The Beaver River Inn

 

Harlow C. Young bought the Old Homestead from H. C. Churchill at the end of the 1910 tourist season. Young changed the name of the hotel to the Beaver River Inn but kept everything else the same. As seen above, the photographer Henry Beach did not have time to take a new postcard photo before the 1911 season started, so he simply scratched out the former name and replaced it. 

Harlow Young was born February 21, 1865. He grew up on the east side of the Black River in the Lewis County Town of Watson on the edge of the Beaver River wilderness. He married a neighbor, Minnie J. Schmidlin, on January 6, 1892. At the time of their wedding Harlow was almost twenty-seven years old; his bride Minnie was born May 19, 1872, so she was nineteen on their wedding day. 

 

Harlow and Minnie settled in Crystaldale, a small community along the Number Four Road. When the railroad started carrying passengers to Beaver River Station later in 1892, Harlow decided to supplement his income by working as an outdoor guide. By 1897 he had joined forces with his cousin Jimmy Wilder to construct a semi-permanent open camp at Witchhopple Lake along the Red Horse Trail that they used to shelter visiting sportsmen.

 

Guiding part-time and farming full-time was a hard and unpredictable way to earn a living. By 1900 Harlow Young had acquired a job as a brakeman on the railroad. For a couple of years, he and Minnie lived in Utica so he could be near the New York Central main line. It was a smart move because by 1902 Harlow had saved enough money to build a house back in Crystaldale and open the downstairs as a general store. As the only storekeeper he was also appointed Crystaldale postmaster. In 1906 Harlow Young was hired as the manager of the Beaver River Club. He and Minnie moved to the Beaver River Clubhouse for the tourist season that ran from May to October.

 

The Beaver River Club was already well-established when Harlow became the club manager. The club had thirty-five wealthy members. Waterfront lots were selling well. Twenty-six cottage lots had already been sold and fifteen cottages built. The board of directors was so optimistic that the club would continue to grow that they had a new survey done that increased the number of cottage lots from fifty-two to seventy-two. 

 

The club initially flourished under Harlow’s management until April 22, 1908 when a fire in the kitchen got out of control and the clubhouse, built in 1902, burned to the ground. This was a devastating loss since all club members took their meals in the clubhouse and the tourist season was about to begin. It was obvious that the clubhouse needed to be replaced as soon as possible. Although he was the manager at the time, Harlow Young was not blamed for the fire. 

 

The 1908 and 1909 tourist seasons were busy ones for Harlow Young. In addition to his ordinary duties as club manager, he also had to arrange for an alternate dining room and supervise the construction of the new clubhouse. This was too much work for one person, so the club hired Carl McCormick, another Beaver River guide, as Harlow’s assistant. McCormick was also an experienced carpenter whose skills came in handy. 

 

Construction of the new clubhouse was their top priority. In 1908 the club was at its peak of popularity. The club’s board of directors decided that the new clubhouse should be larger and more elegant than the one that burned. Consequently, the new clubhouse ended up costing the club twice what the fire insurance paid. To make up the difference they took out a mortgage on the new building and all the land still owned by the club. The new clubhouse was ready to welcome guests by the start of the 1910 season.

 

The loss of revenue from reduced operations in 1908 and 1909 and a wide-spread economic downturn in 1910 reduced the number of guests using the club in 1910. No new lots were sold. In an effort to raise much needed cash, the club had Harlow Young distribute an advertising brochure to try to attract paying guests from the general public. By the end of the 1910 season, the club was falling behind on their mortgage payments.

 

Harlow rightly surmised that the Beaver River Club was headed for serious financial trouble. Right next door the Old Homestead was attracting distinguished guests and making money. It was family-run with low overhead. The rates there were significantly lower than those the directors of the Beaver River Club needed to charge to service their debt. On October 20, 1910 Harlow resigned as manager of the Beaver River Club, bought the Old Homestead and renamed it the Beaver River Inn.

 

Harlow Young made few changes to the hotel building or the operations. Review of newspaper reports and the surviving guest registers in the Goodsell Museum in Old Forge show that during the years he and Minnie operated the hotel they maintained a steady clientele. For example, the Lowville Journal and Republican reported on August 21, 1913, that twenty guests were staying at the Beaver River Inn. Most guests stayed a week or more. The Beaver River Inn appears to have remained profitable for the next twelve years.

