Posts

Beaver River Highway

-
Image
Clarence L. Fisher had a dream. In that dream he saw a smooth, two-lane highway winding through unbroken forest – his forest. Clarence Fisher and his sister Florence Fisher Jackson had inherited about 40,000 acres of forest land in 1913 on the death of their mother, Mary Lyon Fisher. That vast forest bordered the Beaver River from Beaver Lake at Number Four to Stillwater where it encircled the west end of the Stillwater Reservoir. To manage their holdings, the Fisher siblings incorporated Fisher Forestry and Realty Co. Although lumbering continued to be their main business, they also turned their attention to selling cottage lots at Beaver Lake and Stillwater. Roads were not a serious concern for the Fishers when they first started to market their cottage lots. Both areas where they had lots for sale could be reached by the Number Four and Stillwater Roads. In 1921, however, they became alarmed when they discovered that the state planned to greatly expand the Stillwater Reservoir. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Remains of the Road

-
Image
Beaver River Station is the only place with year-round residents in New York that has no direct road connection to the outside world. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, there are only a handful of inhabited places that can make the same claim in all of the rest of the lower forty-eight states. However, from its establishment in 1892 until the end of 1914, Beaver River Station did have a road to the rest of the world: the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road. That road saw considerable use until December 1914 when the crucial Twitchell Creek Bridge was destroyed by an ice jam.   https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-twitchell-creek-bridge.html The Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road was an important early road that once ran all the way across the central Adirondacks. Also known as the Catamount Road, or simply the State Road, it originally connected Carthage on the Black River in the west with Crown Point on Lake Champlain in the east. The course of the west end of this old road a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Memories of the Station Agent's Daughter

-
Image
Beaver River depot, front facing the tracks Living in a railroad depot in the 1930s may seem like a dream come true, especially to an adventurous child. There was the excitement of trains constantly arriving and departing, travelers passing through, and heaps of interesting freight being loaded or unloaded. A vivid account of the life of a child of the Beaver River station agent unfolds in the written reminiscences of Joyce Partridge Vohnoutka. Joyce was born in 1930, the next to youngest child of Ethel Wetmore Partridge and her husband William, the station agent. For reasons that will soon become clear, Joyce’s memories center on 1940, the year she turned 10. The Beaver River railroad depot was built in 1892. Photos of old depots along the Adirondack Division line show that the basic features were roughly the same, but each depot was customized to fit the needs of the location. The depots were rectangular with a roof that had substantial eaves extending over the platform to provide so...
1 comment
Read more

The Twitchell Creek Bridge

-
Image
  The ruined Twitchell Creek bridge in 1915 On June 1, 1841 Nelson Beach and his surveying team set out from the frontier village of Number Four following an old hunter’s trail leading east. They were just beginning a monumental survey for a new road that would cross the central Adirondacks. The plan was to find a route linking existing trails and roads to facilitate settlement in the interior of the great north woods. The road was to connect Carthage on the Black River in the west with Crown Point on Lake Champlain in the east. This road would come to be known as the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road. One part of the surveying crew was already working its way east from Carthage along the Beaver River valley toward Number Four. Beach’s part of the surveying crew travelled to Number Four on an existing road from Lowville to survey the next section of the proposed road. The hunter’s trail they followed on the first day of their survey was a short distance back from the west side of the...
1 comment
Read more

Stillwater On Ice

-
Image
The last community ice harvest at the west end of the Stillwater Reservoir occurred on Jan. 12 and 13, 1953. Later that year power lines finally reached the community and folks switched to electric refrigerators and freezers. Until then, refrigeration was provided by ice harvested from the flow.   The two largest consumers of ice at Stillwater were the Stillwater Hotel and the Rap-Shaw Club. Both had large ice houses to fill. The 1953 ice harvest was a coordinated effort by these two institutions. The Rap-Shaw team was directed by the club steward, Herbie Nye, and included members Rex Baxter, Frank Leet, Harlan Wheadon, Dick Welliver, and guest Tom Root, Baxter’s brother-in-law from Ohio. The hotel team was led by Emmett Hill, the hotel owner, and included Denny Boshart, Bob Griswold, as well as one or two other unidentified Stillwater residents.   Ice harvesting was simple, cold, hard work. First, the surface of the ice was cleared of snow by hand shoveling, then the ice was ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Annie's Christmas Memory

-
Image
I paused for a moment after I managed to herd the children inside the depot where my sister Florence was waiting. The conductor handed down our bags. My nephew Wesley came out and carried the bags inside. I stayed on the platform for a minute to stretch my legs after the train ride. It was already starting to get dark. It was pretty cold. A light snow was falling.   When I looked east up the railroad tracks, I saw three figures in dark heavy clothing slowly making their way toward the station. It was December 22, that much I’m sure of, but I’m not certain now whether it was 1912 or maybe 1911. As they got nearer the depot, I could see they were wearing snowshoes and they were dragging two nice balsam fir trees. Of course, they had their rabbit hunting rifles, but no rabbits hanging over their shoulders. I recognized them from my earlier trips to Beaver River Station. The taller one was Willy Kempton, the railroad section foreman, and the woman walking next in line was Etta, his wif...
1 comment
Read more