The Norridgewock Saloon

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.

 

Each hotel had a barn for their animals and their wagons. In 1909 Burt Bullock, owner of the Norridgewock Hotel, built a large stable just across the Grassy Point Road from the hotel. It was a two-story concrete block rectangle running perpendicular to the road, butting up against the side of a hill. On one side of the building, you can still see where there used to be barn doors. The stable was big enough to house Burt and Pop Bullock’s horses and cows, shelter their wagons, with room left over for any horses that a visitor or neighbor might own.

 

Up a narrow flight of stairs from the stable there were a number of small bedrooms on the second floor as well as an inside bathroom. It appears that Bullock rented these rooms at a very modest rate to the staff of the Norridgewock as well as to lumberjacks and guides who worked in the woods nearby. 

 

Bullock apparently overestimated how much of the building would be needed for use as a stable. Ever the sharp businessman, Bullock decided that part of the stable could generate some income if it was converted into a saloon for the local population. Hotel guests had their own bar, but locals tended not to patronize it because it was too fancy.  

 

The community of Beaver River Station had a considerable resident population in the first two decades of the twentieth century. There were men who worked on the railroad section gang, woodsmen who worked as guides and loggers, women who worked in the hotels, and men who worked in the nearby lumber camps. According to census reports, the resident population between 1900 and 1920 hovered between 26 and 40 adults. 

 

In May 1912, Bert Bullock started to convert the part of the hotel stable nearest the road into a saloon. The construction of the saloon was carefully documented in the daily journal of Etta Kempton, wife of the foreman of the railroad section gang. A new entrance porch was built on the side facing the road and a good-sized bar room replaced the horse stalls inside. Burt brought some tables and chairs over from the hotel as well as a piano to provide homegrown entertainment. At the grand opening of the saloon on June 11, 1912 Bert Bullock treated patrons to free beer and cigars.

By the time the saloon opened Bert Bullock and his family had moved to Utica where Bert got a job as a hotel manager. Bert’s father, Pop Bullock, took over management of the Norridgewock in addition to running his own small hotel at Grassy Point. Things appeared to go pretty much as usual until the afternoon of May 8, 1914, when a fierce fire burned the original Norridgewock Hotel to the ground. Cause of the fire was never discovered. The fire insurance settlement allowed Bert to pay off the mortgage. More details concerning the original Norridgewock and the fire can be found in my post of 06/08/21. https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-original-norridgewock-hotel-and.html

 

The saloon remained open after the old hotel burned down, but it was obvious that Bert Bullock had had enough of Beaver River. He made no secret of the fact that he did not intend to rebuild the hotel and was looking to sell all his Beaver River real estate. By the end of that summer, he had leased the saloon to Peter Propp, a prosperous Tupper Lake businessman who was Bert’s beer distributor. By year’s end Propp had purchased the saloon and all of Bullock’s real estate on the northwest side of the railroad tracks.

 

It was Peter Propp who decided that Beaver River needed a new hotel to replace the original Norridgewock. He proceeded to convert the saloon / stable into a proper hotel by adding rooms upstairs and attaching a new two-story hotel building perched on the hill to the back of the concrete block building. Construction of this new hotel, also dubbed the Norridgewock, began on April 6, 1915. Construction was complete on August 5, 1915. For more on Propp’s plans to develop the property see my post of 07/13/22. https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2022/07/

 

At some point at the beginning of the 1920s Propp sold the hotel and saloon to Walter and Clinton Thompson. The timing of the Thompson’s purchase is interesting. One factor must have been the institution of prohibition on the sale of alcoholic beverages on Jan. 17, 1920. The new law had a profound effect on Peter Propp’s bottling business. Congress Beer, one of his most popular products, was no longer available. This must have reduced his cash flow significantly, prompting him to sell his Beaver River investment. Another important factor was the well-known fact that the state was going to expand the Stillwater reservoir. This would bring scores of construction workers and lumberjacks to the area. These workers would be housed in camps, but their supervisors would be looking for lodging. The Thompsons already owned a small log sportsman’s hotel across the pond from the railroad depot called the Evergreen but it was obvious that many more rooms would be needed. This fact made their purchase of the Norridgewock a good investment in the near term.

