Roads in the Beaver River Country

-

Detail from Eddy map in 1876 Wallace Guide to the Adirondacks

Although there is no road connection to the settlement of Beaver River today, quite a few roads once existed in its vicinity. Most were used for a decade or less and can no longer be located except on old maps. These early “roads” were no more than a wide path cleared through the forest that could be used by a slow-moving horse and wagon.

As for historic public roads, the successors of two of the oldest roads are still in regular use today: the Number Four Road from the Black River to the settlement of Number Four and the Stillwater Road from there to the reservoir. Another segment of the Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road, now called the Six-Mile Road, connects to the one mile long Grassy Point Road leading into downtown Beaver River. These two public dirt roads can only be reached by crossing the reservoir by boat, barge or snowmobile.

 

What follows is a list of all the known roads in the Beaver River area along with their approximate dates of creation.

 

1815: Albany Road completed from Fish House near present Speculator to the St. Lawrence Turnpike ten miles south of Russell. It crossed the Beaver River at Albany (Nehasane) Lake on log bridge. Rarely used in the Beaver River valley. Albany Lake bridge was soon impassable.

 

1822: Number Four Road cut from east side of the Black River near Lowville to new hamlet of Number Four on the Beaver River. Current road follows approximately same route.

 

1841 – 1842: Nelson Beach and others surveyed the route of a proposed road from Carthage to Crown Point on Lake Champlain. Followed existing trails or roads when possible.

 

1844 – 1850: Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road cut out in sections. Section from Number Four to Stillwater is precursor to current road. Log bridge over Twitchell Creek built 1845. The so-called Six Mile Road from the reservoir to near Beaver River is a surviving segment of this road.

 

1850s?: Hunter’s trail existed from near Loon Lake to Twitchell Lake via Woods Lake 

 

1870s?: Hunter’s trail / tote road existed from Sand Spring on South Branch of the Beaver River to Twitchell Lake. In 1923 a proposal was made to reestablish this road, but it failed.

 

1885 – 1887: First Stillwater dam built, 9.5 feet high, used for log driving, bridge over Twitchell Creek destroyed. Muncy used a log ferry to reach his hotel at Little Rapids with his wagon.

 

1890?: Logging tote road from Lonis logging camp near Twitchell Lake to the south side of Beaver River at Grassy Point. Precursor of current Grassy Point Road.

 

1892?: Logging tote road from north side of Beaver River across from Grassy Point roughly following Totten-Crossfield line to Monahan logging camp in the Oswagachie valley.

 

1892: Webb closed off the section of Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road from Sand Spring to Little Rapids and arranged to have it declared abandoned.

 

1893: Railroad starts to run. Second Stillwater dam increased water level by five feet. Beaver River Club got state funds to rebuild Twitchell Creek road bridge to reach current Six Mile Road to railroad station. Possible to reach Beaver River Station from Lowville by road.

 

1895: The sale of 75,000 acres around the Beaver River by Wm. Seward Webb to the state included the so-called “Webb Covenant” that provided in part that existing roads would remain open to the public. This covered the Six Mile and Grassy Point Roads.

 

1897: Road from Eagle Bay to Big Moose Lake built by Webb, precursor of the current road.

 

1902: First concrete dam at current location at Stillwater, water level not increased.

 

1906: Road constructed from Big Moose Station to Twitchell Lake by D. B. Sperry following route of earlier logging tote road. Precursor of current road.


1907?: New road bridge built over Twitchell Creek connecting Beaver River Club at Stillwater with road to railroad station. Could be used by automobiles.

 

1912 – 1914: Network of logging tote roads built by International Paper connecting their 12 logging camps in the vicinity of Woods Lake to Big Moose Station.

 

1914: Last mention of an automobile using the Twitchell Creek road bridge when B.B. Bullock drove to Beaver River Station from Utica via Lowville in July 1914. 

 

1914 - 15: Twitchell Creek road bridge destroyed by ice during winter. Never rebuilt. A bill passed by the state legislature to repair the bridge was vetoed by the governor in 1915.

 

1922: A lawsuit by Fisher Forestry to block new Stillwater dam was settled when NYS agreed to preserve access to Fisher’s lands by road and ferry service. Resulted in creation of bridge across the Beaver River just below the dam. The state never established the promised ferry service.

 

1925: Second (current) concrete dam at Stillwater, water level increased by 19 feet. 

 

1926 – 1927: International Paper granted Town of Webb permission to convert their tote road from Big Moose Station to Stillwater to a public road. Survey completed but road not built. Town of Webb improved the road from Stillwater to county line near Number Four.

 

1956: The current gravel road from Big Moose Station to Stillwater constructed.


Nelson Beach postcard map, ca. 1910


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Norridgewock Saloon

-
Image
The photo above shows me talking to   members of Adirondack Architectural Heritage inside what was once the Norridgewock Hotel saloon. That room played an important part in social life at Beaver River for more than 50 years from 1912 until 1964. Its story deserves to be remembered.   The saloon started out as a rather grand, multipurpose stable. These days livestock is pretty rare in Beaver River, but back in the early decades of the twentieth century  there was a considerable herd in and around the hamlet. There were three small sportsman’s hotels, Elliott’s, Darrow’s and Pop Bullock’s, each of which had at least one team of horses and a cow or two. The Norridgewock Hotel needed a small herd of cows to furnish guests with fresh milk.  Some of the teamsters from nearby lumber camps would occasionally come to town with their horses. In addition to these animals there were a considerable number of wagons and buckboards that needed protection from the weather. ...
Read more

Ouderkirk's Sawmill

-
Image
Ouderkirk's Mill, c1893, Goodsell Museum collection Where the hamlet of Beaver River Station now stands, there once was a beaver pond behind an esker fed by a brook that plunged in from the west. Below the outlet of this pond the brook met its sister from the south and together they flowed into the mother stream that we now call the Beaver River. On the south branch close to where the two streams merged there was a spring hole with a sandy bottom filled with native brook trout. The area around the confluence of the two streams was a large marshy meadow filled with native grasses and shrubs. In 1891 and 1892 a trans-Adirondack railroad was built through this area. It originated at a junction with the New York Central Railroad main line in the Mohawk Valley and reached north to Malone near the Canadian border, thus it was originally named the Mohawk to Malone Railroad, or the M&M for short. The railroad was designed and financed by Dr. William Seward Webb. Only a year after train...
Read more

Guides' Camps along the Red Horse Trail

-
Image
  J. Wilder's open camp at Crooked Lake 1896 The Iroquois established the Red Horse Trail centuries ago for use in their travels between their southern territories and the St. Lawrence River valley. It is one of the oldest footpaths in the Adirondacks. The southern part of this trail still exists. It begins on the north side of the Beaver River, now the Stillwater Reservoir. It follows the Red Horse Creek, connecting Big Burnt Lake, Trout Pond, Salmon Lake, Witchhopple Lake, Clear Lake and Crooked Lake. It formerly continued on northeast to the High Falls of the Oswagachie River, but this segment was buried by the big blowdown of 1995 and has not been reopened. I posted an article on this blog back on 03/01/21 giving the basic history of the trail.   https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-red-horse-trail.html   Detail from H. Beach postcard map, about 1910   In the early 1870s sporting tourists and their guides began to use the old trail. The first publi...
Read more