Annals of the Beaver River

1923 Snowmobile, collection of the Volo Museum, volocars.com These days, winter business at the Norridgewock Lodge in Beaver River Station is fueled by snowmobile tourism. When the Stillwater Reservoir freezes solid or snow buries the railroad tracks, snowmobilers arrive daily by the dozens. In her memoir,   Beaver River: Oasis in the Wilderness   (2000), Pat Thompson, mother of the current owners of the Norridgewock, vividly recalls that the first snowmobile roared into Beaver River during the winter of 1959. It didn’t take the Thompson family very long to embrace snowmobiling. Business at the hotel picked up so much that the Thompsons were able to give up the animal trapping that previously supported them during the winter [ see   Thompson, pp. 125 – 129].     While modern recreational snowmobiling at Beaver River started in 1959, the first snowmobile actually arrived there much earlier. That snowmobile was most decidedly not a recreational vehicle. It was a m...

Photo from the collection of Tim Mayers The photo above has intrigued me for some time. The names of the people are written on the back of the postcard in fancy, hard-to-read script. A caption appears at the bottom that reads, “These are the boys from hear [sic] and the Guide house.” I have added the names to the photograph based on my best guess. Mr. and Mrs. Goons probably ran a boarding house that catered to guides. Because I recognize a few of the names, I know the photo was taken in Beaver River Station, but I have never heard of a building called the guide house. The card is not dated and because it was never mailed, it has no postmark.   Carl McCormick, standing on the far right, sports a distinctive walrus mustache. He shows up in a few other photos taken between 1900 and about 1920 in various locations along the upper Beaver River. I decided to try to find out more about him from old newspapers and the census.    Carl Charles McCormick was born on March 7, 1...