 

The Thompson brothers knew better than anyone that prohibition would be hard to enforce in a remote location like Beaver River. There is no evidence that they sold illegal booze in the saloon, or that they engaged in bootlegging. It’s also true that the Norridgewock saloon remained open and busy during prohibition. There is plenty of evidence that patrons drank beer and whisky there, even though the Thompson’s didn’t sell it openly. There was no problem with availability. Enterprising visitors arriving on southbound trains smuggled whisky in from Canada in their luggage. In his book Big Moose Station William Marleau notes that Charlie Ellerby, who lived in Big Moose, brewed his own beer and hired local boys to bottle it. Marleau also claims that the Beaver River forest ranger Dave Conkey operated a still hidden somewhere in the forest.

 

New York State troopers had the job of trying to maintain order in the boom town that Beaver River became between 1921 and 1924. Three state troopers were stationed in Beaver River full-time during those years. The troopers apparently didn’t spend much of their time enforcing prohibition. They were busy just trying to keep order. During the three years the reservoir was under construction there were plenty of fights but only one recorded shooting and one riot. There were too few troopers to do much about the riot between two logging camps. They did stop, arrest and ultimately convict John Trimble, the fellow who tried to shoot up the town.

The shooting incident occurred in October 1923. One night Trimble, who everyone called Tennessee, got drunk and started a fist fight in the Norridgewock saloon. After Walter Thompson threw him out, he stumbled back to his room and got his revolver. He came back and started wildly firing at the hotel but only hit the outside wall. One shot barely missed William Brown who was next door stacking wood outside Maude Lang’s boarding house. Luckily no one got hurt. Troopers quickly arrested Trimble and took him to the jail in Herkimer. After he served his sentence, he disappeared.

 

Following this incident, the troopers started searching the luggage of arriving passengers and effectively shut off that supply of liquor. Shortly thereafter plainclothes federal agents arrested Harry Smith and Charley Ellerby for selling illegal alcohol. Both men ran what they called “lunchrooms,” really just lightly disguised saloons. They were convicted and paid fines. When Harry Smith reopened his lunchroom, he was arrested again. He was not seen in Beaver River after that. The Thompsons must have been very careful men. They managed to keep their business in operation throughout this entire period and avoid problems with the law.

 

Work on the reservoir gradually wound down in the late summer and fall of 1924. By the beginning of 1925 only 35 adult residents remained in Beaver River. For a few months a crew of 50 men were in the area working to relocate the railroad bed across a newly flooded arm of the reservoir at the place now known as the big culvert. Things got quiet in town after they finished their work and left for home. As a result, business slowed down considerably at the Norridgewock saloon.

 

There are few records of how well the saloon did financially after that. By 1930 the resident adult population had dropped to 27. Most worked for the railroad or in the tourist trade. The end of prohibition in 1933 had little effect on business at the Norridgewock. Regular visitors to Beaver River kept coming, but as time passed fewer outdoor enthusiasts patronized the hotel. Use of the passenger train declined as automobile tourism increased. Since Beaver River had no road connecting it to the highway network, the growth of tourism in other parts of the Adirondacks mostly passed it by.

In the fall of 1939 Walter Thompson sold his share of the Beaver River properties to his brother Clinton. Clint and his wife Jenny kept operating the Norridgewock Hotel with the help of their three children. The saloon continued to serve as the community commons, especially after the post office was relocated there, with its own side entrance. The business operated successfully through the 1940s and 50s up until 1964. That was the year that passenger trains stopped running on the Adirondack Division line. It was also the year that Clinton Thompson died.

 

The Norridgewock closed and was put up for sale. It sat vacant for many years. Subsequent owners struggled to return it to profitability. In 2017 the old hotel was purchased by the current members of the Thompson family. The entire place has been renovated and now looks very much as it did in its heydays. It has been renamed “The Evergreen” as a tribute to the Thompson’s first Beaver River hotel and is available for rent by groups.

 

Visiting the old saloon today effectively evokes its storied past. It’s quiet now, but if you pay attention, you can faintly hear carousing, laughter, homegrown music, square dances, and friends just sitting together to gossip and catch up on each other’s lives. It’s a rare treat for the historian in each of us. 

 

Sources: W. B. Donnelly, A Short History of Beaver River

Pat Thompson, Beaver River: Oasis in the Wilderness

William R. Marleau, Big Moose Station: A Story From 1893 to 1983

Peg Masters in Hopson & Perkins, eds. Wicked Herkimer County

Photo credits:  interior by Nolan Cool, exteriors by Meredith Leonard