “On the Sunday we went to Squire
Osgood’s meeting.” There being no formal church building in North
Elba, it appears that services were generally held at Osgood’s. This is
even more understandable when we consider that Iddo’s son, Dillon,
later became a Congregational minister.
Exactly what building was the original Osgood’s Inn cannot be
determined. It is possible it was on the land that Iddo sold to Earl W.
Avery on April 15, 1851. French’s map of 1858 shows a house
owned by Avery standing on this land. It is a question whether Avery
built this house or whether it was there when he bought the land. In
any event, when the Martin Lyon family bought from Avery, they
enlarged the place, and it became Lyon’s Inn, then the Chancellor
Day summer home, and today, still standing, is owned by Peter
Moreau. The east wing of this building is very old, much older than
the rest of the building, and it is possible that wing was the original
Osgood’s Inn.
On the other hand, current residents alive in the late 19th century
remember the “old Osgood place” as farther to the east of Lyon’s Inn
on Old Military Road, on property owned by Henry Uihlein today,
on which a house formerly owned by Barshad is set way back from
the road. Henry Lyon, who remembered the many buildings on the
lot, furnished the following sketch:
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Henry Lyon said the three Osgood houses and barns disappeared
a long time ago — probably early in the 20th century. These three
houses with barns were said to be the buildings occupied by the
Osgood family before they moved out of town. Duran Wells
occupied the two houses connected by a shed from 1882 and for
some years afterward. Apparently this property was at one time
owned by Anna Newman, because Duran Wells’ obituary says, “In
1882 he moved his wares into the house of Miss Newman, which
was known as the Osgood House.” This piece of land, east of the
Uihlein Mercy Center, is now entirely vacant except for the former
Barshad house, now owned by Henry Uihlein, set way back from the
road. Uihlein owns the entire lot.
There is therefore the possibility that Osgood’s Inn was always
located on the present Uihlein property.
One Justus Dart, according to Thorn’s survey and field notes,
occupied Osgood’s Great Lot 85 as far back as 1803.
Iddo Osgood’s son, Dillon Osgood, was appointed North Elba’s
first postmaster on November 19, 1849, and served until July 7,
1853. Presumably he kept the post office in the old inn. Dillon never
married, and seems to have lived with his father all his life.
90
Note on Lyon’s,
Osgood’s, 1995
I am now definitely of the opinion that Lyon’s stagecoach inn, or
North Elba House, was not and in no way could have been the
original Osgood’s Inn, which was in existence as early as 1833.
Much thought has been given to this matter, and it seems definite that
the original Osgood’s Inn was situated east of Lyon’s, down old
Military Road toward Uihlein Mercy Center, where Sentinel Road
enters Old Military Road.
See my “Osgood family” file for a sketch of the old Osgood
buildings, as reported to me by Henry Lyon.
There is now a new house on the old Osgood land, at the edge of
the woods where the Gordon Pratt house is located.
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Alfred Donaldson as a historian
March 26, 1987
John Duquette
Lake Clear, N.Y. 12945
Dear John,
Wish I could share your unbounded enthusiasm for Donaldson. I
know you are his most ardent supporter and will not welcome
criticism, but I very much want to present my views, which are
shared by many other historians. I do not by any means speak only
for myself.
I think we all have a great admiration for Donaldson — his
courage in attempting such a history from scratch — his prodigious
efforts in the face of debilitating illness. And who would not long to
write as he did — wittily, colorfully and quite wonderfully? There is
no denying his writing style was and remains unique and compelling.
But when it comes to content, there are problems. My own
concerns, quite naturally, are the Lake Placid chapters. I have
counted 32 major errors, besides minor infractions. The Lake Placid
Club chapter is pretty good, but he quoted it all from Longstreth.
Aside from the outright errors, there is the distortion of our history
stemming from lack of knowledge and omission. For years I
wondered how such disinformation had come about, until I studied
his files at the Saranac Lake Library.
It then came clear that he had done little actual research but had
accepted information from local residents (thus disobeying the
cardinal rule: never take the word of “old-timers”).
The whole Lake Placid bit is inappropriate — and maybe
fortunately so. Had it not been, I might not have been so fired up
these past 25 years, would not have searched so diligently and come
up with such an enormous wealth of authentic material about Lake
Placid and North Elba. I have written and had published at least a
couple of dozen lengthy articles and two booklets, and my house
overfloweth with research material. “Stay away from Donaldson!” I
constantly warn, and I believe I have at last educated the public to
come to me instead. Now and then somebody slips through my
fingers, but I soon get them back on track.
There is no chapter that has done more damage and given us
more woe here at Lake Placid than AD’s “John Brown.” There are
numerous errors and distortions, but the worst offense is that AD had
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a completely wrong conception of our Negro colony. From all I can
deduce, he formed it from the wild tales of old Tom Peacock, who
was a mine of misinformation (another instance of the danger of
relying on old-timers). His fugitive slaves and underground railroad
at Lake Placid are purely imaginative. There was not a single
runaway slave in our black colony. It was totally comprised of free
Negroes of New York state — most, if not all, of whom were born in
the North and had never been slaves and were fairly well educated.
There was absolutely no underground railroad activity here. Not one
shred of evidence exists, in all the voluminous historical data of this
period, that John Brown or anyone else maintained a station here.
Not one of the John Brown books in print in Donaldson’s time
mentions such a thing — and he had access to all of them. (I am
purposely not going to comment on AD’s unfortunate use of the
word “darkie” and uncomplimentary remarks about black-skinned
people.)
This silly business of fugitive slaves and an underground
railroad has been extracted from AD ad nauseam and has
considerably upset myself and Ed Cotter, superintendent of the John
Brown Farm State Historic Site. The picture, I am happy to say, is
improving. Present-day authors around the U.S. have come to learn
that Ed Cotter is the foremost authority on John Brown in the world
and consult him constantly. Today very little is written about JB and
the black colony without conferences with Ed and myself.
But there are still a few slips. The latest outrage arising from the
erroneous statements of AD seems beyond repair. This past winter
the Adirondack North Country Association published a map
(200,000 copies!) showing a proposed commemorative “Adirondack
Underground Railroad” trail, leading from Saratoga directly to Lake
Placid.
Not only that, but the legend on the map labels our black colony
a haven for runaway slaves. My indignation and distress know no
bounds. I have made vigorous protests to the Association, to no avail.
Having spent all that money on the map, they are not about to recall
it, and this distortion of history is there to spawn misinformation for
generations to come. A copy of the map was recently presented to
Gov. Cuomo and is being dispensed everywhere. I am deeply
disturbed, and I am not the only one. A leading historian of Essex
County contacted me only last week about the matter, and is just as
chagrined as I am.
Also, the black colony was not nearly the abject failure AD
depicted. A number of families stayed on for some 30 years and did
well, and one family, Epps, never did leave. I am far from an
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authority on Saranac Lake history, have never attempted research
and have little knowledge of whether AD’s material is entirely
factual. I have, however, heard complaints from the Moody
descendants about the Moody section and have long known that the
genealogical chart has major omissions. Also, Donaldson was
unaware that Jacob Moody did not come to Saranac Lake directly
from New Hampshire. Jacob first lived in neighboring Keene, N.Y.,
for some years. It was in that Keene that he received the sawmill
injury and joined the militia in the War of 1812, and some of his
children were born there. And he was not born in Keene, N.H., but
Unityville, N.H.
Because of the errors in the Lake Placid history, can I not be
forgiven for my suspicions about Saranac Lake material? I sincerely
hope I’m wrong.
I am very much aware, though, of errors of significant import.
Some years ago I consulted Donaldson for background data on the
Old Military Tracts because I could find it nowhere else. Here is one
place, I thought, he just had to be right — how could he go wrong?
Still, vague doubts assailed me. Could I trust him when he had let me
down so many times? I made the correct decision: I would research
the subject myself. It took me about a year, working on it now and
then and going to primary sources. Donaldson’s version is
inaccurate. He did not go far enough back into the legislative acts,
did not make an exhaustive investigation, and thus came to grief. The
true story of the Old Military Tracts, in fact, is much more interesting
than AD’s faulty version.
Another area of concern is the Northwest Bay-Hopkinton or Old
Military Road. Here AD was singularly misinformed and came to
erroneous conclusions. If there is any subject I have vigorously
pursued, it is this. I have spent the best years of my life researching
it, and I say without any regard to modesty that I am the leading
authority on this road. I have just completed an article which I think
Adirondack Life is going to use. I admit, some of my sources were
unavailable at AD’s time, but that does not make his version any
more correct.
AD chose to cover only the area within the Blue Line of his
time, and this choice was perfectly legitimate. Still, whenever the
whim seized him, he dragged in extraneous material such as the
Chassinis Tract and the Bonapartes, decidedly not a part of
Adirondack history. It irks me that writers have continued to borrow
this from Donaldson when this story does not properly belong to us.
AD also dragged in the Jays and Au Sable Forks, not then in the Blue
Line, but he did them little justice, and the same can be said for his
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treatment of Wilmington. He had access to Smith’s “History of Essex
County,” and indeed listed it in his bibliography, but ignored its rich
content and claimed he could learn little of its early settlers, etc. He
served them ill, and is the worst possible source for the history of
those communities. Except for Martin Moody, he ignored Tupper
Lake, always within the Blue Line. That can be classed as an insult.
In a way, the omissions bother me more than the commissions. It
is very true that the AD history is still the only comprehensive one of
the Adirondacks so far written, although we can’t discount William
Chapman White, more reliable in some categories and covering the
social history that Donaldson neglected. But there is one more
important point to be made. AD’s history is no longer the best and
“number one” source for much of its content. Many new research
outlets have become available since AD’s day, and many articles
going beyond his scope have seen print.
