The Sand Spring

Back, way back in the nineteenth century, scores of adventurous campers, fishermen, hunters, trappers and even artists ascended the Beaver River on their way to spend at least a week at Smith’s Lake, now known as Lake Lila. This trip typically required three days of travel one-way. The first day was by wagon and on foot on a rough wilderness road from Lowville to Stillwater. The second and third days were by boat. It took a full day to row up the Beaver River from Stillwater twenty-two twisting river miles to the east end of the great marsh that we now know as the Stillwater Reservoir. At the end of that tiring day early travelers often camped at a spot near where the South Branch entered the main river. The South Branch was so shallow that it was only navigable for about 300 yards, but early explorers knew that if they turned in there, they would come to a good level camp site. An added attraction was the existence of a nearby spring bubbling up in the middle of the South Branch where trout were plentiful and the water sweet. Gradually that favored campground came to be known as the Sand Spring.

Doubtless, this had been a popular camping spot for the Haudenosaunee of the Oneida and Mohawk tribes who had used the Beaver River area for hundreds of years before the arrival of settlers of European descent. By the time white hunters and trappers started to explore the upper Beaver River in the 1830s, the Haudenosaunee were gone, mostly confined to their reservation lands in Central New York or along the St. Lawrence River. 

About 1841 a market-hunter and trapper named Chauncey Smith rediscovered the spot on the South Branch and decided to build a shanty there that he could use to avoid having to return frequently to the pioneer settlement at the village of Number Four where he lived. There are no accounts of what Chauncey’s first shanty looked like but since he was known to have used it in the winter it was probably a crude, low log-cabin with a bark roof, and a place to build a fire inside.

In 1845 the state cleared a wilderness road that crossed the South Branch on a log bridge a short distance from the sand spring. This road was called the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road named for its western and eastern end-points. It was intended to encourage settlement of the central Adirondacks but that goal proved elusive. It did allow Chauncey Smith somewhat easier access to his shanty and the ability to use a horse and wagon to haul in supplies and haul out the animals he killed.

The road also had the unintended effect of opening the upper Beaver River to sporting tourism. Before the road existed sporting tourists rarely ventured further than Beaver Lake at Number Four where the road from Lowville ended. It was possible but quite difficult to ascend the next ten miles of the river because of the nineteen falls and rapids that prevented navigation by boat. After the road was opened up, visitors could skirt those rapids.

Early sporting tourists employed local farmers as guides to do the rowing, cooking and heavy lifting. Guides were prepared to build temporary lean-to shelters for their charges but preferred to use existing shelters when possible. Before long Chauncey Smith struck deals with local guides to allow them to use his shanty when he was not there. This worked out well for all involved until June of 1851 when the Jervis McEntee party arrived to spend the night only to discover Smith’s shanty had recently burned down.

Smith rebuilt his trapper’s shanty and over the next few years his tourist business slowly increased. In 1859, he replaced the shanty with a more substantial log cabin with an attached stable. The new cabin was close to the road about half a mile from the boat landing. He called it the “Elk Horn Shanty.” That same year the forest around the South Branch was purchased by a timber company and Chauncey was granted exclusive use of fifty acres surrounding the sand spring in return for serving as a fire warden.

Chauncey Smith successfully hosted parties of sporting tourists at the Elk Horn until at least the early 1870s. In a January 1864 letter to his son William Warren Smith, he boasted:

 

I have a large log cabin there with two square rooms with stoves and two lodging rooms…and a stable suitable for several teams and I can cut a plenty of wild hay there. You would be disappointed [sic] if I should tell you that I have had twenty-five customers in one night mostly from city’s… and three ladies in the party but that was more than I could accommodate comfortably but frequently have a dozen. … We keep boats here and experienced boatman and guides to watch on gents and some ladies and assist them to convey them out and in if required.

 

A party of sporting tourists that included the author H. P. Smith (no relation to Chauncey) and guidebook editor E. R. Wallace spent a night at the Elk Horn Shanty in 1871. By that date the cabin was showing its age. It was heavily decorated with cast off items from former visitors, including piles of broken crockery and empty whiskey bottles. H. P. Smith later met up with Chauncey at his house at Number Four and observed:

 

“Uncle Chauncey” passes most of the summer, and even part of the winter, at the South Branch, 18 or 19 miles deeper in the forest, that he may more successfully follow his regular vocation of trapping and hunting. Although upwards of 76, he is still as lithe and active as many people twenty years his junior. He takes great pleasure in displaying a rifle, with which he claims to have destroyed no fewer than twelve hundred deer, besides scores of wolves, panthers, bears and other wild animals, with which these woods abound.

 

During the next few years “Uncle Chauncey” spent less and less time at his cabin at the South Branch. In 1874 a party that stayed at the Elk Horn Shanty found the clearing growing up in trees and the cabin dirty and moldy with a large hole in roof. In the winter of 1875, the cabin was in such poor repair that a party of passing tourists declined to spend the night there.

 

By the time Chauncey Smith retired to town, his spot on the South Branch at the sand spring was quite well known. It was listed in E.R. Wallace’s Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks as easy to find with “a notable spring hole where the fisher rarely throws his fly in vain.” To take advantage of its notoriety, in 1877 Carlton “Carl” Hough built a new larger cabin and stable there where he continued to serve the growing tourist trade. During the summer of 1877 a Colvin survey team led by Frank Tweedy made their headquarters at Hough’s cabin.

The Wallace Guide for 1888 describes Carl Hough as “a most eccentric recluse” who “welcomes travelers in his neat little bark camp, spring hole ¼ mile SE.”  His cabin had a log frame covered by bark shingles with a bark roof. A large barn with a shed roof partly enclosed with siding made of saplings stood next to the house. In this 1885 photo the man sitting in front of the cabin may be Hough.

