The Flooding of Beaver River Station

On February 11, 1925 the Black River Regulating District closed the gates at the greatly expanded Stillwater Dam. Spring runoff soon filled the reservoir behind the dam. By the summer of 1925 the water level was almost nineteen feet higher than it had ever been before. As the water rose, the tallest hills upstream of the dam became islands. Lower hills and ridges became shoals. Twenty-two twisty miles of the original Beaver River vanished underwater. The massive ten-mile-long Stillwater Reservoir, much as we know it today, had been born.

 

One of the consequences of the expansion of the reservoir was the flooding of about four thousand acres of marsh and forest, some of which was private property containing camps and other buildings. The private property was concentrated in two widely separated areas. One group of cottages, two hotels and a small farm were located at the far western end of the reservoir near the dam. The other camps and buildings were in the immediate vicinity of the railroad station about a mile back from the banks of the Beaver River near the east end of the reservoir. Both of these settled areas experienced devastating flooding that completely reshaped the landscape. This post will detail the impact on Beaver River Station. A future post will deal with Stillwater.

 

Prior to the expansion of the reservoir, the settlement of Beaver River was a very modest place. In 1920 it had 28 year-round residents, 6 of them children, living in ten households. Half of the adults worked for the railroad and the other half provided lodging and guiding services for visitors. The station agent, William Partridge, his wife Ethel and their four children lived upstairs in the depot. Nearby was a section house where Willie J. Kempton, foreman of the railroad workers, his wife Etta, who served as the settlement’s Postmaster, and their family lived. A group of four railroad laborers also had a cabin provided by the railroad. 

 

The tracks of the Adirondack Division of the New York Central Railroad divided the settlement into two unequal parts. The train station, the section house, and other railroad properties were all situated on the western side the tracks. The Norridgewock II hotel, which served as the community center and preferred lodgings for visitors, was also on the west side. Lou Beach, the manager of the Norridgewock, had a camp between the hotel and the station that was large enough to take in a few boarders [see my post of 12/16/21 on Beach]. Near the hotel along the road leading from the depot to Grassy Point and the river were the modest cabins of two outdoor guides, Louis Covill and Dave Conkey [see my post of 03/26/22 on Conkey]. A few seasonal camps were located nearby.

 

Across the tracks on the eastern side, not far from the station, sat Pop Bullock’s Hotel. Smaller than the Norridgewock II, it offered comfortable lodging and a community store. This building originally sat on the river bank at Grassy Point, but had been moved into the settlement in 1916 when the state evicted squatters from the Forest Preserve [see my post of 6/13/21 on Pop]. A short distance behind Bullock’s was beautiful Norridgewock Lake, really just a wide section of the West Branch of the Beaver River. A few seasonal cabins lined the northern shore of the lake near the depot. Four guide’s camps were situated near the lake a short distance outside of the main area of settlement. These camps were operated by Morrell McKennan, Frank Rice, Willis Petrie, and Don Eighmey. On a nearby hilltop was Darrow’s Sportsman’s Lodge and a few small cabins [see my post of 06/29/21 on Darrow’s]. The year-round home of Walter and Gladys Thompson was a short distance away on the southern shore of Norridgewock Lake [see my post of 10/19/22 on the Thompsons].

 

The remainder of the private real estate in the area was vacant. Bert B. Bullock bought all this land in 1902 as part of his purchase of the original 1899 Norridgewock Hotel. He did not put much effort into selling parcels. Most of it was still vacant when he decided to sell out and relocate [see my post of 06/02/22]. This vacant property was eventually purchased by two real estate developers. Forty-eight acres on the western side of the railroad tracks was purchased by Tupper Lake businessman, Albert Hosley and managed by his friend Peter Propp. The vast majority of the vacant property on the eastern side of the tracks, a total of 143.2 acres, was purchased by the Beaver River Campsite Company.

 

Both of the new owners had basically the same plan. In 1917 they each filed subdivision maps with Herkimer County showing projected roads giving access to scores of cottage lots. Almost all the lots were small, about 1/8^th of an acre. That’s small by today’s standards but large enough for a modest cabin with room left over. The lots on the east side were somewhat more attractive since they were situated near Norridgewock Lake. The subdivision plans filed by these developers projected that eventually hundreds of hunting, fishing, and vacation camps would fill their subdivisions. 

 

Prior to 1921 lots on both sides of the tracks sold fairly well. New camps were built, most of them on the eastern side. One factor that may have inhibited the sales of cottage lots somewhat was the possibility that the state would enlarge the dam at Stillwater. In fact, for years there had been rumors that the reservoir was going to be expanded, but no one was entirely sure when or if it would ever happen. The Black River Regulating District was formed in 1919 to decide the locations for new water regulating dams, but there was some significant opposition to any expansion of the dam at Stillwater. Influential parties filed complaints, and even lawsuits to stop an expansion at Stillwater including the New York Central Railroad, the wealthy members of the Beaver River Club and Fisher Forestry, the largest private landowner.

 

Despite all the opposition, in 1921 the Black River Regulating District announced that it had approved a construction plan to increase the capacity of the Stillwater Reservoir and raise the water level by nineteen feet. It produced a series of detailed maps that showed the projected new high-water line. The maps identified the owners of every property that would be wholly or partly flooded. The maps also included the approximate location of any buildings on the affected lots and estimated the area that would end up underwater on each lot.  