A few examples: AD’s chapters on Totten and Crossfield is
certainly not the best source. A lot more information is to be gained
from, say, Colvin — and one of the most enlightening explanations is
in Empire State Surveyor, May 1968. AD’s chapter on Mount Marcy
is not the best source. Many new facts have come to light, included
in the update of Carson’s “Peaks and People,” and much more is
about to come to light in the imminent publication of the Watermans’
superb book. AD is not the best source for the Adirondack Iron
Works. Much has come to light and been written up since AD’s day.
And who would go to Donaldson for enlightenment on the history of
many an Adirondack community? Much has happened in all of them
in the last 65 years, and much has been written. Heaven forbid that
anyone should use his Lake Placid and John Brown chapters. I have
no reluctance in saying that I am the best authority for Lake Placid.
And who would go to Donaldson for enlightenment on the Cedar
Point Road? The treatise that reposes in the Adirondack Museum
archives is the last word.
I am visited by many students, particularly of Paul Smith’s
College and North Country Community College, for help in their
theses. I advise one and all to use Donaldson only as a last resort
when other and better sources are not available. I cringe when I learn
that Donaldson is being taught wholesale in their history classes. I
feel no guilt or remorse in my advice: it stems from my own
unfortunate experiences. History is my great love, and I want to serve
it in a constructive way. To me it is incomprehensible and unjust and
negligent not to forewarn that Donaldson is not always the best
authority on things Adirondack. There is much in his history that is
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admirable and should be consulted, but there is much also that is
unreliable and outdated.
My admiration for AD’s efforts has not diminished. For many
years his history filled a great vacuum. But we have to be realistic
and give him a back seat now and then, in view of the genuinely fine
contributions of writers and researchers who have succeeded him.
AD can no longer be described as the “number one” source of local
history. The rest of us who have labored so long and so sincerely and
conscientiously must be recognized, too, and given our due. We may
owe a debt to Donaldson as a springboard to novel research and
discovery, but we do not owe him blind allegiance.
P.S. — Just a footnote: Donaldson did not found “the first bank in
the Adirondacks.” There was a bank in Saranac Lake in the 1890s —
how long it persisted I do not know. They advertised in newspapers,
some originals of which I have in my archives. Here is one ad:
Potter & Co.
Bankers
Saranac Lake, N.Y.
We invite the opening of DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS and will receive
amounts as low as $1.00. We offer our services to the people for
the transaction of all kinds of BANKING BUSINESS.
F.F. Potter, Cashier
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Regarding Russell Banks’
novel, ‘Cloudsplitter’
April 6, 1999
Stephanie Schosek
6194 Fritz Hill Road
Avoca, NY 14809
Dear Stephanie Schosek,
As official historian of the town of North Elba, I would like to
make some comments about your Literature 2603 project regarding
the novel “Cloudsplitter” by Russell Banks.
I find it incredible that this book has been chosen as a tool to the
understanding of the John Brown character and chronicle, and
especially the nature and climate of the town of North Elba while he
maintained a residence here. Why anyone would want to write, and
why anyone would want to read, a fictitious biography of a famous
man baffles me. I see no purpose served. Dozens of books about
John Brown based on fact have been published in the past century
and more. The best, of course, is Stephen Oates’ “To Purge This
Land With Blood.” This deals in a most scholarly and intelligent
manner with the many facets of Brown’s character, the events of his
life, and his place in national history.
I do not know what “Cloudsplitter” is worth as fiction. As a
historian, I am convinced it has little, if any, value historically. It is a
distortion of the Brown saga and an outright fabrication of the basic
history of North Elba. Already it has done irreparable damage to
local history, and caused me no end of trouble. For 36 years I have
worked very hard to eliminate the kind of nonsense that Banks spouts
about our history and to convey to the people of my community and
elsewhere the true story of Lake Placid and North Elba. And then
someone like Banks comes along and overnight destroys my efforts.
The problem is that while this book is clearly labeled fiction,
almost everyone ignores such labels and considers all published
material as gospel.
Banks has reported that his North Elba Underground Railroad
segment takes place in 1850. This segment rests largely on the
premise that John Brown was engaged in transporting escaped slaves
into North Elba via the Underground Railroad. In reality there never
was an Underground Railroad into North Elba, and John Brown was
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never engaged in such activity while living here. Neither was anyone
else. In fact, an Underground Railroad through any part of the
Adirondacks has never been authenticated. You seem to imply that
there is controversy regarding an Underground Railroad to North
Elba, but such controversy is impossible. In all the voluminous
documentary material of the period, there is not a shred of evidence
of Underground Railroad activity here. And there is no anecdotal
evidence, either.
Also, much of Banks’s “escaped slave” action takes place on the
Wilmington Notch road along the Au Sable River. Such a road was
not yet in existence at the time.
The Thompson Family and Farm
Banks has reinvented our famous and important pioneer
Thompson family. This family came to North Elba in 1824, and
descendants still reside here. Banks chose to use the true name of
Thompson, but then he gave the patriarch of the family a fictitious
first name — “Everett” Thompson. His real name was Roswell, and I
strongly suspect that Banks never found it. Banks makes Thompson
out to be a rabid abolitionist, but in reality he was a very taciturn and
private man who never intruded himself into politics and the slavery
question. There is no evidence that Brown had much of an
acquaintance with him. On the other hand, Roswell’s sons were very
much into John’s politics. Two sons went to Harper’s Ferry with
John and were killed there, and another went to Kansas with John.
Banks has 16 sons in the Thompson family, when there were
only nine. And he has Mrs. Thompson still producing a new son
every year and hoping for a daughter. In fact, Mrs. Thompson bore
her last child in 1838, and one of them was indeed a daughter, Belle
— who, interestingly enough, married John Brown’s son, Watson.
Banks does not seem to know that.
I will say at this point that Banks never once consulted me while
doing the book, and since no comprehensive history of North Elba
has ever been written, he apparently got his material from unreliable
sources, including his own fertile imagination. He has also placed the
Thompson farm in the wrong part of town. Years ago I wrote a very
detailed story of this family for the Lake Placid News which, it is
obvious, Banks never found or made any attempt to find.
The Gerrit Smith black colony
Gerrit Smith of Peterboro, N.Y., a wealthy and leading
abolitionist of his day, owned a great deal of land in New York state,
much of it in North Elba. A small amount of his North Elba land was
inherited from his father, but the bulk of it he bought personally from
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the state of New York in the early 1840s. He decided to give away
small plots to free blacks of New York State so they could become
independent farmers and obtain voting rights. (He was embroiled in
state politics.) No escaped slaves were involved in this project.
Beginning in 1846, hundreds of deeds to land in North Elba were
given to blacks, but only about 15 families actually came here, and
most stayed only a year or two. While the soil was fertile and had
been worked by white pioneers for half a century, the blacks were
not happy with the hard life of a farmer and soon left.
John Brown originally came to North Elba with the idea of
teaching these people how to farm and to be a “kind of father” to
them. They had previously been barbers, cooks, coachmen and the
like. This noble purpose soon fell by the wayside. Brown came here
in the spring of 1849 and did devote himself to helping the blacks
during much of the summer. But, although his family remained in
North Elba, he was mostly absent from here the rest of 1849 and
most of 1850, traveling abroad and trying to salvage his Springfield,
Mass., wool business. He then decided to move to Ohio, and in
March 1851 the family took off for Akron. They did not return to
North Elba until June 1855. By then, most of the blacks had moved
out. John soon took off again for Kansas, and for the rest of his life
was seldom at North Elba except for a few days here and there.
John Brown referred to the black colonists as “Timbucto”
(Banks spells it wrong — “Timbuctoo”), but Timbucto was not a
definite place or a self-contained colony with known bounds. It was,
rather, an idea or a symbol. The Afro-American plots were
interspersed with those of the white residents in the settlement of
North Elba and, like theirs, were scattered over a wide area,
sometimes miles apart. Banks depicts Timbucto as a separate colony,
and it was not.
Banks’s most grievous error is his treatment of North Elba’s
white pioneers. He presents them as racist, “poor and ignorant white
farmers” who despised the free blacks of the Smith colony, calling
them “niggers,” and Banks claims the North Elba whites resented the
black colonists’ unfair access to the “better part of the tablelands.”
He claims they also despised and resented the Browns for giving aid
to the blacks.
This is pure nonsense. There is absolutely no evidence to sustain
such a portrayal. On the contrary, the evidence is clear that the
whites befriended and encouraged the blacks, opened their social
activities, churches and schools to them, gave them employment, and
even voted two of them into public office. In any event, the whites
had little cause for resentment or concern. The blacks received only
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insignificant 40-acre plots, some of them located in the wilderness,
while the whites had farms of between 100 acres and 200 acres. In
addition, there were so few blacks here, and they stayed so short a
time. And the whites certainly did not resent or dislike the Browns.
Such a claim is totally unfounded. There is ample evidence of many
close friendships between the Browns and other white families.
Banks’s cruel and ill-conceived depiction is mighty unfair not
only to our good, intelligent and decent white pioneers, but also to
their many descendants who still live here and who are, rightly, much
aggrieved by Banks’s false portrayal of their forebears. There are
many other minor conflicts with reality in Banks’s presentation of
North Elba, to say nothing of his gaffes concerning other sections of
our Essex County. They are too numerous to mention.
Lyman Epps
The Lyman Epps family was the only black family to remain
permanently in North Elba. Lyman was intelligent and educated and
learned to farm most successfully. He was devoted to his family. On
the Epps side, this family had never been slaves. While Lyman’s
mother was at least part black, his father was a full-blooded Indian.
Lyman was born in Connecticut and moved to New York as a young
man, where he married a black woman. His children, therefore, had
more of a black heritage than he did. His wife and children, like
himself, were all born free. Gerrit Smith granted Epps a 40-acre plot,
and the Epps family moved to North Elba in 1849. This was a muchrespected and -esteemed family in North Elba. They all had
wonderful singing voices and sang in local church choirs. Lyman
gave singing lessons to the whites and also became a famed
Adirondack guide. In later years he was one of the founders of the
Lake Placid Public Library and the Lake Placid Baptist Church. The
last member of this family died here in 1942. Banks failed to portray
this man in depth because, of course, his research was so poor. Banks
really portrays Lyman Epps as somewhat of a bumpkin.
