Annals of the Beaver River

Aunt Ella Darrow Burt Darrow in 1914 I had to wander through Section C of Syracuse’s Oakwood Cemetery for about 15 minutes before I found what I was looking for. I knelt, brushed away a handful of dried leaves and pulled up some long grass. The simple flat stone had sunk a few inches into the ground. It reads: Ella M. Darrow 1881 – 1962. Next to it on the left is a matching stone: Burt Darrow 1872 – 1924. There is nothing on the stones that even hints of the couple’s long and significant connection to the Beaver River country. Ella Maud Harris was born in Syracuse on March 4, 1881, the  daughter of John R. Harris and Alice Eastwood. Her father worked as a machinist. She had an older brother named George [born 1879], a younger sister named Florence [born 1889] and a younger brother named Arthur [born 1893].   Bernard G. Darrow was born May 22, 1871 (not 1872) in Owego, Tioga County, the son of Hill Darrow and Celia Ross. As a child his family called him Bertie, but during his a...

While scanning and cataloging the 1000+ photographs in the Rap-Shaw Club archive I came across eleven images labelled either Bald Mountain or Bald Rock. These photos all appear to have been taken between 1902 and 1916 when the club’s camp was located at Witchhopple Lake. Nine of the views show typical panoramas of forest and lakes but two of them feature a distinctive wooden tower on an open summit. Unlike most wooden surveying or fire towers of that era, this tower was built around a central post, there was no ladder, the platform at the top was minimal and the bracing horizontal rather than diagonal. My first thought was that this mystery tower might be an early version of one of the known wooden fire towers built either on the Bald Mountain overlooking Fourth Lake, now officially known as Rondax, or on the Bald Mountain in Lewis County in the Oswegatchie drainage or even possibly the wooden tower on Stillwater Mountain. I consulted with Fred Knauf and Jim Fox, two fire tower histori...

It was supposed to be a relaxing family vacation at camp combined with a bit of trout fishing. Fate had other plans for Robert Walker and Ira Vendermark. In late August of 1909, the families of two long-time Rap-Shaw Club members from Elmira, NY headed north to spend two weeks at the clubhouse at Witchhopple Lake. The party was composed of real estate agent Ira Vendemark and his wife Belle, along with master plumber Robert H. Walker, his wife Fannie and their adult daughter Myrtle Speh. Myrtle’s husband, Frederick L. Speh, planned to join them at camp for their second week.   The five of them left home early one Sunday morning in the Vendemarks’ touring car. They drove from Elmira to Utica, stopped for dinner and then drove on to Remsen where they stayed overnight. The next morning, they left the automobile behind and caught the morning train to Beaver River Station. They reached there on Monday about noon. They probably ate their dinner at the Norridgewock Hotel near the station t...

Monroe H. “Pop” Bullock was born in December 1846 in the village of Worth high on the Tug Hill Plateau in Lewis County, NY. During the Civil War young Monroe ran away to join the Union army, but his father pursued him and brought him back to the family farm. In 1867 Monroe, now 21 years old, married a neighbor, Sarah L. Hitchcock. They had three children, Edwin, Arthur and Berdett, who they called Bert. Arthur died as an infant. By 1875 the family of four was living on Sarah Hitchcock’s family’s farm in Worth. In addition to work on his father-in-law’s farm, Monroe made some additional cash from the lumbering on the Tug Hill. One day when he was driving a fully loaded lumber wagon across a bridge, the load shifted dumping everything into the river. The horses were killed but a log jammed keeping most of the timber from hitting Monroe, who escaped serious injury. He also worked in a loggers’ hotel in the Worth area during the logging boom. One day a customer slid a loaded gun across a t...

Although the railroad arrived at Beaver River in late 1892, the area immediately around the train station remained mostly undeveloped for years. At first the only structures at the station were the depot and a few associated railroad buildings. A lumber camp and sawmill were built a short distance further along the rail line in 1893. The lumber camp belonged to Firman Ouderkirk, a successful lumberman from southern Herkimer County. Ouderkirk had secured a long-term contract from Dr. William Seward Webb who owned all the land around the upper Beaver River [see my post of April 27, 2021].   Dr. Webb believed that a settlement would someday grow up in the vicinity of the new Beaver River station. Therefore, in 1893 Webb carved out a square parcel of land for future development exactly six-tenths of a mile on each side, more or less centered on the railroad station. This parcel became known as the Beaver River Block.   In early 1896, Dr. Webb sold most of his land surrounding the ...

The era of the Beaver River guides’ camps came to an abrupt end in 1916. As I mentioned in earlier posts, during the first decade of the twentieth century almost all of the guides’ camps were built illegally on state Forest Preserve land. This had two distinct advantages: the guide did not have to bear the expense of purchasing land and the camps could be deep in the forest close to good fishing, hunting, hiking and boating.   The one big disadvantage was that occupation of state-owned land in the Adirondacks was unconstitutional. All the state land in the Adirondacks and Catskills became part of the Forest Preserve in 1885. A constitutional amendment in 1894 made clear that the Forest Preserve was to be kept “forever wild.” T here was no real question that erecting structures of any kind on Forest Preserve land violated this provision.   Beginning as early as 1902 the state publicly and repeatedly announced that it intended to evict all the camps occupying state land anywhere...

The Thompson family occupies a unique place in the history of the Beaver River country. They moved to the area in 1911. The fifth generation of the family still lives and works there. The place has been shaped into what It is today in large part by their collective efforts.   It will take more than a single blog post to do justice to their many contributions to the fabric of the place, so I will break their story up into pieces that I’ll discuss in context. This post is just about the early days of the first generation. To get an overview of the family's history filled with many personal anecdotes, I recommend Pat Thompson’s little illustrated book  Beaver River: Oasis in the Wilderness  [Beaver River Press, 2000]. It’s out of print now, but used copies can still be found.   In 1911 William “Bill” and Hattie Thompson bought an existing guide’s camp called Camp Lookout situated on Loon Lake, a pretty body of water on the south side of the Beaver River about ...