Annals of the Beaver River

During the 19 th   and early 20 th  centuries, moving buildings was a fairly common practice in the Adirondacks. Relocating a building was almost always more economical than building a new structure since finished lumber, fittings like window and doors, and roofing were costly to transport by rail and wagon. To move a building, it was necessary to remove the furnishings, partly deconstruct the building, brace each part, jack the building off its foundation, and pull the building on big wheels or log rollers to a new location using a team of draft horses. Fireplaces and chimneys could be disassembled, often with each rock numbered to aid in reassembly at the new site. There were no overhead wires to avoid and few utilities to disconnect. Labor and horses were readily available, especially when there were logging camps in the vicinity. The photo at the head of this article gives some idea of what the process might look like. Note, this photo is not at Beaver River. There are a g...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...