Hotel Island

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This ruined concrete foundation is on a small island in the Stillwater Reservoir. Scattered about the ruin it is still possible to find the occasional piece of broken crockery, bricks or broken drain tile. During times of low water in the fall, traces of a barn foundation emerge nearby. 

Stillwater locals and visitors rightly assume that the ruined foundation is all that remains of a large hotel that once occupied that location. The full story is far more complex. This strategic hilltop looking out on where Twitchell Creek flowed into the Beaver River is where the first Stillwater inhabitants of European descent lived. It was more or less continuously occupied for 100 years from 1825 until 1925 when the Stillwater Reservoir was flooded and the spot became an island.


It’s not known exactly when the hermit David Smith built a small log shanty there, but based on mostly reliable guides’ tales, it was probably about 1825. Smith made his meager living by trapping and possibly by taxidermy. He vacated his shanty at Stillwater about 1831, supposedly because he encountered too many unwelcome visitors. He then moved upstream to the western shore of a beautiful lake at the source of the Beaver River. That lake was soon being called Smith’s Lake, now known as Lake Lila. In 1846, Smith felt too crowded again, and moved to parts unknown.

 

One of the reasons that more sportsmen were traveling to Smith’s Lake was the opening of the Carthage to Lake Champlain Road that connected Stillwater to the settled Black River valley. When the road builders were constructing a bridge over Twitchell Creek in 1844 – 45, they built a small log shanty in the spot where Hotel Island is today. After they finished the bridge, a hermit named Jimmy O’Kane made his way to Stillwater and commandeered the road builder’s shanty. O’Kane encouraged outdoor guides to store boats along the bank of the Beaver River near his shanty. He was the first person at Stillwater to offer primitive shelter to passing travelers. He lived there alone, except for his dog, until his death about Jan. 1, 1858. O’Kane was the first, and possibly the only person ever buried at Hotel Island.


The spot was mostly unoccupied for the next ten years, although it was still a popular camping ground. Then in the spring of 1870 William and Sarah Wardwell bought fifty acres in the vicinity of what we call Hotel Island and built a sturdy log cabin and barn. They mowed and fenced a pasture for cows and horses. They provided dry storage in the barn and boarded horses. Travelers paid to stay overnight in the cabin with the family and were fed simple meals. Early mapmakers soon designated the spot as Wardwell’s.



In the winter of 1876 Sarah Wardwell fell ill. Her condition was serious and she had to be hospitalized. After that the Wardwells moved to Martinsburg, NY and did not return to Stillwater. The next season they put their Stillwater property up for sale and leased it to Hiram Burke, an outdoor guide. In 1878 Joe and Mary Dunbar bought the Wardwell place. The Dunbar family, including their children and two nephews, built a frame sportsmen’s hotel and opened for business just as the tourist trade started to boom.



The Dunbar Hotel did so well that in 1880 family cabins and boathouses were added and the hotel was enlarged until it looked like this. 


Dunbar’s Hotel was a financial success for the next twelve years. Joe Dunbar and his sons’ reputations as premier outdoor guides steadily grew. Groups of sporting enthusiasts returned to Dunbar’s every year. The maps and guide books of the time now called the hill beside Twitchell Creek “Dunbars.” 

A lot changed in 1892. Construction was almost complete on the railroad that would cross the Adirondacks nearby. New railroad buildings and a large sawmill were under construction about six miles away on vacant land that the railroad was calling Beaver River Station. Regularly scheduled passenger trains started to stop at Beaver River Station by the end of October. The opening of the railroad soon brought a new set of outdoor tourists to the area.

 

Although this would be good for business at the Dunbar Hotel, Jim and Mary Dunbar were ready to retire. When a group of regular customers approached them in December 1892 with an offer to buy the hotel, they decided to sell. A few months later, the new owners and their friends founded the Beaver River Club and ownership of the hotel and surrounding island property was transferred to the club. 



