The Beaver River Club

Under the water in a shallow section of the Stillwater Reservoir lie the traces of numerous building foundations, roads, bridge abutments and the scattered detritus that commonly accompanies human occupation. On a small island in this area there is a large building foundation nearly hidden by tangled undergrowth. These are the remains of the once grand Beaver River Club. 

From its founding in 1893 until it was flooded in 1925 the Beaver River Club was the favored destination of many of the visitors to the Stillwater area. It was the summer retreat of wealthy and influential families from Syracuse, Utica and to a lesser extent from elsewhere in New York State. The decision to enlarge the Stillwater dam to create today’s Stillwater Reservoir utterly destroyed this glittering outpost in the wild

 

Sometime in 1890 William H. Morrison, a successful pharmacist from Lowville, NY, assembled a group of like-minded friends with the object of establishing a sportsmen’s club and game preserve. In January 1891 Morrison announced that this group, newly named the Smith’s Lake Park Association, had purchased Lamont’s hotel at Smith’s Lake along with most of the property surrounding Smith’s Lake and nearby Albany Lake. Only a few months later Dr. William Seward Webb purchased all that property and the Smith’s Lake Park Association ceased to exist.

Webb posted the land against trespass and hired former guides as game protectors to keep the public away from his property. With their favorite vacation destination now off limits, Morrison’s group devised an alternate plan. Most members of the group had stayed at Dunbar’s Hotel at Stillwater during previous hunting and fishing trips. In late 1892 the group purchased the Dunbar Hotel and also signed a multi-year lease for 6000 acres of forest and lakes in the immediate vicinity of the hotel.

 

On February 10, 1893, thirty-two well-to-do businessmen primarily from Syracuse, Utica and Lowville formally founded the Beaver River Club. They renamed Dunbar’s Hotel the “Beaver River Clubhouse” and hired Monroe “Pop” Bullock, a well-regarded local guide, to manage it. A new dam on the Beaver River, built in the same year the Beaver River Club was founded, raised the water level enough so the land they just purchased became a two-hundred-acre island. 

 

The club had their island surveyed and divided into 52 waterfront lots for sale to members. The 1893 New York State Forest Commission Report describes how members of the Beaver River Club and guests could reach the remote club by wagon, traveling the last 12 miles “through unbroken wilderness” along the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road from Number Four, or by rail to Beaver River Station and then by boat to Stillwater.

Beaver River Clubhouse in 1902

During its heyday, the membership of the Beaver River Club read like the upstate social register. Successful manufacturers were well represented by men like William S. Foster of Utica, president of Foster Brothers Manufacturing, makers of iron beds and springs. From Syracuse there was Carlton A. Chase, president of Syracuse Chilled Plow and later president of the First Trust & Deposit Bank. Another prominent Syracuse civic leader was William K. Pierce, president of Pierce, Butler & Pierce, manufacturers of heating and plumbing fixtures. W. K. Pierce also founded the company that installed the first street lights in Syracuse. 

 

Prosperous retailers and wholesalers were well represented. Foremost among these was Robert Dey,founder & president of Dey Brothers department store who is credited with inspiring the current Syracuse downtown shopping district. From Utica there was William D. Moshier, wholesaler of spices, extracts and coffee. A Lowville native, he joined the Beaver River Club with his brother and business partner, Charles Moshier, his father John J. Moshier and his brother-in-law, A. C. Boshart.  Other Lowville business owners included the pharmacist W. H. Morrison and the Richardson brothers, who operated a grocery store while developing a major wholesale trade in cheese and maple sugar. 

 

Professional men also made up a significant part of the membership. Chief among them was Syracuse attorney, William P. Goodelle, a member of the 1894 constitutional convention that drafted the “forever wild” clause protecting the Adirondack forest preserve. Goodelle served as club president from 1895 until at least 1910. The rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Syracuse, Rev. Dr. Henry R. Lockwood, was also a founding member. Leading physicians such as Dr. J. Willis Candee of Syracuse and Dr. Martin Besmer of Ithaca represented the medical profession. 

 

The Beaver River Club truly flourished during the 15 years from 1893 until 1908. In June of 1902 H. C. (Henry Charles) Churchill replaced “Pop” Bullock as club manager. Churchill owned a small twenty-foot-long steamboat named Alice that he used to transport Beaver River Club members in style from Grassy Point near the Beaver River railroad station to the club dock on Twitchell Creek.

 

Disaster struck the Beaver River Club on April 22, 1908 when the clubhouse burned to the ground. The club was then at its peak of popularity. The board of directors saw no reason the new clubhouse should not be even larger than the one that burned. An impressive new clubhouse, built in a rustic Queen Anne style, opened in 1910. The main floor had a beautiful living room with stone fireplace, a spacious dining room that could seat 80, the kitchen and a pantry. There were eighteen bedrooms on the second floor and two indoor bathrooms. Wide porches on the north and east sides looked out on the water and the mountains.

New Beaver River Clubhouse in 1910

The fire insurance proceeds from the loss of the first Clubhouse were inadequate to completely finance this fine new hotel that would end up costing $20,000, or about $350,000 in today’s dollars. To raise the necessary capital to rebuild, the Beaver River Club mortgaged the new Clubhouse and all its remaining unsold real estate.

 

Unfortunately, the grand new clubhouse did not bring about the expected increase in club membership or the sale of more cottage lots. As early as the summer of 1911 usage of the Beaver River Club began to decline. This may have been the result of the so-called Panic of 1910 – 11 that resulted in substantial reductions of commercial and industrial activity and in currency deflation. A second recession in 1913 – 1914 served to further decrease the disposable income of wealthy business owners. 

 

A sad example of the effect of this financial decline is the case of leading club member William K. Pierce of Syracuse. His manufacturing company lost a fortune during these years and his personal fortune declined from $1,250,000 in 1913 to only $60,665 by January 1914. Unable to shake the depression he felt at his business failure he committed suicide on April 5, 1915. 

 

Eventually the club found it was unable to meet the costs of operations and ceased paying the mortgage. On Dec. 18, 1914 in the resulting foreclosure auction the clubhouse and all the unsold cottage lots were purchased by three wealthy club members for $10,916.13, the amount still owed on the mortgage.

 

The club continued to operate more or less as usual until 1919, the year the Black River Regulating District was created. It was no secret that the regulating district intended to find a way to impound more water behind the dams it controlled on the Moose and Beaver Rivers including the dam at Stillwater. In 1920 the Black River Regulating District received approval from the Conservation Department to raise the Stillwater dam by nineteen feet to its current height. This would, of course, alarm the members of the Beaver River Club as almost all their property lay only a few feet above the existing water level.

 

On Nov. 29, 1919 the three co-owners of the club property sold everything they still owned, including the clubhouse, to Henry Wetmore. Wetmore apparently operated the clubhouse on some basis for the next two years for those club members who continued to use their camps.

 

As work began on the higher dam, the Black River Regulating District drew detailed maps of the area to be flooded and then proceeded to negotiate with the persons who owned land below the proposed new water line. The regulating district was not interested in purchasing buildings, only the land. Owners of camps and other buildings were given until the end of 1924 to remove their buildings or have them destroyed.

 

On Feb. 11, 1925, the gates closed at the new Stillwater dam and the water rose. Prior to the flooding, all club buildings including the clubhouse were relocated or demolished to salvage any valuable materials. All that remained were the foundations.  In time, almost all traces of the once famous Beaver River Club faded into obscurity.

 

A much more detailed description of the Beaver River Club will appear in my forthcoming book, Beaver River Country to be published later this year by Syracuse University Press. An early version of this article appeared in the Adirondack Almanack on August 20, 2016.