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The Original Norridgewock Burns

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Gladys was on her way home from her usual afternoon walk when she heard people yelling. The voices were coming from the old hotel. When she turned to look, she saw a few men hauling furniture out onto the lawn and shouting for more help. Next, she saw the black smoke pouring out of the top story. Her first instinct was to rush over to help. Then, she remembered her camera. The date was May 18, 1914, almost exactly 111 years ago. Gladys Kempton was just fifteen years old. She grew up in Beaver River Station. Her father was the section foreman for the railroad. Gladys lived year-round in the section house with her parents ever since she had graduated from school in June 1912. To make some spending money in March 1913 Gladys began to sell souvenir photo postcards to tourists at the railroad station. She sold a large number of such cards, sixty-eight on one day in April 1913.   The cards she sold usually featured beautiful views of the area, some probably taken by local photographers s...
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The Big Moose to Stillwater Road

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The first time I drove in to Stillwater Reservoir it was on the road from Big Moose Station. I assumed that the road had been there for a very long time, maybe for a century, maybe longer. I was wrong. The bumpy, curvy, often dusty section between Big Moose and Stillwater was built in 1955 – 56, so it’s only 70 years old. Here’s the story. From 1845 until 1956 the only road access to Stillwater on the Beaver River was from Lowville by way of the Number Four Road then on the old Carthage to Lake Champlain Road. My previous post of 2/15/21 tells how that road was built and the trials of keeping it open. You can read that article here.  https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-carthage-to-lake-champlain-road.html . The current road from Number Four to Stillwater and the Six-Mile Road to Beaver River are surviving parts of that old road.   After the Adirondack Railroad started to carry passengers in October 1892, most people who travelled to Beaver River Station or Stil...
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The Stillwater Hotel

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Between November 1924 and the end of January 1925 Harlow and Minnie Young with the help of friends dismantled the old Beaver River Inn that sat on land destined to be flooded by the expanded reservoir. They moved the salvaged material to a lot they owned on higher ground nearby [see my post of 8/6/24 at  https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-beaver-river-inn.html ]. They used the salvaged material to construct a new hotel a short distance back from the projected new shoreline. As shown above, the new Beaver River Inn had a two-story section on the side facing the water with rooms upstairs. The entrance was through a story and a half building attached behind the main building. A wrap around porch provided a place to relax overlooking the reservoir and surrounding hills. The reincarnated Beaver River Inn was open for business for the 1925 summer season.   Although it’s hard to see because of the extensive later renovations, the present Stillwater Hotel is still in ...
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Carl Rowley's Snowmobile

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1923 Snowmobile, collection of the Volo Museum, volocars.com These days, winter business at the Norridgewock Lodge in Beaver River Station is fueled by snowmobile tourism. When the Stillwater Reservoir freezes solid or snow buries the railroad tracks, snowmobilers arrive daily by the dozens. In her memoir,   Beaver River: Oasis in the Wilderness   (2000), Pat Thompson, mother of the current owners of the Norridgewock, vividly recalls that the first snowmobile roared into Beaver River during the winter of 1959. It didn’t take the Thompson family very long to embrace snowmobiling. Business at the hotel picked up so much that the Thompsons were able to give up the animal trapping that previously supported them during the winter [ see   Thompson, pp. 125 – 129].     While modern recreational snowmobiling at Beaver River started in 1959, the first snowmobile actually arrived there much earlier. That snowmobile was most decidedly not a recreational vehicle. It was a m...
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Carl McCormick, Beaver River guide

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Photo from the collection of Tim Mayers The photo above has intrigued me for some time. The names of the people are written on the back of the postcard in fancy, hard-to-read script. A caption appears at the bottom that reads, “These are the boys from hear [sic] and the Guide house.” I have added the names to the photograph based on my best guess. Mr. and Mrs. Goons probably ran a boarding house that catered to guides. Because I recognize a few of the names, I know the photo was taken in Beaver River Station, but I have never heard of a building called the guide house. The card is not dated and because it was never mailed, it has no postmark.   Carl McCormick, standing on the far right, sports a distinctive walrus mustache. He shows up in a few other photos taken between 1900 and about 1920 in various locations along the upper Beaver River. I decided to try to find out more about him from old newspapers and the census.    Carl Charles McCormick was born on March 7, 1...
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The Station Agents

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Everyone recognized the Beaver River station agent.   In the fifty years between 1893 and 1943 the Adirondack Division of the New York Central Railroad employed a full-time station agent at Beaver River Station. There were only two Beaver River station agents during those years: John E. Dowd for the twenty years between 1893 until 1913 and William R. Partridge for the thirty years between 1913 until 1943.   The two-story depot building at Beaver River was designed so that the station agent and his family could live upstairs. The agent needed to be present at the station around the clock. Emergency communications could come at any hour. Night trains sometimes had to be flagged down. In winter the station agent had to stoke the stove and be sure the platform was cleared of snow. Although the station agent played a key role in railroad operations, it was not a particularly prestigious job. The only job requirements were a sound mind, a friendly personality, some ability in bookke...
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