Strangely, while Banks uses Epps’s real name, he gives a
fictitious name to the other black involved in the “Underground
Railroad” segment — “Elden Fleete.” There was no such person, but
Banks clearly did not know the names of any black colonists except
for Epps.
No photographs were taken of John Brown’s funeral. However,
the famous political cartoonist, Thomas Nast, attended the funeral,
and his sketch of the house and funeral scene was widely published.
The John Brown genealogy has never been fully addressed. A
number have claimed that he descended from the Peter Brown of the
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Mayflower, but others have maintained that this Peter Brown had no
children.
I am unable at this time to make a personal presentation, but I
believe this report will be of use to you in your project.
101
Against proposal to make John
Brown’s Farm site into a historic
Visitors Interpretive Center
TALK GIVEN TO THE LAKE PLACID GARDEN CLUB, JUNE 28, 1978
Ladies and gentlemen:
It’s always very difficult trying to oppose governments and
bureaucracies on issues we feel to be unsound. Today my job is
doubly difficult because we have in our opposition a very personable
and persuasive individual. For a moment there, he almost had me
hooked. But I have come to my senses just in the nick of time,
because ringing in my ears is that classic old phrase from my high
school Latin, “Timeo Danaos et donas ferentes” (“I fear the Greeks
bringing gifts”).
This gift of well over half a million dollars the state wishes to
bestow upon the town of North Elba — let’s explore it.
The state is honestly bewildered because there is so much loud
and determined opposition to their plan of redevelopment at the John
Brown Farm State Historic Site. They ask themselves, “What do
these people want? We’re spending $650,000 and giving them a nice
interpretive center and a nice parking area and nice formal walkways
and nice restrooms, and maybe a nice picnic ground, and planning a
nice all-round job in memory of old John Brown, and they don’t
want it. What’s the matter with these people?”
Now, I don’t think the men in the office of Parks and Recreation
are ogres and villains — though some do. I think they are wellintentioned practitioners who want to give everybody a good dose of
history, and who simply do not realize what the sound and fury are
all about, that some of their ideas may be untimely and ill-conceived,
and they have not given enough thought to the values that will be
destroyed.
I’m certainly not against the state’s support of historical sites
and history in general. In fact, most of our governors and legislators
have a long record of being very indifferent to and neglectful of
historical matters. Governor Carey’s abolishment of the office of
state historian several years ago, as an economic cutback, was an
outrage, and every town historian in New York has suffered in some
way from this act.
However, the people of America have come of age. They no
longer accept without question the paternalism of a government that
always knows what’s right for us. They no longer say, “Well, what
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can you do about it?” We know today that we can do something
about it if we work in concert and in good faith, and not out of blind
passions and prejudice, but with intelligence.
I would like to start out by reading a letter of opposition I wrote
to the Adirondack Park Agency on May 3, and I’d like to make it
clear that it contains not only my sentiments but the sentiments of
many others.
[MM’s notes indicate that, at this point, she read her letter of
May 3 to the Garden Club, though we could find no copy of that
letter in her files.]
The state has softened and altered some of its original proposals
for the John Brown Farm redevelopment, but that does not change
the over-all picture.
First of all, we must understand that the state originally based its
plan on the hypothesis that, while annual visitation at the site now
averages 20,000 persons a year, research indicates visitors would
number 50,000 by 1990 — an increase of 150 percent.
As Al Smith used to say, “Let’s look at the record.”
Here are the official visitation figures for the last 9 years at John
Brown Farm:
1969
27,229
1970
25,405
1971
26,479
1972
23,961
1973
22,909
1974
23,249
1975
17,968
1976
15,089
1977
17,578
It presently appears that 1978 will be a little under 1977.
Think of it: The recorded visitation at John Brown Farm in only
9 years has decreased from 27,000 to 17,000 — a difference of
10,000 people. That is a lot of people, a very large decrease. There
has been a regular pattern of decrease, but the real drop began with
the gas shortage, and continued as gas prices shot up and inflation set
in. For the last four years, the average has been just about 17,000.
Since its original proposal statement, the state has lowered its
estimate. They now say there will be an increase of only about 50
percent by 1990, according to a memo from Tom Ciampa to Tom
Cobb of March 10, 1978. Fifty percent of 17,000 is 8,500, and that
increase, folks, gives us 25,500 people by 1990 — 2,000 less than
visited the site 9 years ago. Those 27,000 who visited the site 9 years
ago were easily accommodated without any trouble at all, and with
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no parking problems, and without the expenditure of over half a
million dollars.
I recently read an article in Newsweek stating that by the mid1980s gas will be either so expensive or so scarce that tourism as we
know it today will be in very bad straits. That is not a good outlook
for Lake Placid, but it is a possibility that must be faced.
The state bases its projected increase largely on the expected use
of the ski towers as a tourist attraction. They believe this will lure
many more people to the John Brown Farm, which they will see from
the top of the towers. Well, our great horse show, which brings
thousands of people to Lake Placid for two and three weeks each
year, and which is located directly opposite the entrance sign and
road to John Brown Farm, makes little or no difference in John
Brown Farm visitation. Maybe ski tower visitors will think more of
John Brown than horse-show aficionados. I simply don’t know —
and neither does anyone else.
I think this whole concept of a huge increase in attendance at the
farm by 1990 is apocryphal, false and misleading, and would never
come to pass in the normal course of events. Notice that I say “in the
normal course of events,” for I do believe many travelers could be
enticed off the road by picnic grounds, rest rooms, and exhibits with
popping lights and sound effects, especially mothers and fathers with
four screaming children in the back of the car.
But those are not the kind of people we want at the John Brown
Farm.
There certainly will be an increase for a short time during the
Olympic period, but there will be no parking problem, as automobile
travel in Lake Placid is to be severely restricted. Any visitation at
John Brown Farm will be by bus shuttle.
Shouldn’t the watchword be, “Wait”? Why pour up to $1 million
into this primitive little farm site now, for the relatively small amount
of visitors? If a huge increase does occur in a few years, then is the
time to think about this project. It would take only a year to put it
into effect. Why squander all this money now on a mere possibility?
We have a classic example of this kind of thinking in the hundreds of
preliminary schools that were built in this country in the last 10
years. Almost all of them are half empty today — and the one in
Lake Placid probably will be, too, in a few years. Some of them are
closed. And all because of false projections of population growth. No
one considered what the effects of the declining birth rate would be.
But the state also says it must make changes at the John Brown
Farm for the present number of visitors. Their reason is that these
people must be “better accommodated.” Americans have a peculiar
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talent for tampering with their antiquities and the landscape. If
something is there, it either has to be removed, reconstructed, or
added on to. Bureaucracies are prime offenders. They feel that
changes are necessary and inevitable and in the best interests of the
public. Are they? Really?
Let’s take a look at this “interpretive center.” The semantics
bother me. I’ve been thinking this matter over carefully since my
letter to the Adirondack Park Agency, and I’ve come to some new
conclusions.
What is an “interpretive center,” anyway? Well, it’s the latest
wrinkle in modern governmental procedures. I did a little
investigating and found that this business of interpretive centers is
one very dear to the hearts of the National Park Service, which may
have invented them. The National Park Service erects an interpretive
center in front of every pine tree. An interpretive center seems to
serve a definite and functional purpose. It helps to keep visitors
backed up and away from the spot they actually want to visit, but
there are already too many people in the spot they want to visit. If the
state entices a lot more people to the John Brown Farm, it will all
work out just fine. The interpretive center, although it tends to draw
crowds, will help keep them away from the John Brown farmhouse,
where only a handful can be accommodated at a time. The tail will
wag the dog, and the dog will wag the tail, and everybody will be
happy.
What will this interpretive center do? It is not very easy to find
out. The state proposal says that it “would provide the space and
systems necessary to articulate an expanded program of introduction
to the site, static display and actual demonstrations. … Primary
emphasis is being placed upon creating an integrated program of
education and recreation utilizing historical themes relating to John
Brown, his activities and the cultural aspects of his era. … The
facility will maintain its historical orientation while also serving in
an academic and community role through its availability for research
and public forum. Specific objectives of redevelopment have evolved
from assessing the existing conditions.” End quote.
That, my friends, is pure bureaucratese, and Edwin Newman
would have a field day with it. This kind of communication — or
perhaps I should say, non-communication — is simply awful and
should draw a prison sentence. It is all right for bureaucrats to talk
that way to each other if they want to, but I can tell you, I wouldn’t
want to be marooned on a desert island with anyone who talked that
way. President Carter has ordered the federal bureaus to halt this
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kind of nonsense and convey ideas to the public in plain English.
Governor Carey would do well to emulate him.
So we do not learn very much from the proposal, except that the
interpretive center will somehow interpret John Brown’s life and
activities.
I suppose most of you have visited Mount Vernon. I have not
seen an interpretive center there and, as they say of the purple cow, I
never hope to see one. Does George Washington need to be
interpreted? You know, it’s an odd thing — I have searched and
searched for years, and in all of American history I have found only
two men who stand as great symbols in our land. We have generals
living and dead by the dozens, we have presidents living and dead by
the dozens, we have Revolutionary War heroes by the dozens. We
have only two men who are great symbols. One is George
Washington, the emancipator and father of his country. The other is
John Brown, who believed that every man should be free, that no
man should be treated as an animal and bartered and sold. There may
one day be a third symbol in the person of Martin Luther King Jr. It
is too early to know.
Now, there have always been persistent rumors that George
Washington fathered a number of children by his slaves. Would it do
any good for some researcher to ferret out the facts and present them
in an interpretive center? Similarly, there are many episodes in the
life of John Brown, as in the life of any revolutionary or zealot, that
are unpalatable and indigestible. For him, the ends had to justify the
means. In Kansas he is labeled a murderer, and with some
justification. An interpretive center must cover every aspect of a
man’s life. I don’t think it will do the American people much good to
learn every facet of the life of John Brown — in fact, I believe it
would do great harm. The bald and sometimes frightening facts about
history’s heroes are not for everyone, and may distort our conception
of a man’s worth.