Travel by railroad was crucial to the success of the new Beaver River Club, but there was one significant problem. The state was in the process of rebuilding the nearby Stillwater dam to increase its height. The higher water level would widen Twitchell Creek and certainly destroy the floating bridge being used to cross the creek to reach the railroad station. So, the wealthy and politically powerful members of the Beaver River Club arranged to have the legislature provide funds for a new bridge over Twitchell Creek. That handsome bridge was soon in place.


The Beaver River Club counted as members the families of wealthy business owners primarily from Syracuse and Utica. Some members bought lots and built cottages while most members and guests stayed in the hotel, now known as the clubhouse. Before long the old Dunbar Hotel building was replaced by a more comfortable and spacious clubhouse. The new clubhouse was finished for the 1902 season and featured a living room and dining room on the main floor and private bedrooms with indoor plumbing on the top two floors. 


 
The club prospered over the next five years. Disaster struck, however, on April 22, 1908 when the clubhouse caught fire. The club’s directors decided that a larger and even more grand clubhouse was needed. Well-known Syracuse architects Asa Merrick & James Randall were selected to design an expanded clubhouse that would cost $20,000. Confident of continued success, the club borrowed money to pay for the new building. The new clubhouse was ready for occupancy in the spring of 1910. The new concrete foundation can be seen under the porches. It probably served as a root cellar.



Everything went well for a few years until there was a nationwide economic downturn in 1912-13. Use of the club declined and no new cottages were built. The club fell behind on its mortgage payments. In 1914 the lender foreclosed on the mortgage. The club only survived because a group of members bought the clubhouse and remaining unsold lots at foreclosure. Then, in December 1914 the Twitchell Creek bridge was destroyed by ice, cutting off road access to the Beaver River railroad station. The club never fully recovered from these losses. The club continued to function for five more years as the remaining members searched for ways to improve the club’s finances.


About 1919 the members of the Beaver River Club learned that the state was planning to create the current Stillwater Reservoir by raising the water level nineteen feet. The projected new high waterline would flood nearly all of their property leaving only the highest hilltops as islands. At first, club members fought against the creation of the reservoir, but when their efforts did not succeed, they sold their lots to the state and salvaged what they could of their cottages. The state eventually purchased all the property of the Beaver River Club, except for the land on top of the two hills that would become Williams and Chicken Islands. By the end of 1924, every building of the once glittering Beaver River Club was gone, including the clubhouse. 

 

The gates closed on the new Stillwater dam in February 1925, and the water rose. On the hilltop where so much had transpired for over a century, only a small uninhabited island with a bare concrete foundation remained.



More details can be found by following these links to my illustrated blog posts on Annals of the Beaver River:

“The Beaver River Hermits,” posted 2/14/21

https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-beaver-river-hermits.html

 

“Wardwell’s,” posted 3/23/21

https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/03/wardwells.html

 

“Jolly Joe Dunbar,” posted 4/09/21

https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/04/jolly-joe-dunbar.html

 

“The Beaver River Club,” posted 5/3/21

https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-beaver-river-club.html

 

“The Twitchell Creek Bridge,” posted 2/10/26

https://beaverriverhistory.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-twitchell-creek-bridge.html

 

There is even more information about Hotel Island in my book Beaver River Country: an Adirondack History, Syracuse Univ. Pr., 2022, especially chapters 3, 7, 8, and 11.

 

Image credits

 

Color photographs of Hotel Island, Meredith Leonard, taken 08/12/26

 

“An Old-Time Sanitarium; Stillwater on the Beaver River,” 1902 report of the Forest Fish and Game Commission of the State of New York.

 

Map of Stillwater area, Wallace’s Guide to the Adirondacks, 1876 edition

 

Dunbar Hotel about 1878, collection of the Adirondack Experience

 

Dunbar Hotel about 1880, collection of Jim and Carol Fox

 

1915 USGS map showing island property of the Beaver River Club

 

Twitchell Creek bridge about 1900, collection of Frank Carey

 

1902 Clubhouse of the Beaver River Club, collection of Jim and Carol Fox

 

1910 Clubhouse of the Beaver River Club, collection of Frank Carey

 

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