 

Photographs of the Beaver River Inn don’t reveal its location very well because at the time the water level of the Beaver River Flow was nineteen feet lower than it is now. Much of the land seen in the old photos, including the land where the Beaver River Inn was located, is now under water. The detail from the 1916 Hopkins map below clarifies the matter somewhat. The Beaver River Inn was located on the crest of a hill that was then part of the mainland. That spot is now a shallow spot in the reservoir a short distance east of the current landing. The hotel looked out on the water at the place where Alder Creek entered the larger Beaver River Flow. Docks were located in a little sheltered bay. The road from Number Four passed right by the hotel, went down the steep east side of the hill, crossed Alder Creek on a bridge that connected to the property where Churchill had a cottage and then on to the Beaver River Club. Amazingly, those old bridge abutments still exist in decent condition under water. They emerged in 2001 when the reservoir was drawn down to make repairs to the dam.

The photo below shows the road bridge over Alder Creek and part of the hotel’s docks. The road that passed by the hotel was a surviving segment of the 1848 Carthage-to-Lake Champlain Road. That historic road is described in detail in my post of 02/15/21 at https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-carthage-to-lake-champlain-road.html The current road between Number Four and Stillwater is the direct descendent of that old road. As seen in the 1916 map, the road ended at the Beaver River Club after the bridge over Twitchell Creek was destroyed by the ice. On the other side of Twitchell Creek the old road, now known as the Six-Mile Road, still exists as far as the Grassy Point Road. A trail following the course of the old road continues on east a short way, passing by the Colvin Rock before disappearing underwater.

As with most hotels of the time, Harlow and Minnie did most of the work themselves. Minnie probably did the accounting, managed guest reservations, cleaned rooms, did laundry, managed the kitchen and dining room, hired and managed extra help, and tended the garden. Harlow did maintenance on the hotel and grounds, transported guests and their luggage from and to the train station, managed and repaired boats, hired guides for guests, did some guiding himself, and probably told some tall tales around the fire in the evening. When a job required two men, they called for help from their old friend Carl McCormick. 

In the nineteen-teens when Harlow learned of the state’s plan to substantially expand the reservoir, he made plans to adapt. First, he bought a large plot of adjacent land on higher ground at Stillwater. He probably reasoned that this land could be used as a future location for the hotel. He and Minnie also purchased a house on Sharp Street in Lowville so that they would have a place to live in town. In 1921, when the Black River Regulating District released detailed maps showing the projected new high-water line, the Youngs knew for certain that the site of the Beaver River Inn would soon be flooded. On August 30, 1923, they sold the land to the State of New York. They continued to operate their hotel until November 1924, and then closed the doors for good.

 

Harlow and Minnie Young did not intend to retire from the hotel business just yet. The state had purchased their land, but not their buildings. As soon as the hotel closed, they completely dismantled it and salvaged what they could. Fixtures like windows, doors, stairs, finished lumber, fittings, plumbing and so on were stripped from the hotel and moved to the lot the Youngs had purchased nearby. After removing all the valuable building materials and furniture, they burned everything that remained.

 

They moved all the salvaged material to the lot they owned on higher ground in Stillwater. A short distance back from the projected new shoreline they reconstructed their hotel. The new hotel was “somewhat smaller but more pretentious” than the original. It had a two-story section on the side facing the water with rooms upstairs. The entrance was through a story and a half building attached behind the main building. A wrap around porch provided a place to relax overlooking the reservoir and hills. The reincarnated Beaver River Inn opened for business for the 1925 summer season. The next year they used some of the leftover salvaged material when they built themselves a new camp high on a hill behind the hotel. Both these buildings still survive, although, as will be discussed in my next post, the hotel has since been renamed the Stillwater Hotel and extensively remodeled.

During the next few years, as the Stillwater Reservoir gradually gained a reputation as a fine place for boating and fishing, their established clientele kept the Youngs busy and prosperous. At the end of the 1927 season, they decided to retire. Minnie was 55, Harlow 62. They sold the hotel to Douglas J. Purcell and moved permanently to their house in Lowville. They enjoyed a long retirement. Minnie Schmidlin Young died on September 19, 1943. Harlow Young died soon after on October 5, 1943. They are buried in the Beaches Bridge Cemetery near the Black River.

Sources: Interviews with Dennis Buckley and review of his extensive archive and real photo postcard collection. Harlow Young was his great-great uncle. Dennis and his wife Judy now own Harlow Young’s camp at Stillwater. An earlier version of this article with footnotes appears in Chapter 13 of my book Beaver River Country, Syracuse University Press, 2022.