Better that John Brown and the John Brown Farm remain
symbolic. Better for people to just stand in that sublime spot, look at
the sublime mountains, and think sublime thoughts about an
incredible man who had an incredible dream. This is the virtue and
the simple function of the John Brown site as it exists today.
A small museum certainly would not be out of line, manned by
one or two people in peak season, if the state could acquire some
genuine artifacts — and they are not easily come by. Why not use the
barn and save a lot of money, and keep the integrity of the farm
intact, and allow the land to remain classified as Wild Forest?
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Oh, no, the state says. The barn cannot be used. In a letter to
Robert Worth from Tom Ciampa, the project coordinator, dated June
13, 1978, the state says, “We at one time considered using the barn
for an interpretive center, but historic preservation philosophy
prohibits modifying original fabric to the degree which would be
necessary to utilize it in such a manner.”
Well, let’s take a look at this barn. The siding is new. The roof is
new. The foundation is new. There is nothing original left but the
inner framework. It does not even look as it did in John Brown’s day,
because now the siding is horizontal and in John Brown’s day it was
vertical. It also originally had a shed tacked on to the back of it. The
barn that is there today bears not the slightest resemblance, except
for overall size, to the barn that was there in John Brown’s time.
I think in this case the historic preservation philosophy, like the
baby, was long ago thrown out with the bath water. The state’s whole
attitude of what should be done and what can’t be done at this site is
full of illogic.
There is one more thing I want you to be very sure of: If the
Adirondack Park Agency reclassifies this place from “Wild Forest”
to “Intensive Use,” the state can do anything whatsoever it pleases at
this site. Maybe not tomorrow, or the day after, or next year. But 10
years from now. The state people today may be honorable men who
do not want to alter the environment to any great degree or make
drastic changes. But who will be in power 10 years from now? And
what will they want to do beyond the present proposal? There has
already been some talk among state people that one day the pond will
be filled in because it wasn’t there in John Brown’s day. A beautiful
body of water will be removed in the name of historic preservation
philosophy. And that says nothing about the lack of fire protection
that would follow.
Some day we could have a condition such as exists at the ski
jump. We were promised the towers would be pleasing in
appearance, would shade into the environment, and would not detract
from the beauty of the landscape. Now look what we’re stuck with.
I’ve talked too long, and I apologize. But I must make one more
brief point. I’ve expounded on practicalities, and in all this time I
haven’t mentioned the one matter that is the vital matter to 99
percent of the people who oppose this redevelopment project. It is,
my friends, a matter of the heart. The state of New York may legally
own the John Brown Farm, but it belongs in reality to the hearts and
the minds of the people of North Elba and everyone in this country
who has visited it and loved it just as it is. They love the tranquility
of it, the loneliness, the isolation, the stark simplicity in which John
107
Brown and his family lived. They beg that no crowds be lured to this
spot by tourist gimmicks and productions. They honor and respect
John Brown, but they do not love him — he was not a particularly
lovable man — and, in any event, he himself spent less than a year in
total time at this place. They do love his gaunt, austere little
farmhouse with its back to the west wind, and they love the land it
stands on.
The state wonders why there is such strong opposition. And I
say, if they wonder, they have not done their homework very well;
they do not understand the symbolism of this place and the historical
implications it has for the people of North Elba. It is the last pioneer
farm of all North Elba’s great pioneer farms that is left in somewhat
of an original state. Any changes made, anything removed, any
amusements provided, any buildings erected, however remote from
the farmhouse, will forever change the innate character and
temperament of this place.
It is not only our last pioneer farm; it is also a memorial, not just
to the Browns but to North Elba’s outstanding pioneer family, the
Thompsons, who came here in 1824. The Thompson story is a great
American tragedy, and I hope to be the one to tell it to the world
some day. Two Thompson boys, William and Dauphin, died in
agony at Harper’s Ferry. William’s death was so violent, so vicious,
so barbaric, that it became a national scandal. Dauphin was luckier
— he was bayoneted in the engine house and died immediately. A
Thompson girl, Belle, was married to Watson Brown, who died at
Harper’s Ferry, and her name is on the women’s plaque at the farm.
Another Thompson boy, Henry, married John Brown’s daughter
Ruth, and Henry built with his own hands the little Brown farmhouse
that stands there today. William and Dauphin Thompson are buried
beside John Brown.
Yes, the John Brown Farm lies at the core of our early history,
and there are not many North Elbans or people anywhere who care
very much about obeying the letter of historic philosophy law, or
about interpretive centers that prepare one for the “experience” of
visiting a primitive farmhouse. They just want things left as they are.
I think Stephen Vincent Benet in his great epic work, “John
Brown’s Body,” expressed the meaning of this site in a way that can
make us all understand. And I hope my opponent will forgive me for
trying to bring a tear to the eye and a lump to the throat of everyone
in this room. We native North Elbans are sentimental creatures.
In the last stanza of his epic poem Benet says,
John Brown’s body lies a’mouldering in the grave.
Spread over it the bloodstained flag of his song
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For the sun to bleach, the wind and the birds to tear,
The snow to cover over with a pure fleece....
And then he goes on to say that not only John Brown is buried in
this place. The old South is buried there, too, that is gone with the
wind. And buried there, too, is the dream of the America we have not
been.
And then he says of this burial ground:
Stand apart from the loud crowd and look upon the flame
Alone and steadfast, without praise or blame.
“Stand apart from the loud crowd.” I think all of us have the
right to wonder, “How much longer will we be able to stand apart
from the loud crowd at this place?”
Think about it.
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Presidents’ visits:
Correspondence
December 21, 1975
Tony Atwill, Editor
Adirondack Life
Willsboro, N.Y. 12996
Dear Tony:
I enjoyed the excellent article, “Hail to the Chief,” in your
Winter 1976 issue, covering the visits of U.S. presidents to the
Adirondacks. Perhaps some additional comments will be of interest
to your readers.
Monroe, in fact, skirted the Adirondacks rather closer than
Champlain and Sackets Harbor. In 1817 he made a tour of the
northern states in the interests of national defense. Starting from
Plattsburgh, he traveled west via northern Franklin County and
arrived at Hamilton, St. Lawrence County, on July 31, 1817. The
following day he was escorted into Ogdensburg by a marching band
and made a speech to the citizenry. That night he repaired to
Morristown and lodged with Judge Ford. On August 2 he visited the
iron works at Rossie, and then proceeded to Antwerp, very close to
the Adirondack Blue Line, and then to LeRayville, where he spent
the night.
Grover Cleveland spent a part of his honeymoon at the Grand
View Hotel in Lake Placid in August 1886.
President McKinley made a triumphant visit to Lake Placid on
August 11, 1897, accompanied by Vice President Garret Hobart and
Secretary of War Frederick Alger. The primary object of his trip
from Plattsburgh’s Hotel Champlain was a visit to John Brown’s
grave at Lake Placid. Almost every train station between here and
Plattsburgh was decorated with flags and crowded with sightseers
who cheered the passengers on the special train. At Lake Placid,
thousands of persons gathered to see the distinguished visitors, who
lunched at the Stevens House. McKinley was the first Republican
president to visit John Brown’s grave. As he was leaving the grave
site, some one started singing “John Brown’s Body” in low tones,
and it was taken up by all present.
One president omitted from the article is Woodrow Wilson, who
summered at St. Hubert’s Inn at Keene Valley with his wife and
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three small daughters shortly after 1902 when he became president of
Princeton University. A charming article on this visit, by Mildred
Cram, appeared in the December 1951 issue of Woman’s Day
magazine.14
One of the most important visits by President Franklin D.
Roosevelt to the Adirondacks was in February 1932 when, as
governor of the state of New York, he presided at the opening of the
III Olympic Winter Games at Lake Placid.
Sincerely,
Mary MacKenzie
February 16, 1976
Dear Tony,
I’m really becoming an awful pest about this “presidents in the
Adirondacks” matter, but, knowing how addicted I am to Adirondack
history, you must bear with me. I just can’t leave matters alone.
I’ve devoted this past weekend to research and have been
through all the Lake Placid News issues of the 1920s. The paper
devoted a lot of coverage to Harding after his death (I think maybe
because Harding’s sister had spent many summers at the old Cascade
House on Cascade Lakes), and an article of August 10, 1923,
described two visits he made to the Adirondacks before he became
president. Therefore, we have one more to add to the list — and let’s
hope this wraps up the subject once and for all!
If it’s not too late, and I’m not asking too much, I’d like to add
one more paragraph to my little dissertation. This can appear right
after the paragraph beginning, “One president omitted from the
article is Woodrow Wilson, etc.”, as follows:
“Also, Warren G. Harding made two visits to the Adirondack
League Club in the southwest corner of the [Adirondack] Park before
becoming president, as the guest of Senator [Joseph S.]
Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. An avid fisherman, he caught some
fine trout in the club waters. After he became president, he was made
an honorary member of the club.”
If it’s too late, so be it.
Sincerely,
Mary MacKenzie
14
L.M.: Hard as it may be to imagine today in Republican-dominated Essex
County, President Woodrow Wilson attended a huge Democratic victory parade
in Lake Placid on Saturday, November 11, 1916, celebrating his re-election
earlier that week.
111
Grover Cleveland
at Lake Placid
AFTER 1985
In his book, “Lake Placid” (Thomas F. Barton, 1968), George
Carroll tells a story of Grover Cleveland’s honeymoon trip to the
Adirondacks in 1886, claiming that the Clevelands stayed at the
Grand View Hotel in Lake Placid. While much of his account is
factual, it is erroneous in regard to the Grand View. The Clevelands
were not guests at the Grand View at any time, but rather at the
Stevens House in Lake Placid. Leila White’s designation of the
Grand View, which Carroll obviously relied on, was simply a lapse
of memory.
