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

1

A short history of the Adirondacks

From creation to the 20th 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

2

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 land-dwelling 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.

3

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

4

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

5

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.

6

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

7

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

8

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 Pre-Grenville. 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

9

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

10

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

11

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 near-starvation, 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

12

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

13

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 electric-power 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

14

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?

15

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

16

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

17

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, heart-broken 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

18

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.

19

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

20

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

21

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.

22

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

23

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.

24

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.

25

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.

26

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 well-frequented 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

27

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.

28

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.

29

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

30

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

31

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.

32

Dates in Lake Placid- North Elba history

C I R C A 1 9 6 5 ; U P D A T E D T H R O U G H 1 9 8 1 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.

33

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 speed-skating 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,

34

the 500-meter speed-skating race, was won by Jack Shea of Lake Placid. February 4, 1951 The Placid Memorial Hospital [now Adirondack Medical Center-Lake 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.

35

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 ski-joring 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.

36

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.”

37

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.

38

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

39

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.

40

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.

41

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

42

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.

43

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.

44

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.

45

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.

46

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.

47

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.

48

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.

49

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. 11 In November 1981 Matt Clark was elected supervisor of North Elba township, a position in which he served from 1982 through 1985.

50

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 That portion of Sentinel Road is now called Newman Road. 13 Street address: 43 Johnson Ave.

51

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.”

52

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,

53

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

54

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 back-breaking 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.

55

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

56

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?

57

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

58

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

59

“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

60

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.

61

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.

62

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

63

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.

64

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.

65

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

66

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 member-guests. 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

67

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

68

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

69

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 single-handedly. 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.

70

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

71

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

72

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

73

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

74

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.

75

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

76

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.

77

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

78

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

79

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

80

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

81

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

82

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

83

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

84

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.

85

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.

86

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

87

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.”

88

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

89

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:

90

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.

91

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.

92

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

93

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

94

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

95

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

96

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

97

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

98

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

99

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

100

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 much-respected 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

101

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.

102

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 well-intentioned 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

103

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

104

no parking problems, and without the expenditure of over half a million dollars. I recently read an article in Newsweek stating that by the mid-1980s 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

105

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

106

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?

107

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

108

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

109

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.

110

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

111

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.

112

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

113

through the departure. The president and Mrs. Cleveland acknowledged the courtesy by appreciative smiles and bows.”

114

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

115

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

116

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.

117

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 three-dimensional 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

118

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.

119

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.

120

“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.

121

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

122

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

123

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

124

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

125

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 rose-pink 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

126

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

127

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

128

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

129

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

130

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.

131

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.

132

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.