The Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road

In 1841, at the urging of some influential citizens, the New York state legislature authorized construction of a road all the way across the Central Adirondacks from west to east. Because this road started at Carthage on the Black River and ended at Crown Point on Lake Champlain it was named the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road. In some accounts it was called the Catamount Road or simply the State Road.

Nelson J. Beach of Lewis County was primarily responsible for course selection, surveying and construction along with Nathan Ingerson in Jefferson County and David Judd in Essex County. The expense of building and maintaining the road was to be defrayed by a tax on the non-resident lands to be benefitted. The road was surveyed in the summer of 1841 and opened in sections over the next nine or ten years.

 

The road followed the course of existing trails and earlier roads as much as possible. An entirely new route was only needed between Belfort and Number Four and between Stillwater and Raquette Lake. Wallace’s Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks gives the entire route and mileage as follows: Carthage to Belfort, 15 miles; to Number Four, 9 miles; to Stillwater, 11 miles; to South Branch, 7 ¼ miles; to Brandreth, 9 ½ miles; to North Bay of Raquette Lake, 6 miles; to Long Lake Village, 17 ¾ miles; to Newcomb, 13 miles; to Tahawas Lower Iron Works, 7 ½ miles; to the Schroon River (“Roots”), 19 miles; to Crown Point on Lake Champlain, 19 miles. Total length = 134 miles.

 

The road roughly followed the Beaver River valley from Belfort upstream, passing near the settlement of Number Four and skirting the next ten miles of rapids before arriving back at the Beaver River at Stillwater. It crossed Twitchell Creek on a rickety log bridge and continued up the south side of the river to Little Rapids before turning toward Raquette Lake. From there it generally followed earlier roads the rest of the way to Crown Point on Lake Champlain

 

The road had been cleared from Carthage as far as the confluence of the Beaver River with Twitchell Creek at Stillwater by the fall of 1844. We know the date because E. R. Wallace tells of how Charles Fenton and his brother George were rescued by the road crew camped at Twitchell Creek after they were lost in the woods for two days. [Descriptive Guide (1889 ed.), pp. 400 – 401.] Twitchell Creek proved to be a major obstacle. It took the road-builders quite some time to construct the first log wagon bridge across the wide stream. While working on the bridge they built a small log cabin as a way station. When the road builders moved on in 1845, the hermit Jimmy O’Kane took possession of the cabin they left behind.

 

This wilderness road was not much more than a wide trail through the forest. Trees were felled and stumps removed when possible. Superficial rocks were thrown into the woods but larger embedded rocks stayed put. Marshy spots and shallow streams were crossed on “corduroy,” small logs placed side by side perpendicular to the direction of travel. Deeper or wider streams merited log bridges. Most of the road was complete by around 1850. Unfortunately, the planned taxation on non-residents did not yield adequate funds to maintain it. Local residents maintained some sections but the more remote sections gradually became impassable as bridges and corduroy rotted.

Even in the early days the section of the road between Number Four and Raquette Lake received little maintenance. When the artist Jervis McEntee traveled along the road in 1851, he noted it was:

 

“… simply a path through the woods, with an attempt at bridging streams and morasses with corduroy, and [that] was opened with a view of inducing settlers to go in and occupy the lands through which it runs. It has had but little effect in this way, however, and seems practically useless, as there are often whole years during which it is not traveled by a single team throughout its entire length. Fishing and hunting parties frequently avail themselves of it in hauling their provisions to Raquette Lake, but the labor of traveling it is more than many care to undergo.”

 

The intrepid Constable family took Adirondack camping trips in 1850, 1851 and 1855 by driving their wagons across the western portion of the road to Raquette Lake. Even as early as 1850, it was in terrible condition, full of mud holes, rocks and fallen trees. Walking was usually much more comfortable than riding. John Constable described the challenges posed by the road.

 

“We had a bulky horse who would either not go at all, or else with such a rush as to stave everything to pieces over the rocks and gullies which constituted our road… it required the greatest care and skill to keep our only team from smashing the wagon to pieces. The teamster walked behind to pick up the articles that were constantly thrown off by the violent jerks … which frequently came near plunging me headlong into the bushes.”