County newspapers (including the Elizabethtown Post of Sept. 9,
1886) tell the true story. The Clevelands actually spent their
honeymoon at the old Prospect House (later called Saranac Inn) on
Upper Saranac Lake. During the first week in September, they made
a side trip to Lake Placid and spent the night at the Stevens House.
The next day they took a pleasure trip through Wilmington Notch to
Upper Jay, then up through Cascade Lakes Pass to Adirondack
Lodge on Heart Lake, and then back to Lake Placid. That night they
again stayed at the Stevens House, where a grand ball was held in
their honor. They returned to Prospect House the next day, stopping
on the way at the Ray Brook Inn for luncheon. (Source: Essex
County Republican, Sept. 16, 1886)
In 1886 the Grand View was a very small, rather primitive place
with no ballroom. On the other hand, the Stevens House was brand
new, had superior accommodations and a large ballroom, and was
much more suitable for a presidential stay.
The Essex County Republican article gives an interesting
account of the luncheon party at the Ray Brook Inn, as follows:
“The presidential party, consisting of the president and wife,
Mrs. Folsom, Dr. Ward and a reporter, honored Ray Brook with a
visit last week and took dinner at the Ray Brook House. The
president spoke in high commendation of the table, and assured the
proprietor, Mr. Cameron, that he would like to spend a week at his
house and try the fishing.
“The guests did not, as is the custom, request a reception, feeling
that it would be only an annoyance, but as the distinguished party left
the house, the guests assembled on the piazza and remained standing
112
through the departure. The president and Mrs. Cleveland
acknowledged the courtesy by appreciative smiles and bows.”
113
FDR and Essex County
PRESENTED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
NORTH COUNTRY LOCAL HISTORIANS ASSOCIATION,
ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY, JUNE 1995
Many Presidents of the United States have visited northern New
York and the Adirondacks. Most came for rest and relaxation,
hunting and fishing, and mountain climbing. Franklin D. Roosevelt
came for other reasons: the initiation, celebration and
commemoration of momentous events in the history of New York
State.
In 1929, as governor of New York, he came to the Adirondacks
for the first time to initiate the construction of the great Whiteface
Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway by turning the first shovelful
of earth.
While it was Al Smith who was governor in 1927 when a
legislative act and constitutional amendment permitted the location
of the highway on state forest lands, Roosevelt was governor during
the first crucial years of construction, and he supported and abetted
every aspect of the mammoth project.
Arriving by train at Lake Placid on September 11, 1929,
Roosevelt was greeted by area notables and then proceeded to the
state hospital at Ray Brook and on to Saranac Lake. His cavalcade
rode through village streets to the strains of the Saranac Lake Boys’
Band. Returning to Lake Placid, the Roosevelt party led a parade in
his honor to the music of the Lake Placid Fire Department band. A
thousand schoolchildren lined the streets, waving and cheering
enthusiastically — and I was one of them.
The governor and his party then continued on to Wilmington and
the site of the starting point of the proposed highway. Here a crowd
of several thousand witnessed Roosevelt turning the first shovelful of
earth. The shovel was gold-plated. It was the first time a New York
state governor had ever visited Wilmington.
Roosevelt paid a stirring tribute to the soldiers and sailors of
New York who had died in World War I, in whose memory the
highway would be dedicated. He said it was his greatest wish that he
be present when the highway was opened and that he ride a car to the
summit of the mountain.
Again as governor, Roosevelt returned to Lake Placid on
February 4, 1932, to officially open the III Olympic Winter Games
and administer the oath of amateurism to the athletes. Roosevelt took
great pride that a community in New York state had been selected to
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host a world event of this caliber. President Herbert Hoover had, of
course, been initially asked to open the games as first citizen of the
United States, but he had declined the invitation. Roosevelt was the
second choice and, off the record, was delighted to accept the honor,
for he was about to become a Democratic candidate for the
presidential election that fall to run against Hoover. It did not hurt his
chances when newsreels flashed photos of his commanding presence
at the Olympics all over the country, and newspapers gave him great
publicity.
I was present at that opening ceremony and again was privileged
to see Roosevelt.
In 1933, Roosevelt was inaugurated as president and
immediately became involved in his great New Deal projects that
would lift the country out of the Great Depression. He nevertheless
retained a deep interest in the New York state projects that had been
of particular concern to him. While governor, he had sponsored a
wide conservation and reforestation project. When the celebration of
“50 Years of Conservation in New York State” was scheduled for
September 1935 at Lake Placid, he was only too happy to lend his
presence to the ceremonies. The opening of the Whiteface Mountain
Veterans Memorial Highway had been set for July of that year. It
was the consensus of state officials, however, that President
Roosevelt should dedicate the highway, and a date was determined to
coincide with the conservation festivities. Again, Roosevelt happily
accepted the invitation.
Roosevelt arrived at Lake Placid by special train on September
14, 1935, with Governor Herbert Lehmann, and was whisked away
to the site where only a few years before he had officially opened the
III Olympic Winter Games. There he gave the initial address for the
commemoration of 50 years of conservation in New York state. One
thousand Civilian Conservation Corpsmen serving in Northern New
York were present, and Roosevelt’s remarks were directed primarily
to these special guests. Roosevelt said that 510,000 young men were
presently in the CCC program, and he estimated that a million had
served in CCC in its two years of existence. He suggested that the
CCC become a permanent part of the government. It is interesting
that such a conservation corps is again being suggested today.
I was present at that opening of the conservation celebration, and
for the third time saw Roosevelt and heard that inimitable voice.
The president then proceeded to Wilmington for the dedication
of the Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway. The
highway had been opened on July 19 with much fanfare, but now it
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would be dedicated officially to the memory of the New York men
who had died in service in World War I.
Thousands of veterans were present, and Roosevelt paid special
tribute to the armed forces of the United States. He then pointed out
that many persons, due to disability, could not indulge in the luxury
of camping and climbing. He said, “For older persons who cannot
climb up a mountain, we have now got the means for their coming up
here on four wheels.” And he said it with a knowing smile. As he had
hoped years before, his car was then driven slowly up the highway so
that he might enjoy the full beauty of the Adirondacks.
We who were present at these Roosevelt functions and similar
ones throughout the country saw a Roosevelt that most Americans
never saw — a helpless cripple who could not walk a step without
the assistance of people, braces or crutches. In those days, the media
had an unspoken agreement never to reveal his great physical
disability in newspaper photos or newsreels. Photographs were taken
only when he had reached the security of a chair or podium, when he
became in an instant the powerful, commanding and charismatic
leader of America, and that is the image that survives today.
Lake Placid and its township North Elba benefited greatly, as
did so many small communities in Essex County, from Roosevelt’s
Works Progress Administration programs. Lake Placid was the site
of one of the major CCC camps.
But probably the greatest benefit derived by Lake Placid and
much of Essex County came from the Rural Electrification program.
There were still a great many family farms on the back roads that
lacked electric service. With the assistance of Rural Electrification,
they suddenly came out of the darkness and in step with the rest of
America. The electrification of farm areas was probably the most
important and lasting benefit of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in
Essex County.
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Mystery at Bog River Falls
ADIRONDACK LIFE, SUMMER 1973
More than a century ago a mysterious affair was reported from
Bog River Falls.
Bog River country is lonesome land. It lies south and west of
Tupper Lake on the sunset side of the Adirondack Park, and only
solitary fishermen and hunters speak its tongue.
Bog River itself is a solitary stream. Its two narrow branches, by
turn savage and swift, deep and lazy, pass through pond after pond
and twist like water snakes through the black bush. The famous old
guide, Harvey Moody, pronounced this stream, along with Follensby
and Little Wolf, “the confoundest, crookedest consarns in the
woods.”
Yet the Bog does have its own peculiar charm. By a strange
alchemy of color and light, every leaf and tree and stone ashore is
mirrored in the dark stream with wonderful accuracy. The
underwater landscape seems even sharper and more threedimensional than the real thing.
Almost unknown today, this region was a favorite haunt of 19th
century sportsmen. In the old days boats ascended three miles of the
river to Little Tupper Lake, now in Whitney Park. Many a gentleman
hunter patiently trekked the swampy, desolate terrain in order to
reach the headwater, lily-padded Mud Lake, for there in large
numbers lived the moose. It is said that moose were found there long
after they were gone from every other part of the Great North
Woods.
But if the river corkscrews through country rather dark and
brooding and inhospitable, all that is forgotten when it finally
empties itself over Bog River Falls into the head of Tupper Lake.
There is no prettier sight in all the Adirondacks. Happy at last to
shake off the gloomy forest, the river pours in lacy foam bells over a
mossy, shelving ledge some thirty feet high and swan dives into the
beautiful lake below. The view from here is splendid: the lake, its
bays and jutting points, quiet islands, a backdrop of misty mountains.
To this pristine spot shortly before 1855 came Franklin Jenkins,
a pioneer of Lewis, on the New York side of Lake Champlain, and a
lumberman by trade. Franklin soon established a chopping and
sawmill at Bog River Falls. It was the first lumbering operation in
that wild, western extremity of the Adirondack Mountains and eight
miles from the nearest neighbor. The artist-journalist William James
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Stillman, passing through in 1855, found two Jenkins clearings and a
tidy little settlement of six buildings on the lakeshore.
Franklin literally grubbed his clearings out of primeval forest.
Immense hemlocks inhabited the land, some of the oldest primitive
wood then known. Ranging from 500 to 1,000 years in age, they
were trees already ancient when Columbus raised the standard of
Spain on the beaches of the New World. Franklin hired five hands to
help him clear his holdings, and soon the antique timber began to
shudder and fall. At last the final giant, a hemlock 3½ feet in
diameter, came crashing down. Then came the difficult task of
removing the stump and roots by the simple device of windlass and
oxen.
