The Twitchell Creek Bridge

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The ruined Twitchell Creek bridge in 1915

On June 1, 1841 Nelson Beach and his surveying team set out from the frontier village of Number Four following an old hunter’s trail leading east. They were just beginning a monumental survey for a new road that would cross the central Adirondacks. The plan was to find a route linking existing trails and roads to facilitate settlement in the interior of the great north woods. The road was to connect Carthage on the Black River in the west with Crown Point on Lake Champlain in the east. This road would come to be known as the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road.


One part of the surveying crew was already working its way east from Carthage along the Beaver River valley toward Number Four. Beach’s part of the surveying crew travelled to Number Four on an existing road from Lowville to survey the next section of the proposed road. The hunter’s trail they followed on the first day of their survey was a short distance back from the west side of the Beaver River. It ran through deep forest along the tops of a series of long, winding hills to avoid a part of the river with nineteen rapids and falls. After eleven miles, the trail reached a place above the falls called the Stillwater. They made camp where the trail ended on a high bank of Twitchell Creek close to where it flowed into the Beaver River.

 

Over the next few days, while some of Beach’s team surveyed the trail from Number Four, Beach and his guides searched for an easy way further east that would not involve crossing Twitchell Creek at Stillwater. First, they explored the north bank of the river following a trail made by the hermit David Smith with Smith as their guide. That trail proved too steep and rocky for a road. They also ascended Twitchell Creek some distance looking for a better crossing with no luck. By June 7 Beach had concluded that there was no other alternative. A bridge would have to be built at Stillwater to span the deep, wide Twitchell Creek.

 

Between 1844 and 1850 the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road was cut out in sections following the route that Beach surveyed. The section from Number Four to Stillwater was completed about 1845. That same year a state road crew built a log bridge over Twitchell Creek. The bridge was constructed on site from materials readily available. Their only building equipment was horses, axes, shovels and their strong backs. Bridge pilings, supported in sturdy cribs made of logs and filled with rocks, were set in place first. Long logs were laid across the pilings to support the bridge deck. The deck was probably of shorter logs laid crosswise and flattened on top. The crew also built a small shanty near the site to serve as their camp while they worked on the bridge.

 

The bridge was somewhat precarious from the start. In the summer of 1850 when the Constable family reached Twitchell Creek on their way to camp at Raquette Lake, they got out of their carriage and watched as their horses were slowly led across the bridge. The bridge apparently remained fairly serviceable for the next 35 years. It’s probable that periodic bridge repairs were performed by Stillwater hotel keepers Wardwell and then Dunbar without state financing. Records kept by the Colvin surveying parties working in the area during the 1870s show they were able to use the bridge. Andrew Muncy who had a sportsmen’s hotel after 1877 further up the road at Little Rapids also regularly crossed the bridge with his wagon and team bringing in supplies from Lowville.

 

In 1887 the state finished building the first Stillwater dam a short distance downstream from where Twitchell Creek flowed into the Beaver River. The first dam stood 9.5 feet high, and was usable for log driving. The higher water behind the dam widened Twitchell Creek considerably and destroyed the old road bridge. Because he needed to use the road east of the creek, Muncy built a floating bridge across the water to a new island in the middle, and used a homemade ferry to cross the wider part of the creek. Muncy later testified that he remembered the crossing was 35 rods wide in one place, and 40 rods wide in another with an island in between. Since a rod equals 5.5 yards each stretch of open water must have been about 200 yards wide.

 

In 1894 the state increased the height of the wooden Stillwater dam by five feet. Muncy’s floating bridge was washed away, and the road was temporarily cut off. The wealthy members of the newly established Beaver River Club had just purchased the Dunbar Hotel and two hundred acres along the road on the west bank of Twitchell Creek. Since they needed to use the road, they convinced the state legislature to allocate funds to rebuild the Twitchell Creek bridge. As Muncy had done, they used the island in the middle as part of the new bridge.

 

The bridge as seen from the clubhouse about 1905 

Wagon on bridge with 1910 clubhouse in background

The Beaver River Club needed a bridge over Twitchell Creek mostly to accommodate horse-drawn wagons used to carry luggage, supplies and mail from the new, 1892 railroad station at Beaver River. Club members and guests would typically arrive at Beaver River by train, take a short wagon ride to the river at Grassy Point and board a steamer for a comfortable and scenic ride down the river to the club at Stillwater. Club employees arrived by road from Lowville. Those employees who could afford a train ticket used the road from the station to reach the club. 

 

After the Model T Ford started rolling off the production lines in 1908, the bridge proved sturdy enough to be used by the occasional automobile. It’s not clear how many cars actually ever crossed the Twitchell Creek bridge. We know that Bert B. Bullock, owner of the Norridgewock Hotel in Beaver River, drove his car across the bridge in the summer of 1913. He did it again in July 1914. He and his family returned by auto to Utica from Beaver River via Lowville in August 1914. That trip is the last mention I can find of anyone crossing the Twitchell Creek bridge by car. As shown in the photo at the top of this article, sometime in the winter of 1914 – 1915 the Twitchell Creek bridge was destroyed by ice.

 

The bridge was used regularly enough by this time that on Feb. 18, 1915 the Black River Democrat reported the Lewis County legislature had petitioned the state for money to replace the Twitchell Creek bridge. Later that year the state legislature passed a bill that allocated funds to replace the bridge, but the bill was vetoed by the governor. The governor’s veto was probably because plans were already in the works to further expand the Stillwater Reservoir. The much larger reservoir would substantially widen the gap, making a new bridge totally impractical.

 

From that time on, the road has ended at the water’s edge in Stillwater.

 

Sources


For more about the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road see Chapter Five of my book Beaver River Countryand my article on this blog at https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-carthage-to-lake-champlain-road.html

 

Nelson Beach’s surveyor’s notebook is preserved at the Lewis County Historical Society, Lowville, N.Y.  A transcription by Noel Sherry appeared in the Lewis County Historical Society Journal, Vol. IV. No. 23, and Volume VI, No.1.

 

For more about the Beaver River Club, see Chapter Eleven of my book Beaver River Country and my article on this blog at https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-beaver-river-club.html

 

Muncy’s testimony about the Twitchell Creek bridge is recorded in the Second Annual Report of the Fisheries, Game and Forest Commission, 1897.

 

The facts of Bullock’s auto trips to Beaver River Station are from Etta Kempton’s journal, in the collection of the Goodsell Museum in Old Forge NY.

 

Photo credits

 

Twitchell Creek Bridge destroyed by ice, 1915, photograph from the Churchill-Shaver Album. Courtesy of Jim and Carol Fox

 

Panorama of Twitchell Creek bridge, about 1905, author’s collection.

 

Wagon on bridge, about 1910, collection of Nate Vary.

 

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