 

Lack of use, non-existent maintenance and the regenerative power of the great northern forest slowly turned much of the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road into no more than a barely discernible footpath. By the end of the 1880s only selected sections of the road were still passable. The Report of the Forest Commission for 1891 characterized most of the road as “a mere string of rocks and mud holes.” At the west end, the section from Belfort to Number Four was abandoned by 1894. The section from the Beaver River through Brandreth Park to Raquette Lake was closed to the public by 1897.

 

Even though it was rough, the section of the road between Number Four and Stillwater continued to receive a fair amount of use. Until the railroad arrived in 1892 anyone bound for the destinations on upper Beaver River such as Stillwater or Smith’s Lake needed to use that section of the road to bypass the rapids on the river.

 

The road between Number Four and Stillwater actually took on new life in October 1892 with the opening of the railroad. Although tourists visiting the area now commonly came by train, a good many of the growing number of folks who worked in the woods or at the new hotels, used the road. Because of the increased commercial activity around the community of Beaver River Station, the section of the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road between there and Number Four actually received increased traffic after 1892, resulting in gradual improvements. 

 

The biggest problem in using the road beyond Stillwater to the east was the condition of the bridge over Twitchell Creek. When Nelson Beach originally laid out the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road in 1841, he spent several days searching for a way around Twitchell Creek. Only after all the other possibilities had been exhausted, did he decide on a route that required a bridge.

 

From the beginning, the Twitchell Creek bridge proved hard to maintain. The original 1844 bridge was built of logs balanced on piers of rock. As early as 1855 crossing the bridge with a wagon and team was precarious. Records are not clear on how long the first bridge remained passable. Suffice it to say, most early travelers left to road at Stillwater and ascended the next section of the river by boat. Doubtless the bridge was repaired from time to time over the next thirty years by those who absolutely needed to get a wagonload of goods across the creek. 

 

It was the series of impoundment dams built on the Beaver River at Stillwater that eventually destroyed the bridge. First, the higher water behind the dam of 1887 washed away the old log bridge. A.J. Muncy, who regularly used the road to get supplies from Lowville to his sportsmen’s hotel at Little Rapids, reported that after the first dam he needed to build a floating bridge in one place and use a ferryboat in another to cross with his team.

 

A second, higher dam completed in 1894 again widened Twitchell Creek. A group of upstate businessmen had just purchased 200 acres and the Dunbar Hotel near the dam to create the Beaver River Club, a private sportsmen’s preserve. The new dam turned their property into a 200-acre island. Members and guests of the Beaver River Club arrived by train, then took a small private steamer down the river to their clubhouse. They needed to restore the Twitchell Creek bridge because they hauled luggage and other heavy goods by wagon from the railroad station to the club. 

 

Accordingly, they used their combined political influence to get the state legislature to appropriate funds for a new bridge. The new bridge needed to be much longer, so it was built in two sections. The first span crossed to a small island in the enlarged Twitchell Creek. A much longer span was built on the other side of the “road island.”

 

The bridge across Twitchell Creek built in 1894 was replaced with a new structure during the winter of 1909 – 10. The very next winter, shifting ice displaced the new piers destroying the longest span. Crossing to the six-mile-long section of the road leading to the railroad station again required use of a ferry. There is no evidence that the Twitchell Creek bridge was ever replaced after 1911. 

 

Even with the road cut off at Twitchell Creek, it remained in use from Number Four as far as Stillwater to serve the Beaver River Club and the adjacent Old Homestead / Beaver River Inn. The creation of the current Stillwater Reservoir in 1924 raised the water level another nineteen feet completely flooding the hotel and the Beaver River Club property. Since that time the west end of road has ended at the water’s edge in the hamlet of Stillwater. The current gravel road from Number Four to Stillwater follows the course of this original road with only one minor deviation. Parts of the road from Raquette Lake to Crown Point are now modern paved roads.