It was during this operation that a startling find was made. As
the roots tore through the forest floor, they carried with them an
amazing object. There, hoisted from three feet below ground, cradled
in the great roots of the hemlock, lay a porcelain vase of beautiful
design. About 16 inches high and ornamented with vine, scroll and
flowers, it was as fresh in color and perfect in glazing as the day it
left the potter’s hands.
There could he no doubt. The vase had rested there all the time
the hemlock was growing, at least a thousand years and possibly
centuries more. Suggesting Grecian, Roman or Egyptian art at a time
of great perfection, its workmanship and decorations marked it as the
product of a highly sophisticated race.
The men stared and fell silent. Words come hard at such an
awesome moment. But soon a babble arose. What was to he done
with the treasure? Who should possess it? Not one was ready to
surrender his nine points of the law. The argument continued for
days, with none willing to yield. At length, as in most deadlocks, a
bargain was struck that left no one satisfied and, in this case at least,
triggered an act of vandalism almost unequalled.
The vase would he broken into as many pieces as there were
men present.
And so the deed was done, the depredation complete, and six
fragments of a priceless article of virtu parceled out. Need it be said
they have long since vanished, along with the men? No one can be
found now to write a postscript to the tale.
A Mediterranean vase? In the untrod wilds of the Adirondacks?
Lost, left behind, buried with a corpse, perhaps, a millennium back
by outlanders from across the sea?
Wait. It is not impossible. Tupper Lake to Raquette River,
Raquette River to the St. Lawrence, St. Lawrence to the sea … There
is, after all, a water highway from Bog River Falls to the Atlantic.
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Added to this, old Viking shield and battle-ax remains have been
unearthed in Ontario. Moreover, in recent years some rather
persuasive evidence has been offered that even as long ago as the
Bronze and Early Iron Ages, ancient sea kings freely roamed the
world.
There are many archaeologists who believe that, long before the
Vikings reached America around 1000 A.D., Central and South
America were often visited by races from across the Atlantic and
Pacific. Professor Cyrus H. Cordon of Brandeis University, a daring
historical detective of pre-Columbian influences and artifacts in the
Americas, has exciting clues to offer. The ancients, he maintains,
were well aware of a great land continent to the west. Navigators
knew the New World in remote antiquity, notably the Phoenicians
and Minoans, crack merchant mariners of their day. Professor
Gordon has concluded that, for thousands of years of pre-history,
men were in contact with other men at opposite ends of the earth.
Fascinating testimony is cited: Greek, Latin and Egyptian words
embedded in the languages of ancient Middle America; Japanese
pottery from the island of Kyushu dating hack to 3200 B.C., found in
Ecuador; Mesoamerican ceramic sculpture before 300 A.D.,
portraying Mediterranean, Semitic and Negroid types; a Roman
sculptured head of 200 A.D. excavated in a Mexican pyramid; a
Canaanite rock inscription of 531 B.C. found in Brazil.
But he does not stop at Middle and South America. He offers,
too, evidence of early visits to North America proper: Roman coins
found in Tennessee; Hebrew coins in three places in Kentucky, all of
the second century A.D.; a Hebrew-inscribed stone of 135 A.D. dug
up at Bat Creek, Tennessee.
As to the vase at Bog River Falls, Professor Gordon comments:
“I do not doubt for a moment the accuracy of the report, and I believe
it is in every way possible that the vase was pre-Columbian, perhaps
quite ancient. However, nothing useful can be done with such objects
that have disappeared without accurate photographs or drawings. I
would say the vase indicates that sooner or later other such
discoveries will be made in your area.”
On the other side of the coin, there are many skeptics, among
them Dr. Robert E. Funk, official New York state archaeologist.
“There are, of course, many tales and rumors about artifacts of
pre-Columbian origin in the New World,” says Dr. Funk. “These are
almost entirely without foundation. The only possibly authentic
Norse settlement ruins on this continent are those at L’ainse aux
Meadow, Newfoundland. Indisputable Viking remains have been
found on Greenland, dating to A.D. 1000.
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“It is quite possible that mariners of older civilizations, such as
the Phoenicians, Greeks and Egyptians, sometimes reached North
America,” continues Dr. Funk, “but so far no authentic traces have
been found. There are some archaeologists who believe they have
evidence for influences from Southeast Asia on the Mayas of A.D.
700-1000 in Mexico and Honduras. The desire to believe in such
ancient contacts in North America has led to very imaginative
proposals by some writers.”
And thereby hangs the tale.
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Wildflowers in the garden
DATE UNKNOWN— TO THE GARDEN CLUB OF LAKE PLACID
Madame President, Anne, members of the Garden Club and our
guests,
I’m very glad I was asked to give this talk today, because in
doing a bit of necessary research I learned an awfully lot about
wildflowers I never knew before. What I’m going to tell you today is
based not only on my own knowledge, but what I have learned from
experts in the field. I know I stand before a few experts in the
audience — I see Til Lewis, Emmy Williams and Judy Cameron to
name a few — who are surely going to trap me on a few points, and
so if I make any outrageous errors, I hope you’ll correct me.
Our subject, of course, is wildflowers in the garden. I must say
that I’m standing here now because I made the grievous error at an
Executive Board meeting of allowing as how I had a little experience
in the matter. So instead of being put on a committee, I was put on
the program.
Seriously, I have never met anyone who was completely
immune to the appeal of wildflowers. All children instinctively love
them, including little boys. In fact, I think I have met more little boys
who love wildflowers than little girls. All of us who have grown up
in small towns surrounded by woods and fields have been especially
blessed, for many of our fondest memories are of wild things: our
secret spot in the woods where we found the first spring beauties —
or a little dark place under giant pines where only we knew that
white lady’s slippers grew — or the frog pond with fat cattails and
arrowheads, where we heard the song of the red-winged blackbird,
and where we waded, too, among the jellied masses of frog eggs and
caught pollywogs in glass fruit jars and emerged happily soaked to
the skin and coated with primeval mud and slime. I remember a
certain pine woods where the waxy, small pyrola carpeted the forest
floor, but these are gone now. Even a small town changes, and the
woods that used to be next door with their violets and adder’s tongue
and wake robins have long since fallen prey to the bulldozer and are
now thickly populated residential areas.
All these things we remember with great affection and nostalgia
and a sense of things lost forever, but it need not be so. For with a
little effort, a little luck and a little knowledge, we can duplicate
many of nature’s perfect scenes in our own back yards. Not, heaven
forbid, with lady’s slippers or Indian pipes, for there is no sorrier
sight than these lovely, rare, delicate creatures growing in someone’s
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garden, where they are robbed of half their charm. They are denizens
of the deep, dark, acid woods, and they are best left where they
belong, in the dim cathedral light with the song of the hermit thrush
in the background. But more about them later.
Henry Downer tells the story of presenting some slides of
wildflowers to a garden club one afternoon. And after he had
finished, a very proud little lady gushed, “Mr. Downer, the Grass
Pink Orchid you showed us is so beautiful! I have it growing in my
woods!”
And somewhat enviously he said, “You are very fortunate.”
“Yes,” she sighed complacently, “I heard it was found in a
boggy woods near us, and so I bought the woods.”
Well, fortunately for most of us, that isn’t the only way to get a
wildflower preserve of our own.
Before I go on, I want to ask and answer two questions. The first
one is, What is a wildflower? Obviously, all garden flowers were
once wildflowers. Over the few thousand years since primitive man
left his nomadic forest trails and became an agriculturalist, they have
been cultivated and hybridized and cross-fertilized and tampered
with until most of them bear little resemblance to the simple plants
that inhabited the earth unchanged for millions of years.
Let us say, for the purposes of this talk, that a wildflower is one
that is found growing in its original form and natural habitat, in the
woods and fields, along the streams and in the bogs of America. We
will not confine our talk to wildflowers of the Adirondacks. We will
discuss wildflowers of the whole northeastern United States that can
easily be transported to your garden and prosper there. After all, we
are but a few miles from valley country, where the wildflower
population is radically different from our own, and surely we will
want to try a few plants that are native to Jay and Au Sable Forks and
the Champlain Valley, and even New England and southern New
York.
Now we come to our second question, and that is: Why grow
wildflowers at all, when we have at our command the most splendid
and exotic plants that man in his ingenuity has been able to create for
our pleasure? I cannot answer this question. There are those with
huge estates and lavish, expensive gardens who will take more
pleasure in persuading trailing arbutus to flower than in growing a
perfect rose. And with what triumph and pride we will exhibit a jack
in the pulpit to our friends while a choice dahlia will go ignored.
Perhaps it’s the challenge of pitting oneself against the improbable,
or persuading nature’s children to prosper under our care, that gives
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us this keen sense of achievement and enjoyment in growing
wildflowers.
There is a certain group of wildflowers that is found only in very
acid, peaty soil that is not likely ever to be duplicated anywhere in
our gardens. Among them are, unfortunately, some of the finest and
most dramatic of our wildlings, but I implore you, do not try to grow
them, for you will probably meet with failure.
One of these, of course, is our pink lady’s slipper or moccasin
flower, or the showy lady’s slipper with its huge pink and white
blossoms. It seems to be touched with the spirit of the deep woods,
and there is a certain fitness in its Indian name, for it looks as though
it came direct from the home of the red man. All who see this
wonderful flower in its secluded haunts immediately want to take it
home, but I have never known anyone who has really succeeded with
it. It may come up the first year, but chances are it will never be seen
again. Not only is it a lover of soil too acid for our gardens, but it is
very difficult to lift and cultivate because of its odd root system and
complicated reproductive process. How well one can succeed with
so-called nursery specimens, I do not know.
Another is the Indian pipe, with its clammy white ghost flower
that feeds on decaying vegetable matter. It will never grow for you.
Another acid lover is the pipsissewa, or prince’s pine, almost
always found in sandy pine-woods soil. It belongs to the heath family
and has the loveliest flowers imaginable, waxy white or pink and
translucent as fine porcelain. I have tried many times to grow this
flower, but it has resisted all my efforts.