Hough had a friend and fellow guide named Emmett Harris who helped him maintain his cabin at the sand spring. By 1888 Harris had taken over the cabin and Hough moved back to town. A visitor that summer described Harris’ cabin as “a veritable museum, walls covered with antlers and skulls of all kinds, outside also covered with same including two locked together in a fight.” The Wallace Guide for 1894 noted that Harris had succeeded Hough but added that all the land in the area had been purchased in 1891 by Dr. Webb, who might evict him.

Wallace was right. Dr. William Seward Webb, who owned the railroad built through the area, had no intention of allowing the general public continued access to the upper Beaver River. Instead, he evicted the owners of sportsmen’s accommodations at Little Rapids and Smith’s Lake and demolished their buildings. He posted his land against trespass and hired two dozen game protectors to keep the public out. By 1893 Webb’s Great Camp Nehasane stretched along the shores of Smith’s Lake which he renamed Lake Lila in honor of his wife. His private preserve included a main lodge, two train stations, eleven sleeping cabins and two boathouses, all in a sophisticated shingle style. The main lodge had room for twenty-five guests, including space to accommodate eight to ten guides. 

This might have been the end of sporting tourist visits to the sand spring, but fate intervened. Part of Dr. Webb’s grand plan was to log off much of the forest around the upper Beaver River. Webb entered into long-term contracts with three lumber contractors who built logging camps and a sawmill. At the same time as they were preparing to clear sections of Webb’s forest, the State of New York replaced the old wood and earth dam downstream at Stillwater with a higher dam that effectively prevented Dr. Webb from floating softwood logs downstream to market. Webb fumed and sued the State for damages.

When the dust cleared, the State settled with Dr. Webb by purchasing outright 75,000 acres of his forest to add to the Forest Preserve. Webb retained specific lands from the sale including all the property surrounding Smith’s and Albany Lakes where he had built his private Great Camp. Webb also reserved a plot exactly 6/10^th of a mile square surrounding the Beaver River train station. The land around the South Branch was included in the sale to the state, thus it became part of the Adirondack Forest Preserve open to the public.

The railroad started carrying passengers in late October 1892. Webb built a station less than two miles from the South Branch primarily to serve sporting tourists and keep them away from his private land. The station building sat in a clearing by a road that led to the Beaver River at a place called Grassy Point. Passengers who got off the train here had no place to stay except for the exclusive Beaver River Club at Stillwater. Anyone who was not a member of the Beaver River Club had to camp out. So, in 1894 or 95 the two Elliott brothers, Chet and William, decided to take advantage of the situation by building a sportsmen’s lodge on state Forest Preserve land along the Beaver River a short distance upstream from the outlet of the South Branch. Building on state-owned land was technically illegal but all across the Adirondacks hundreds of private camps were situated on state land, most built with full knowledge that they were trespassing.

Elliott’s building was a typical two-story sportsmen’s hotel with cedar shake siding. Meals were served in the lodge. Chet and his brother William initially operated the Elliott Camp together with Chet’s wife, Addie, doing the cooking. Chet and Addie’s teenage children helped with the chores and the guiding. William soon took a job managing the Central Hotel in Lowville and moved to town. Here’s a photograph of the Elliott main building taken by Henry Beach about 1910 with the whole family and their guests sitting out front.

The Elliott Camp prospered from the family’s hard work. Chet cleared a track to the camp and met every passenger train at the station with his horse and wagon. He improved the main building and added a dozen cabins and tent platforms along the bank of the river. Newspapers from all over upstate New York carried favorable articles about successful fishing and hunting expeditions based at Elliott’s. In the spring of 1912, the Elliott family sold their buildings at the South Branch to brothers W.H. and C.B. Johnson. The Johnsons renamed the property Beaver River Camps and continued successful operations until 1916.

 

After years of benign neglect, in 1915 the New York Conservation Commission finally decided to crack down on illegal occupation of state land throughout the Adirondacks. It was estimated that by that time there were in excess of 700 illegal camps on the Adirondack Forest Preserve and the number was growing fast. The state served all these squatters with formal eviction notices demanding that they immediately remove their buildings and possessions or have them destroyed. By the fall of 1917 all the many sportsmen’s camps and lodges on state land around the Beaver River, including the Beaver River Camps, were gone.

 

Removal of the buildings did not prevent people from camping at their favorite spot near the old sand spring, but now it was necessary to bring a tent. This sort of casual use continued through 1924, the year the present dam at Stillwater was completed. On Feb. 11, 1925, the gates closed at the new Stillwater dam and the water level in the reservoir rose nineteen feet. The outlet of the South Branch was flooded well beyond the old sand spring. Today, boats pass over that historic camping ground without anyone taking notice. Nevertheless, in the depths the old sand spring still flows clear and sweet.

 

Sources:

 

Edwin R. Wallace, Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks: And Handbook of Travel to Saratoga Springs, Schroon Lake, Lakes Luzerne, George, and Champlain, the Ausable Chasm, the Thousand Islands, Massena Springs and Trenton Falls (multiple editions 1872 – 1897).

 

H. Perry Smith, Modern Babes in the Woods; or, Summerings in the Wilderness (1872).

Jervis McEntee, Diary for 1851, manuscript and typescript, Research Library of the Adirondack Experience Museum at Blue Mountain Lake.

Editorial assistance and fact-checking kindly provided by local historians Noel Sherry and Mary Kunsler-Larmann.

 

Quotation from Chauncy Smith letter provided by his descendent Dawn Jackson via Noel Sherry.

 

Geographical location of the sand spring with help of Stillwater map-maker Nate Vary.