 

At Beaver River Station the biggest impact was on the eastern side of the tracks. The higher water would flood the course of South Branch of the Beaver River all the way back to and beyond the railroad tracks. This would require the railroad to substantially raise and reconfigure the rail bed. That new arm of the reservoir would also reach up the West Branch of the Beaver River increasing the size of Norridgewock Lake. Another part of that arm would flood across some of the property on the west side of the tracks, creating a marsh.

 

The owners of the Beaver River Campsite Company were devastated. The new reservoir would clearly flood almost all of their remaining vacant land on the east side of the tracks, not to mention many of the lots that they had already sold. The impact would be less severe on the west side where only a few dozen vacant lots would be flooded.

 

Shortly after the Black River Regulating District released the 1921 flooding map, E. S. Cullings, secretary of the regulating district board, began to visit the owners of all the affected land. He showed them the map and offered to buy any property that would be flooded based on the fair market value of the real estate only. The developers of the vacant land were quick to accept his offer. The Beaver River Campsite Company sold Cullings 104.30 acres that would be totally submerged. In a separate transaction they sold Cullings all of their remaining property that would not be flooded, 38.9 acres in all, and the company went out of business. Hosley sold Cullings 15.41 acres on the west side, filed a revised subdivision plan and kept selling lots.

 

Cullings also bought the individual properties on the east side that would be wholly or partly flooded. There were eleven lots that would be completely flooded with thirteen camps on them. Eight more lots that did not yet have camps built on them would also be totally flooded. Nine more properties with buildings on them would be partly flooded, but the buildings would be unharmed. Through sheer luck, Darrow’s Lodge and a few surrounding camps had been built on a high hill that would become an island leaving the buildings untouched.

 

An important feature of all these real estate purchases was that the regulating district purchased only the real estate, not the buildings. This policy posed no problems for those owning unimproved property, but for those who had already spent time and money building camps, the policy seemed unfair. Some, like Edwin Butcher, refused to sell unless the value of his recently constructed camp was added to the purchase price. The regulating district promptly took him to court and obtained his land through eminent domain.

 

It's easy to understand Ed Butcher’s feelings. His camp, like most others at Beaver River, was a modest, owner-built place. Building such a camp could easily consume years-worth of hard-earned savings. In order to preserve that investment, some the owners of camps that would be flooded out hired a crew to move their camp to a new lot on higher ground. It appears that some of the camps were moved intact. Those who could not afford to hire a house-moving crew dismantled their buildings and salvaged what they could for materials that could be used in a new camp. Undoubtedly, some camps were simply abandoned or burned down. 

The McKennan cottage being moved across the tracks

 

After the regulating district purchased the lots that would be flooded, it gave the owners of the thirteen camps on those lots until the end of 1924 to remove their buildings. The record of what actually happened is murky and incomplete. An article in the Watertown Daily Standard of June 13, 1925 reported that five of the camps were moved to higher ground intact; namely, those owned by Henry J. Green of Beaver River, Dan Pope of Edmeston, Douglas Hilliker of New York City, Charles Nagel of Buffalo and Morrell McKennan of Ilion. The article gives no indication of what happened to the other eight camps. Based on the 1925 and 1930 census reports it appears that only a few of the other owners of flooded camps, such as Ed Butcher and Don Eighmy, stayed in Beaver River after the flooding.

 

The flooding altered Beaver River Station forever. The most obvious effect was a massive reduction in the size of the settlement. When the Beaver River Block of private property was originally established in 1893 by Wm. Seward Webb, it was a square 6/10^th of a mile on a side amounting to 384 acres. Not all of this acreage was suitable for development as it included the land under Norridgewock Lake, the sand bank, wetlands and the railroad right of way. This left about two hundred acres open for development before the flooding. Approximately 125 acres was flooded in 1925, reducing the land available for development by more than half. Furthermore, development of the 39 acres of unflooded property on the east side of the tracks essentially stopped for fifteen years with the collapse of the Beaver River Campsite Company. Development of the east side only resumed in earnest after Clinton Thompson acquired the vacant property on the east side in 1940. Consequentially, the camps built between 1925 and 1940 were mostly on the west side of the tracks.

 

As the centennial of the creation of the Stillwater Reservoir approaches, wouldn’t it be interesting to identify which of the camps built before the 1925 flooding still exists at Beaver River Station? Of course, the recently renovated Norridgewock II still stands as does the Annex. I have reason to believe that there may be three or more existing camps that were built before the flooding. I’d love to hear from anyone with information about pre-1925 buildings still standing in Beaver River. You can contact me by email at edpitts303@gmail.com. 

 

I will do my best to make a list of all these vintage buildings and post the results on this blog. Stay tuned.

 

Sources: I derived the information about the flooded lands from Sheet 9 of the 1921 Stillwater Reservoir land map produced by the Black River Regulating District, reproduced above. 

 

Many thanks to my fellow Beaver River amateur historians Mary Kunzler-Larmann and Tim Becker for their help in researching this article.

 

For more details on the creation of the Stillwater Reservoir see my post of 8/11/21.