Ouderkirk's Sawmill

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 trains started running on his line it was acquired by the New York Central and renamed its Adirondack Division. For more on this railroad see my post of 4/27/21.

 

The southern section of this rail line had station stops mostly located at small towns, but after it reached Thendara / Old Forge it had to cross about 60 miles of essentially undeveloped wilderness before reaching the village of Faust / Tupper Lake. In this middle section the location of stations was decided by Dr. Webb.

 

Dr. Webb was personally familiar with this section. Webb was one of the first to realize that tourism would play a major role in the future of the Adirondacks. Therefore, he placed some new stations in locations where tourism was already established and increasing. Webb also had decided that he would establish Nehasane, his own private “great camp” in the center of this section. He purchased 40,000 acres surrounding beautiful Smith’s Lake (now Lake Lila) and built two private train stations on his preserve reserved for his family, his guests and his large staff [see my posts of 10/29/21 and 12/16/21].

 

Webb also had ambitious plans to harvest the vast tracts of untouched timber from this region. He used his wealth and power to acquire about 120,000 acres stretching from St. Lawrence County to the Fulton Chain of Lakes including Smith’s Lake and much of the upper Beaver River, Big Moose Lake, Twitchell Lake and Fourth Lake. To profitably harvest the timber, he entered into three logging contracts with well-known lumbermen: John Dix’s Moose River Lumber Company, the Moynehan Brothers, and Firman Ouderkirk’s Herkimer Lumber Company. His contract with Ouderkirk included a requirement that Ouderkirk build a sawmill to prepare high-quality timber for shipment by rail. Webb directed Ouderkirk to build his mill adjacent to the railroad at Beaver River Station outside the borders of Nehasane Preserve.

 

Webb directed that the Beaver River station be built in a totally undeveloped spot along the railroad ten miles south of Smith’s Lake. He had three reasons for choosing this location, none of which are apparent today. One important consideration was the need for a large level area near the railroad right-of-way that could accommodate Ouderkirk’s sawmill operation. The mill needed acres of land for log and lumber storage, rail sidings, sawmill buildings, stables, and housing for the mill operators. It also needed to be reasonably accessible to the areas where the timber was to be cut. The marshy meadow at the confluence of the west and south branches of the Beaver River was perfect. Accordingly, the new Beaver River station was initially intended primarily for the use of the lumbermen, as well as the mill workers and managers of Ouderkirk’s mill.

 

The maintenance needs of the railroad were the second reason for locating the station in the middle of nowhere. Track maintenance was provided by small groups of workers who could only manage about five miles of track. Beaver River Station was located about half way between the Big Moose Station and Webb’s private Keepawa Station where neighboring section gangs were located. In addition, the railroad needed a reliable source of water at reasonable distances apart for the steam locomotives. That water source had to be uphill from the tracks so a water tank next to the tracks could be gravity fed. A small “gravity dam” on the west branch of the Beaver River met this requirement well.

 

The third reason was Dr. Webb’s intention to close off public access to the 40,000 acres of his private Nehasane Park [see my post of 10/29/21]. When Webb chose Smith’s Lake for his private preserve, he knew that this had been one of the main destinations for Adirondack outdoors recreation since about 1850. By placing a station outside the boundaries of Nehasane he correctly surmised that sportsmen would be forced to get off the train there and thus restrict their activities to lower sections of the Beaver River and the Red Horse chain of lakes. 

 

And so, in 1891 or early 1892 a group of surveyors passed through laying out and marking the route the tracks would follow. They were soon followed by the axe men who cleared a wide path through the forest. Next work crews built the railbed, laid the ties and the rails. At pre-arranged station sites carpentry crews created a depot building, a water tank, tool and storage buildings, a small dormitory for the section gang and a modest house for the section foreman. Telegraph poles and lines soon ran along the right of way. At Beaver River, Ouderkirk’s employees arrived with train loads of sawmill equipment. Before long the pretty meadow at the confluence of the south and west branches of the Beaver River looked like this:

Ouderkirk's mill, collection of the Adirondack Experience

Ouderkirk’s sawmills were steam powered. Steam powered sawmills were used only where water power was not available. The steam boilers could be fired by either coal or wood. Coal delivered by rail was more expensive but more efficient than using wood. On the other hand, wood was essentially a free byproduct. The tall smokestacks indicate that Ouderkirk operated three separate mills, each used for different parts of the process. To learn more about how steam mills worked, check out this video of one of the same vintage brought back to life by a crew of dedicated volunteers in California https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0FUBhCizWE

 

Most of the logs from Ouderkirk’s mill were probably sawed into dimensional lumber that was used as a local building material in addition to being shipped elsewhere. A special feature of Ouderkirk’s Beaver River mill was its specialty processing of old growth red spruce into “fiddle butts,” lumber to be used to manufacture soundboards for violins and other musical instruments. This was extremely profitable for Ouderkirk. The Lowville Journal & Republican reported on 12/23/1897 that Ouderkirk had a contract with a factory in Dolgeville for one million board feet of spruce for up to $20 per thousand feet.