Then there is the little bunchberry, the smallest member of the
true dogwood family, whose purse white, perfect bracts are almost
exactly like those of the dogwood tree. It is found in peaty
swampland, and its brilliant red berries appear in late summer.
Unless you find it already on your property, you will not grow it
easily. I was interested in hearing Eunice Soden say last month that it
is growing on her lot bordering Mirror Lake, and she is indeed
fortunate. And Anne Varian tells me she has had some success in
moving it.
Then there is trailing arbutus, the very name of which has a
magic and aristocratic sound for all of us. It is so highly valued that it
is often stripped from the woods by ruthless persons and sold on
street corners. Because it favors acid, sandy soil, and also because of
its rarity, we should not steal it from the woods. Better to transplant
to your garden the little dogbane bush, with beautiful, bell-shaped
flowers somewhat like arbutus, but as a matter of fact with a much
stronger and sweeter perfume. I really can’t say too much in praise of
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the dogbane. I would venture to guess that not more than a handful of
you have ever noticed this lovely little shrub with the strange name.
For unless you stroll slowly by the roadsides you are apt to pass it by.
It is allied to the milkweed family and has a milky stem. I am lucky
to have it growing at the edge of my land on West Valley Road.
Well, enough of these flowers you should not grow. There are
many more, but let’s get on to the fascinating flowers that can be
grown. We can’t begin to cover half of them, and I hope you’ll
forgive me if I leave out your favorite. I will mention only those I
know the best, are most worthy of growing, and easiest to transplant.
All of us have neglected nooks and corners. Just take a tour
around your own grounds and see how many you can count. It is in
these spots that wild flowers come into their own, for many kinds
will flourish where tender, pampered exotics will give up the ghost.
Shady or rock-infested grounds can actually be a triumph, for
there are unique opportunities to create unforgettable scenes. Dainty
ferns love to nod in the shadows of old rocks, and in the spring you
would be very hard-hearted indeed if you were not moved by the
sight of bloodroot or hepatica or clintonia or wake robins springing
up beside a rough, stone wall. And what can be more beautiful than
the wild fox-grape mantling an old wall, or indeed a clothes pole? I
have also found that the fox-grape is wonderful in dried
arrangements, and last year I used it to decorate all my Christmas
packages along with bittersweet.
Which reminds me: You, too, can grow bittersweet and not rob
the riversides of this splendid native vine each year. The small
flowers in June rarely attract attention, but in October no lover of
color can fail to admire the deep orange and brilliant scarlet seed
pods. Of all our native vines, this is the one most admired, and does
in a small way for our quiet landscape what ivy-covered walls
accomplish in warmer climates.
The hepaticas have enamel-like flowers, white, pink and
sulphur-blue, of very delicate beauty. They are usually the first of all
flowers upon the spring scene, even before the crocus. I planted some
25 years ago, and they are still heralding spring for me. Someone has
suggested that their fuzzy little buds look as though they were
wearing furs as a protection against the still wintry weather.
In April, the curled-up leaf of the bloodroot pushes its firm tip
through the dead leaves, and a blossom of spotless beauty unfolds.
The snowy petals fall before one has had time to get used to such
perfection. Just a few hours of wind and storm will shatter its
loveliness, but its short life makes it all the more worth growing.
Somehow it always reminds me of cherry blossoms and what the
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Japanese say of them so wisely and fatalistically: “Consider the
cherry bloom: It falls when it must.”
I have always had quantities of jack in the pulpit in the nooks
and crannies. I hardly need to describe these quaint little preachers in
their striped pulpits. They are well-known to everyone who loves the
woods in early spring, and again in autumn their bright scarlet berries
are conspicuous. I had one plant that wedged itself into a crack of the
stone wall and grew to a frightening size. The leaves were like
elephant ears.
Baneberry, too, is an attractive plant to grow. It is valuable for
its bright red berries in summer. Another form has china white
berries with black dots, on a bright pink stem. As children, we called
these “doll eyes.”
One of the most delightful wild flowers for the problem spot is
the blue-crested iris, blooming in May. This three-inch-tall beauty is
a native of damp woods but will bask contentedly in the sun also.
There is also a lovely white form. It is of creeping habit and forms a
dense mat. A good companion is the tall and vigorous yellow flag —
which, I hasten to confess before someone reminds me, is not really a
native species. But it has been naturalized in the northeast so long
that it deserves honorary membership in the wildflower clan.
The cultivated “sweet violet” is all but impossible to grow in our
climate because it is not reliably winter hardy. But who cares, when
we can introduce into all the out-of-the-way places on our lots the
lovely violets of the wild — blue, white and the several varieties of
yellow. I was interested to learn that violets were once all green, then
evolved into white or yellow. Only the more recently evolved violets
are purple. I have quantities of wild violets on my property. They
spring up everywhere, and some grow so lushly they rival the
hothouse blooms in size.
But my favorite of all my spring plants is the handsome
foamflower or false mitrewort, which makes as perfect a
groundcover as anything one can buy from nurseries. Its flowers are
white and feathery and foamy, as the name implies, and last a long
time. The leaf is heart-shaped and most attractive in shady spots all
summer long. Here is one wildflower that combines wonderfully
with cultured flowers, and I use it freely with primrose, daffodils and
blue ajuga.
With the foamflower I also grow another charming wildflower,
the fringed bleeding heart of the dicentra family, with nodding rosepink nuggets. Although many do not realize it, this is a true wildling,
found from Georgia to western New York. It is actually a much more
desirable plant than the old-fashioned bleeding heart of our
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grandmother’s garden, for the latter, while it has larger and showier
flowers, is very unsightly when it is dying down in the summer. The
fringed bleeding heart does not die back. Moreover, it blooms all
spring and most of the summer, has attractive, luxuriant foliage,
colonizes quickly, and makes itself at home in a woods-like retreat.
Of course, the first cousin of this fringed bleeding heart is our
own beloved and quaint Dutchman’s breeches, found in April and
May in the rich woodlands of the Adirondacks. This little plant is our
native bleeding heart, but has yellow-tipped white blossoms. They
especially gladden the hearts of the younger fry because they “look
like something.”
Wildflower gardening seems to suggest to most people a shaded
spot planted with spring-blooming natives. But the role of attractive
native plants is not limited to spring-bloomers or lovers of the shade.
When the all-too-short spring season is over, then comes the turn of
many more colorful natives to flaunt their bold scarlets, oranges and
purples in the summer sun.
To be sure, not all of these summer wildflowers are suitable for
our gardens. But there are many that can be used with distinction.
They were the features of our great-grandmother’s garden, and their
very names carry us back in spirit to the good old horse-and-buggy
days when gardening, like everything else, was more peaceful and
contented: bee balm, butterfly weed, blazing star and Canada lily. I’ll
match these against the best of the finicky hybrids.
Any spot in a sunny border will do for these native perennials,
although bee balm will also thrive in shade, and so will the
wonderful cardinal flower, although the latter demands a lot of water.
Many of us in Lake Placid grow the brilliant scarlet and aromatic bee
balm without realizing it is a true wildflower. Wild bergamot is
closely similar, except for flowers ranging from lilac to purple. I
have seen whole fields of this lovely wild bergamot growing near Au
Sable Forks. Bee balm is much beloved by bees and hummingbirds. I
have noticed that hummingbirds jealously guard these flowers for
themselves and will angrily chase away any bee that ventures near.
The gorgeous orange butterfly weed flames from dry, sandy
meadows from Maine to Florida, from mid-summer to fall. Even in
the tropics one rarely sees anything more brilliant. Oddly enough, at
one American exhibition, a sensation was created by a bed of these
beautiful plants that was brought from Holland. No one knew they
were originally American wildflowers. Truly, flowers, like prophets,
are not without honor save in their own country. This plant has
become so popular for formal gardens that it is sold by almost every
nursery. Try it against a background of purple blazing star, and for an
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even more brilliant combination add the white form of blazing star.
Blazing star, also known as gayfeather, is also a very showy native
wildflower of the northeast. This plant thrives both in shade and sun
and has been greatly neglected in gardens, even though it can be
bought anywhere under the name of Liatris.
Another native American that has received much attention
abroad is our mountain laurel. It is highly prized and even celebrated
in England, and the English newspapers advertise the flowering
season at many estates, which are then thrown open to the public. It
is hard for the English to believe that each June in parts of America
the waste hillsides are brilliant with the beauty of this pink-and-white
checkered flower. This holds true also of the American
rhododendron, with its lovely waxy pink flowers, which has been
carefully cultivated and brought to perfection in England.
Here is a suggestion to you: Instead of wasting your efforts on
trying to grow the exotic azaleas of our southlands, which are simply
too tender for our frigid north, try the wonderful native laurels and
rhododendrons, which will serve the same purpose if given acid soil.
There is not too much mountain laurel in the Adirondacks,
although I have found it up at Copperas Pond. But we do have
another charming little shrub of the same family, some of which I
have in my garden. This is sheep laurel or lambkill, which has
flowers similar to mountain laurel, deep pink but smaller. It is deadly
to sheep, hence the name lambkill, but deer seem to feed upon it with
impunity.
Among the loveliest of lilies is an American native, the Canada
or meadow lily. I found it growing in woods in Clinton County and
brought it home. Now I have eight giant plants, five feet high. A
well-established group with eight or ten pendant, airy, yellow blooms
apiece is a sight to behold.
These lilies I grow among the most valued of all my summer
wildflowers, and that is the black snakeroot, also known as bugbane.
With names like these, you can understand why I always refer to it
by its Latin name of cimicifuge. The Indians believed it cured
snakebite. It is supposed to have such an unpleasant odor that even
the insects avoid it — its name, bugbane, meaning literally to drive
away bugs. I have loads of this plant, and frankly it does have rather
an unpleasant odor, but I have still seen many insects exploring the
flowers. Apparently my bugs have never been told it is bane to them.
