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Jim Dunbar and the Dunbar Club

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The Dunbar Fish and Game Club was informally founded in 1905. Ever since then a small group of member sportsmen have come to the club at Stillwater on the Beaver River for hunting and fishing expeditions. The club was founded by James C. “Jim” Dunbar who lived and worked at Stillwater from 1879, when he was just fourteen, until his death in 1926 at the age of sixty. During his forty-seven years as a full-time Stillwater resident Jim Dunbar worked as a guide for sportsmen, a hotelkeeper, the first Stillwater dam keeper, a subsistence farmer and as the founder and first president of the Dunbar Club. Jim Dunbar was born on July 27, 1865 on a farm a few miles north of Dannatberg, Town of Watson, Lewis County, NY. His parents were Joseph C. Dunbar and Mary E. Warmwood [sometimes spelled Wormwood]. About 1877 the Dunbars purchased the Wardwell place at Stillwater on the Beaver River plus 100 adjourning acres. They demolished or repurposed Wardwell’s cabin and built a two-story frame hotel wi
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Professor Hartnett

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Back in the 1920s when newcomers first arrived at the Rap-Shaw Club camp at Beaver Dam Pond deep in the woods north of the Beaver River, one of the first club members they encountered was a rough-looking fellow, dressed like a bum, noisily cutting the grass in front of the clubhouse. At suppertime a man who called himself Professor Hartnett would appear in the dining room dressed in sartorial splendor and try to convince the guests that he was same man who they met earlier cutting the grass.   No doubt, the befuddled guests wondered, “Who is this oddball?”   Dennis Edward Hartnett was born July 19, 1872 in Catskill, NY, son of Dennis and Mary Ann Byrne Hartnett. His father worked in the local wool spinning mill. His family was of modest means. As soon as they were old enough, he and his siblings also went to work as spinners in the mill. Dennis was born with an artistic temperament and a free spirit that did not equip him particularly well for factory work. Instead, he applied himself
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Ouderkirk's Sawmill

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Ouderkirk's Mill, c1893, Goodsell Museum collection Where the hamlet of Beaver River Station now stands, there once was a beaver pond behind an esker fed by a brook that plunged in from the west. Below the outlet of this pond the brook met its sister from the south and together they flowed into the mother stream that we now call the Beaver River. On the south branch close to where the two streams merged there was a spring hole with a sandy bottom filled with native brook trout. The area around the confluence of the two streams was a large marshy meadow filled with native grasses and shrubs. In 1891 and 1892 a trans-Adirondack railroad was built through this area. It originated at a junction with the New York Central Railroad main line in the Mohawk Valley and reached north to Malone near the Canadian border, thus it was originally named the Mohawk to Malone Railroad, or the M&M for short. The railroad was designed and financed by Dr. William Seward Webb. Only a year after train
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Rufus J. Richardson

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  “Hello, is this Ed Pitts?”   “Yes, it is. Who’s calling.”   “This is Joe Reeder. I have a camp near the Stillwater Reservoir. Does the name Reeder or Richardson mean anything to you?”   “I can’t say for sure. Richardson rings a bell but I’m not sure I can place Reeder.”   “Thought so. I’m calling because I read your book on the Beaver River and I’m surprised that you didn’t mention my camp. I believe it’s probably the oldest continuously occupied camp in the whole Beaver River area.”   “Really? I’m sorry, Joe. I remember now that Terry Perkins once told me I should investigate the history of your camp, but I never got around to it. To be honest, I had the impression that it was just a typical hunting camp. I’d be very happy to look into the history of your camp and, with your permission, write about it on my blog.”   “Why don’t you come up to visit? I’m at camp right now. I’ll be here through the first week of November.”   A week later, with my wife Merry at the wheel of our VW Golf,
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Magneto Telephones

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So far as I can tell, the first documented telephone service in the Beaver River country started in 1891 when William Morrison, a Lowville druggist, financed a telephone line to connect the Smith’s Lake Hotel that he owned at today’s Lake Lila with his store in Lowville. This allowed guests arriving in Lowville by train to alert the hotel and allowed the hotel to order supplies from town. Even given the significant cost, the phone line must have been a welcome improvement. Since the railroad through Beaver River did not yet been exist, a trip to town took at least two arduous days by boat and wagon. Morrison’s telephone connection functioned like an intercom. The wire was only able to connect two telephones. Such systems were popular despite this limitation. They were commonly used to connect businesses to one another, or to connect a person’s business to their home. The signal could carry over long distances making it practical in many applications. The draw-back was that every pair o
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