 

Logs were moved from the woods to Ouderkirk’s mill in the winter using large horse drawn sledges. The sledges were pulled across snow- and ice-covered tote roads built by the logging contractors. We know from several reliable map sources that as early as 1892 there was a tote road up the valley of the South Branch that connected a lumber camp with the mill. There is also good evidence that the road from the station to Grassy Point on the Beaver River also existed by 1893. There is some possibility that this road followed the track of a previously existing tote road no longer in use. Maps drawn in the first decade of the twentieth century also show a tote road on the north side of the river connecting Beaver River Station to the Moynehan Brother’s logging camps in the Oswegatchie River drainage. The draft horses employed by the loggers were transported into the area in the early winter and out again in the late winter by railroad.

 

Between 1893 and 1902 operations at Ouderkirk’s mill were the primary economic activity at Beaver River Station. I    n 1898 when Ouderkirk’s lumber contract with Webb expired, Ouderkirk bought all the land surrounding Beaver River Station that Webb had not sold to the state, known as the Beaver River Block, consisting of 182.4 acres. Ouderkirk had two main reasons for making this purchase. The primary one was so he could continue to operate his sawmill to process timber still being cut in the area, much of it coming from Webb’s Nehasane Preserve. The second reason was that he planned to take advantage of the ever-increasing tide of outdoor tourism brought in by the railroad. Dr. Webb loaned Ouderkirk the money for the purchase in return for a $10,000 mortgage on the land. $4000 was to pay for the land and $6000 was to fund construction of a hotel right next to the station.

 

As Webb had foreseen, the tourists who had previously vacationed at Smith’s Lake quickly started to look for new destinations in the Beaver River country. One group of wealthy businessmen bought Dunbar’s Hotel at Stillwater and converted it into the private Beaver River Club [see my post of 05/03/21]. Chet Elliott, who had worked at Dunbar’s, built a sportsman’s hotel and camp along the Beaver River not far from the station and started providing wagon transport from the station to his camp [see my post of 05/06/21]. A group of small business owners from western New York established the Rap-Shaw Club along the Red Horse trail [see my post of 05/16/21]. An enterprising local man named Stanton built a sportsman’s camp on the river about half-way between the station and Stillwater [see my post of 05/21/21]. 

 

Ouderkirk correctly believed that there was still an unmet demand for accommodations near the railroad station that offered a more refined experience for visitors. In 1898 he used $6000 of the money he borrowed from Dr. Webb to build a beautiful three-story Victorian hotel with a dining room, ball room and bar that could house up to one hundred guests. He named it the Norridgewock. He hired Bert B. Bullock, the well-liked son of a local guide, to manage the hotel. It was an immediate success [see my post of 06/08/21].

 

Norridgewock and Depot taken from the water tank, mill is just out of sight on upper right
Collection of the Goodwill Museum

Ouderkirk only owned the Norridgewock for three years. In 1902 he closed his sawmill at Beaver River Station. Webb had shifted his logging efforts to the old growth forest around Partlow Lake in the western sector of Nehasane. Rather than haul logs from there to Beaver River Station, in 1900 – 01 Webb built a spur railroad to Partlow Lake. Ouderkirk accordingly dismantled part of his sawmill and moved it to Partlow. Ouderkirk soon moved the rest of his mill to Moulin, a new railroad station located between Thendara and Carter. For the next few years his Herkimer Lumber Company conducted major logging operations around Moulin. In August of 1902, Ouderkirk’s sawmill at Partlow Lake burned to the ground. By the end of 1902 all the buildings and equipment of the Beaver River mill had been removed except for one house that had been used by mill employees. That house still exists. Its further history is given in my post on Frank Rice of 04/21/23.

 

To complete his withdrawal from Beaver River Station Ouderkirk sold the entire Beaver River Block and his grand hotel, the original Norridgewock, to Bert B. Bullock. The continuing story of the Norridgewock is told in my post of 6/8/21. The meadow where Ouderkirk’s mill once stood gradually recovered its native vegetation. Bert B. Bullock used part of the meadow as a pasture and planted a field of oats on another part. As spelled out in my post of 11/10/22, in the spring of 1925 the waters of the expanded Stillwater Reservoir turned that meadow into a lake.

 

Sources: 

Bill Gove, Logging Railroads of the Adirondacks (2006). Barbara McMartin, The Great Forest of the Adirondacks (1994). Noel Sherry, series of articles on the early history of Adirondack logging posted on New York Almanackbetween April 2022 and November 2023. See especially “Adirondack Logging History: Wood’s Lake and Beaver River Stations,” 12/23/22.