In any event, this native shade-enduring plant is a wonderful
sight in summer. Its tall white wands shoot up along the edge of the
shadowy woods like so many ghosts. It takes a while to mature, but
when it does it makes a compact, dense hedge. Its feathery white
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flowers are borne on stems that are sometimes gracefully arched or
twisted, grand for flower arrangements. One of the most stunning
displays I have ever seen of this flower was two years ago at the
Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire.
And, by the way, if any of you want to see outstanding gardens as
well as unforgettable sculpture, do visit this place on your travels.
Then we come to the gentian, which Walter Thwing has called
“the belle of the fall,” referring to the fringed gentian, which is not
native around Lake Placid. This delicate little sky-blue flower
belongs to the royal family of American wildflowers. It is,
unfortunately, very capricious, and is also a biennial, which adds to
the difficulty of trying to grow it. Walter Pritchard Eaton tells of a
nurseryman in Massachusetts who sold the seed. When Eaton wrote
to ask him in what sort of soil to plant it, the nurseryman replied with
delightful candor, “It doesn’t make any difference what soil you
plant it in, it won’t come up. I just offer it because folks ask for it.”
In Lake Placid we do have, however, the closed gentian. What a
thrill it always is for me to go down to the swamp below my house in
September and see the carpet of intense and vivid blue, so rare a
color in nature. This is a flower I have not yet tried to transplant but
is on my list for this fall. This is one of the flowers protected by the
state, so it would be wise to take it only from private lands.
Anne Varian has expressed an interest in transplanting some
witch hobble bushes to her garden. This interesting bush belongs to
the viburnum family, and all of you have seen its splendid white
flowers in the woods of May. But it is really too leggy and scrawny
for our home grounds, and there is another native bush of this family
that is much more appropriate. This is the maple-leaved viburnum,
with flowers almost identical to the witch hobble. The bush itself is
very attractive, and in fact will grow into a small tree, as it has on my
grounds.
I have often thought it strange that our native shad tree has been
so neglected in home planting schemes. It is a fairy tree, airy,
delicate and graceful, and can substitute for all the glamorous
flowering trees too tender for our climate. The blooming of the shad
in the spring is a lovely sight, and the purple berries disappear like
magic if there are any birds in the neighborhood.
I have several of these dear trees in my woods. For me, spring
arrives the day the shad trees bloom. Only then am I ready to admit
that, as the Bible tells us, “The flowers appear upon the earth, the
time of the singing of birds is come.” Even then, search the woods as
we may, we shall hardly find another shrub in bloom, unless it be the
little mountain fly honeysuckle with its small bells exactly the color
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of Naples yellow, the paint that artists use. The fly honeysuckle is apt
to escape all but the most careful observer. But the shad tree literally
cries its presence. All along West Valley Road at the height of its
blooming, the woods are white as bridal veils, and paraphrasing
Housman’s lovely poem I always say,
Since of my threescore years and ten
Forty will not come again,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the shad tree hung with snow.
Well, there are just a few wild things for you to try. There are
scores of others all around you everywhere. And I say, Don’t
hesitate. Go ahead and try them. Try them all, because where one
person will fail, another will succeed. I don’t think you can grow
wood sorrel, but maybe you can. And I don’t think you will have
much luck with coral root, but then maybe you might.
Walter Pritchard Eaton says that if he had his way, he would tear
out all the silly rock gardens, all the overgrown and sickly evergreen
foundation plantings, the pocket handkerchief front lawns infested
with crabgrass on all the suburban streets up and down America. He
would hedge in the yards with laurel, and brighten the lawns with
daisies and goldenrod and asters. He would form a garden club in
every town, among the less palatially domiciled inhabitants, devoted
not to raising named varieties of peonies and gladioli but to
transforming the front yards of its members into American gardens,
made out of strictly native materials. And the results would be
astonishing. There would be no flower show, no blue ribbons to the
largest stalks of delphinium, but prizes for the best actual gardens
employing wild material, the use of which is justified by its lack of
rarity, or by its purchase from a nursery that actually propagates it.
Which brings us to a very touchy subject, for you are inevitably
going to ask, “But where in the world am I going to get all these
wildflowers? Aren’t they protected by law?” First, let’s remember
that most of the spectacular summer wildflowers are sold by
nurseries who really and truly raise them. Secondly, just for a
moment or two, let me air my purely personal views on this matter.
Let’s admit it, the whole situation is a very silly one. We will all
agree that the law forbidding the taking of certain wildflowers on
state lands is well-intentioned, but a more hopeless law was never
written. It is absolutely impossible to enforce this law, and the real
offenders are never detected and punished. It is not botanist Reginald
Farrer’s “itinerant spinster with a pilfering trowel” — which
description, by the way, will fit a lot of people we know — who is
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the real criminal. This simple but ardent soul is merely the kidnapper
of a few jack in the pulpits or bouncing bets to tuck away tenderly in
some odd corner of her garden.
The real criminal is the nurseryman or florist who buys huge
quantities of wild plants from back-country collectors who earn their
living at the game. And every one of us compounds the crime when
we wander into their establishments and buy an armful of bittersweet
in November to decorate our Thanksgiving tables, or garlands of
ground pine for our Christmas mantles. These things are sold in
enormous quantities throughout the land, and do not fool yourselves
that they are tenderly grown in greenhouses or on wildflower farms.
As a matter of fact, nine-tenths of any of the plants you buy from the
so-called wildflower farms came from the wild the same or previous
year. There are a few nurserymen who painstakingly grow wild
plants from seed — and we would do well to find out who they are
— but they are in the minority. When we realize, for instance, that it
takes nine years for the seed of the adder’s tongue to mature and bear
flowers, we can readily understand that no nurseryman can afford to
raise very many of our spring wildflowers.
There are other criminals who are never prosecuted: the
bulldozer, the lumberman, forest fires, swamp-draining projects,
housing projects, the county roadside weed sprayers, and those who
indiscriminately pick flowers. The pickers are far worse than the
diggers. I cannot believe that we who take a few small plants from a
friend’s woods — or even the wilderness — to propagate and
preserve are guilty of any great felony. Not if we leave the rare plants
alone — and in any event, and fortunately, those are the very ones
least suitable for our gardens.
It is not so evident in the Adirondacks as in many places — and
let us hope that we remain forever wild — but we are living in a
changing world, and our children are growing up in a changing
world. Soon they will see no wildflowers at all on their Sunday rides
— nothing but denuded banks, sprayed roadsides, hot dog stands,
ugly filling stations and tourist attractions. I still think that a child
who grows up with a knowledge of and love for wildflowers
becomes a better and happier adult and citizen, and a real
conservationist. And I do not believe it is so unimportant, after all, if
we can leave some wildflowers untouched wherever we build, or
plant a few in our gardens where the whole family can see them and
learn to love and respect them.
Thank you.
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Building a patio
DATE UNKNOWN — TO THE GARDEN CLUB OF LAKE PLACID
As anyone who knows me very well can testify, I am probably
the most ardent do-it-yourselfer of all time — with the possible
exception of Carolyn Massey. It simply never occurs to me that there
is anything I can’t accomplish — that is, until I am right smack in the
middle of a project, and then, fortunately, it’s too late to turn back.
There is an old saying, “He who knows nothing, doubts
nothing,” and so I never doubted I could build a patio when the idea
first came to me. As a matter of fact, the success of this tremendous
project has only strengthened my belief that there is no manual job
too big for a woman.
There are only three things you need to build a patio all by
yourself, no matter how large it is: (1) a wheelbarrow, (2) a very
small amount of money, and (3) determination.
The wheelbarrow will do all the heavy work a woman can’t do
with her slight muscle tone. A very little money will buy a load of
flagstone, a couple of bags of cement and some builder’s sand. And
determination will carry you through when you begin to sadly regret
the day you joined the bricklayer’s union.
I can honestly say I built every bit of my patio by myself and did
all the hauling and laying of rocks, sand and flagstones. It took me
three summers, but for you who don’t hold down a job away from
home, it would probably take only one. Just one thing was done for
me: my husband mixed the cement. He offered to do this voluntarily
(take note that the patio was by then almost finished), and I must say
at that stage of the game I was in no mood to turn him down.
In the short time allotted to me, I could not possibly tell you
much about the mechanics of building a patio. In any event, you
learn as each step progresses; there are plenty of pointers in how-to
books, and you will also have to solve by yourself the problems of
your own individual site. I will stress only one thing, and on that
depends all your success: In our climate, you must definitely have a
rock and sand base of at least a foot and a half. Two feet are better. If
you will follow this rule, your patio will stand for generations.
If you do not follow this rule, the winter frosts are almost certain
to undermine it. There are those who will tell you it isn’t necessary,
and perhaps for a winter or two it may look as though they are right.
But a third winter will pass, and one fine spring day they will emerge
to find their beautiful patio cracked and crumbled by the action of
frost.
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I had a peculiar problem because the site I selected sloped away
rather abruptly from the house. At the lower end it had to be built up
with cement blocks, and the tremendous hole had to be filled in with
large stones. I might say there was not a stone to be found within a
half mile of my house after I had finished scavenging.
I filled in the chinks of the stone base with sand and spread over
it a 3-inch layer of sand, and on this were set the flagstones, properly
leveled, fitted, and finally sealed in with cement.
You will see that my patio is a very informal one, with a
weathered, rugged look that blends in well with the rather wild,
woodland setting. And it is free-form because a square, formal shape
would not have been consistent with the natural beauty of the place.
In other words, I did not hold nature in my hands — she held me in
hers, and I followed her bidding.
I love my patio. In the summer I live there and eat there and
cook there and work there and relax there. It is my outdoor living
room, and you step onto it directly from the house. I do not claim a
professional job, but nevertheless I am terribly happy with it.
There are little gardens about it, and lots of birds and
chipmunks, and there are always plenty of exciting things going on
around it in the world of nature to watch and enjoy.
Now, then, won’t you come into my patio? I will lead the way.
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