The original Norridgewock Hotel and the Norridgewock II

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 upper Beaver River to New York State, except for the Beaver River Block and 40,000 acres at his private Nehasane Park. One of the stipulations of the sale was that the existing lumber contracts could continue until their expiration dates. In 1899, Ouderkirk purchased the entire Beaver River Block in order to protect his on-going lumber business.

 

Ouderkirk was keenly aware that significant numbers of outdoors tourists arrived at Beaver River every day on the train. They usually quickly dispersed to the many guides’ camps located on state Forest Preserve lands or to the Beaver River Club [see my five posts on this subject from May 2021]. Ouderkirk correctly surmised that if there were a first-class hotel located near the train station that business would be good. Accordingly, in 1899 he financed the construction of just such a hotel on the west side of the railroad tracks. A paved sidewalk led straight from the station to the hotel. It was a grand three-story Victorian edifice supposedly with room for up to one hundred guests.

Ouderkirk named his hotel the Norridgewock. 

Norridgewock is the anglicized version of the Abenaki Indian word Naⁿraⁿtswak. It was originally the name of a band of Abenaki Indians that inhabited the Kennebec River Valley in Maine. The literal translation of the name is “people of the still water between rapids.” Their village was located on the banks of the Kennebec River near the present-day town of Norridgewock, Maine. The Naⁿraⁿtswak tribe no longer exists. Beginning in 1724 their village was subject to successive attacks by English colonists. By 1754 most surviving Norridgewock Indians had fled to Quebec where they found refuge in the Abenaki village of Odanak along the St. Francis River.

I believe there is good evidence that when Ouderkirk was trying to think of a name for his hotel he remembered that a fellow lumberman named Ike Kenwell had once told him that the two most famous Indian guides in the central Adirondacks, Elijah Benedict and Mitchel Sabattis, were both Norridgewock Indians. 

Use of that tribal name may have been Ouderkirk’s way of paying tribute to those two famous central Adirondack guides. It’s also possible that he thought the sportsmen visiting Beaver River would be attracted by the authentic sound of the name. I like thinking that the continued use of the name Norridgewock commemorates in its own obscure way a lost Abenaki tribe and two great old-time guides who earned the right to be remembered.

Ouderkirk had no intention of running his new hotel himself. Instead, he hired Berdett “Bert” B. Bullock, son of Monroe “Pop” Bullock, to be his hotel manager. Bert proved to be very good at the job and the hotel flourished. In 1902, with his lumber business winding down, Ouderkirk sold the entire Beaver River Block, including the Norridgewock, to Bert Bullock. By 1907 Bullock had hired Louis Beach, a skilled guide and experienced carpenter, as his assistant.

By 1909 the hotel was doing well enough that Bullock was able to build a large concrete block stable across the Grassy Point Road from the hotel. He also added piped-in water and hired a small orchestra to entertain guests. Bert himself played cornet. As proof of his pride in ownership, Bullock commissioned a fancy nickel-plated cash register emblazoned with his name. It still sits behind the bar at the present Norridgewock.

Louis Beach eventually came to share hotel management duties with Bert Bullock. Business continued to be strong. Then on May 8, 1914, a fierce fire burned the original Norridgewock Hotel to the ground. Bert Bullock and his family had apparently had enough of backwoods living and decided not to rebuild. The family moved to Thendara where Bert opened a garage and taxi service.

For about the next two years there was no Norridgewock Hotel. On March 29, 1915 Bert Bullock sold the section of the Beaver River Block on west side of railroad tracks where the hotel had been to Albert S. Hosley of Tupper Lake. He sold the property on the east side of tracks to the Beaver River Camp Site Co. Both new owners filed subdivision maps with hopes of selling lots for camps and cottages. 

Then, in 1916, the state closed and evicted the guides’ camps that had previously accommodated many of the visiting sporting tourists [see my post of June 5, 2021]. Suddenly, there was a strong demand for more lodging. A man named Peter Propp soon bought some of the former hotel property on the west side of the tracks from Hosley. Instead of building a completely new hotel, the existing large stable built by Bullock in 1909 was converted into lodgings by adding six bedrooms on the second floor and by attaching a new two-story building to the rear, with a dining room and parlor on the first floor and five bedrooms on the second.

Louis Beach appears to have been closely involved in the construction of the new accommodations. When the hotel was complete, he became its proprietor by either leasing or buying it from Propp. Beach’s 1918 draft card lists him as a hotel proprietor as does his 1918 state liquor license. Probably hoping to recapture the business of former patrons, Beach named the new, smaller hotel the Norridgewock. To avoid any possible confusion, I will refer to it as the Norridgewock II.

It’s unclear to me exactly when the new hotel first opened for business. It had to have been in operation by the fall of 1917 because the photograph below showing a group of hunters by the completed Norridgewock II is labeled with that date. Lou Beach’s brother, the famous photographer Henry M. Beach, is first from the left. Henry Beach’s son Harry stands at the far right.

Lou Beach successfully operated the Norridgewock II until 1920, when it was purchased by Clinton and Walter Thompson, the grown sons of Bill and Hattie Thompson [see my post of June 2, 2021]. Lou Beach moved to Old Forge, where he worked as a carpenter.

 

The Thompson family successfully operated Norridgewock II for the next forty-four years until 1964 when the current Norridgewock was built on the opposite side of the tracks. I will devote a future post or two to their long tenure. In a complicated turn of events, the current generation of the Thompson family reacquired the historic Norridgewock II building in 2017. The Norridgewock II has now been renovated to be used for group functions.

The historic photos in this post are from the postcard collections of Frank Carey and Tim Mayers. The recent photo is by Meredith Leonard.