The Rock Shanty

The creation of the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road in 1844-45 made it reasonably feasible for hunters and trappers to prowl the almost untouched wilderness of the upper Beaver River. Before the road existed, it was possible, but quite difficult, to reach this area because upstream from the pioneer settlement of Number Four a series of nineteen falls and rapids prevented navigation by boat. Reaching the upper Beaver River above the falls required an eleven-mile hike. This limited the earliest hunters to only as much meat or fur as they could carry on their backs. After the road was opened, they could skirt those rapids and haul goods in and out with a horse drawn wagon.

These early hunters and trappers typically erected temporary shelters near their favorite hunting grounds so they could remain in the woods for days or weeks until they had collected what they considered to be a marketable supply of dead animals. These primitive shelters were all loosely referred to as shanties. If intended primarily for warm weather camping, a shanty would probably be an open lean-to constructed of stout saplings with a bark roof. If intended for winter use, a shanty would be a low, enclosed hut made of logs and bark with a place inside to build a fire.

Many of these old shanties survived for only a year or two, but some were used regularly and kept in good repair for much longer. If they lasted long enough, they became backwoods landmarks. The “Rock Shanty” was one such long-lived shelter. It took its name from a large glacial erratic that was used as one of its sides.

 

The Rock Shanty was probably constructed in 1850, quite possibly that fall. This simple shelter was located right along the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road three to four miles east of the Twitchell Creek Bridge at Stillwater. The shanty was quite near Loon Lake just a few rods east of the old trail that led south to Twitchell Lake. This description corresponds very well with the location of the trail from Loon Lake to Woods Lake to Twitchell Lake shown on the W. W. Ely map that accompanied the 1876 edition of Edwin R. Wallace’s Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks.

 

According to Wallace, a party of four men, “Uncle” Orville Bailey, Briggs Whitman, Lewis Diefendorf, and Orlando Reynolds, were the “architects and builders” of the Rock Shanty. Three of the men, Diefendorf, Reynolds and Wightman, were from Hastings in Oswego County, NY. Bailey was from Wayne County, NY. Diefendorf was listed in the Census as a merchant and the others as farmers.

 

We know the Rock Shanty existed and was in fine condition in the summer of 1851 because the artist Jervis McEntee, his artist friend Joseph Tubby and their guide Asa Puffer spent the night there on June 13, 1851. McEntee described the shanty this way in his journal:

 

Our home [was] a log shanty about ten feet square built against a rock. The door was a hole two feet square and a part of the roof [was] left off unsealed as an escape for the smoke. We crawled in and surveyed the place, which looked inviting because [it] afforded a shelter. A white and blue shirt was suspended from the roof by a buckskin thong, and across the stick which had been placed before the fireplace for a seat was a deerskin, while around on shelves were cooking utensils, and in the corner were three empty jugs.

 

The McEntee party spent only one night at the Rock Shanty. McEntee noted that their guide built them a fire from some “fat” spruce he had cut down the year before and stored near the shanty for future use. This supports the fact that the shanty existed in 1850. It also demonstrates that the hunters and trappers who built the shanty had a symbiotic relationship with the local farmers who worked as guides for parties of sporting tourists. The hunters used the Rock Shanty primarily in the fall and winter and lent it to the guides for use during the spring and summer. 

 

On November 18, 1856 Orville Bailey and Briggs Wightman arrived at the Rock Shanty to do some hunting and trapping. They set out a trap line along the trail to Twitchell Lake. Five days later Wightman left camp at 4 am to check the trap line and to do some fishing. Bailey stayed behind because he had fallen ill and was too sick to walk.

 

Wightman did not return as expected that night. Bailey was too sick to go look for him. A few days passed before the guide Amos Spofford came along on his way back to Lowville after delivering supplies to a hunting party camped further down the road at Raquette Lake. Spofford stopped at the Rock Shanty, discovered Bailey was still ill and went to look for Wightman. At Twitchell Lake he found Wightman’s rifle, his hat and a hole in the ice. A more detailed account of Wightman’s misfortune can be found in an article byNoel Sherry, “Twitchell Lake History: ‘A Melancholy Occurrence,’” Adirondack Almanack, October 23, 2019, https://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2019/10/twitchell-lake-history-a-melancholy-occurrence.html.

 

The Rock Shanty continued to be used pretty regularly by sportsmen and their guides for the next few years. Slowly, however the original builders used it less and less. Wightman met his unfortunate end in 1856 and Diefendorf died in 1857. We know Orville Bailey and Orlando Reynolds still frequented the area until at least 1859 because according to Wallace’s Descriptive Guide, that spring they helped Beaver River guide Chauncey Smith build his cabin on the South Branch of the Beaver River. When Bailey revisited Smith’s cabin in 1871 guiding E.R. Wallace and H.P. Smith, he remarked that he had not been to the upper Beaver River in so many years that he had trouble recognizing once familiar landmarks.

 

There was not much mention of the Rock Shanty after 1860. It appears for what was probably the last time in the 1876 journal of the great Adirondack surveyor Verplanck Colvin. Colvin and his party were bushwhacking from Twitchell Lake to the Beaver River on Oct. 15, 1876 to meet with one of Colvin’s field teams. When they reached the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road they were unsure of whether to turn left or right. “Suddenly the guide called out that there was a log cabin in the trail but it was a huge rock, shaped just like a shanty. In a moment I recognized the locality, it was the Rock Shanty of the Beaver River guides; and searching we found the remains of an old hunting camp.”

 

Although the Rock Shanty had collapsed well before Colvin’s visit, the glacial erratic that gave the shanty its name still sits along the present “Six-Mile” Road to the hamlet of Beaver River near Loon Lake. Unfortunately, few of today’s visitors have heard its story.