Annals of the Beaver River

While window-shopping through the beer display at my local grocery store in Syracuse I happened to notice they are selling Congress Beer. I vaguely remembered that back in 2018 the Onondaga Historical Association partnered with a local craft brewer,  Willow Rock Brewing Company,  to resurrect a beer that was once extremely popular in Syracuse and throughout upstate. I also remembered that the popularity of Congress Beer among Adirondack sportsmen and lumberjacks was a factor in the creation of the second Norridgewock Hotel. Here’s that formerly untold story. As I explained in my post of 6/8/2021, the original Norridgewock Hotel burned to the ground on May 8, 1914. At the time, the hotel and most of the surrounding private property at Beaver River Station was owned by Bert B. Bullock. Bullock did not want to rebuild the hotel since his family planned to relocate to a more cosmopolitan setting. The concrete block stable just across the road from the original hotel was undamaged ...

Behind the bar in the present Norridgewock Lodge in the hamlet of Beaver River, NY sits an ornate, nickel-plated antique cash register. Berdett “Bert” B. Bullock purchased it in 1907 from the National Cash Register Company for use in his Norridgewock Hotel. Bert had his name cast onto the cash register cover as proof of his pride in ownership. Bert’s cash register still works, but is no longer in use having been eclipsed by newer technology. It survived the 1914 burning of the original hotel, and several transitions of ownership and location. Today it serves as a totem for Bert’s role in that heady first era of the settlement of Beaver River from 1894 until 1915.   I laid out the history of the original Norridgewock Hotel in my blog post of 06/08/2021. This post will complement that story by describing the lives of Bert, his wife Julia and their only son Clyde. Along the way, I will clarify and correct the history of that era at Beaver River Station based on recently uncovered sour...

Jessie Elliott was a unique figure in the history of the Beaver River country. People who visit the tiny settlement of Beaver River, NY these days are still told she went to prison for her role in the bootlegging that was rampant in the lumberjack days of the early 1920s. She is listed among the “lawless ladies” in Niki Kourofsky’s 2015 book,   Adirondack Outlaws . Pat Thompson’s memoir about life in Beaver River claims Jessie rode her steed through the settlement with her long hair flowing and a pistol in a holster on her belt. More fantastic stories about Jessie are found in Bill Donnelly’s   Short History of Beaver  River where she is described, among other things, as a good-looking Calamity Jane, a bootlegger and a prostitute. The truth underlying the legends reveals a much more complex and interesting wilderness woman. Jessie E. Elliott was born in April of 1885 at her parent’s home at Chase’s Lake, Town of Watson, Lewis County, NY. She was the youngest child and onl...

The old-timers at Beaver River Station remember Dave and Mabel Conkey as something of a legend. They arrived about 1907 to establish a sportsman’s camp on the point that sticks out into the outlet of Big Burnt Lake on the north side of the Beaver River. They ran a camp at that location until they were evicted in 1916 [see my post of 06/05/21], then relocated into the settlement of Beaver River where they continued to host and guide visiting sportsmen into the early 1950s. Later in life, the Conkeys lived at Beaches Bridge just outside Lowville in the winter months, returning to Beaver River with warmer weather. In their fifty or so years at Beaver River they saw the community change from a way-station in the wilderness to the boom town of the 1920s then morph into the private camp community it is today. Few others have ever lived there so long. David Lysander Conkey was born on Nov. 8, 1870 in Petrie’s Corners, Town of Watson, Lewis Co., NY. His parents were Emma Graves and John Lysand...

William Goodelle was a well-known and well-liked Syracuse attorney who lived at the end of the 19 th   and beginning of the 20 th   centuries. He rightly deserves to be remembered as an outstanding trial lawyer, an early leader of the local bar association, and a person dedicated to setting and maintaining high standards for the legal profession. He also deserves to be remembered for adding one important word to the “Forever Wild” clause of the New York State Constitution. Early Life William P. Goodelle was born on May 25, 1838 on a farm in Tully, N.Y. just south of Syracuse. His parents were Aaron B. Goodelle, a successful farmer, and Eleanor A. Prevost. After obtaining his elementary education at the local common schools, he attended the Homer Academy for a year, then completed the five-year college preparatory course at the Cazenovia Seminary. In the spring of 1861, he enrolled as a sophomore at Dartmouth College and graduated with the class of 1863 with high honors. When h...

After deriding the expansion and gentrification of most hotels across the Adirondacks, Hopper’s article praises Smith’s Lake because it had remained in its untouched “primordial” state. Hopper feared that railroads would soon penetrate all parts of the forest. As a result, Hopper warned, the wilderness “is fast being brought into narrower limits by a ruthless inevitable march of civilization.”   Hopper concluded his article with the urgent and ultimately ironic advice to other sportsmen to “go there!” Hopper had no way of knowing that by the time his article was published it would already be too late for the general public to go to Smith’s Lake. In early 1891 Dr. Wm. Seward Webb purchased tens of thousands of acres surrounding the upper Beaver River and tightly closed them off to the public [see my post of 10/29/21]. Webb also purchased and demolished both Lamont’s and Muncy’s hotels. The railroad that Hopper feared, cut diagonally across the area. [see my post of 04/27/21]   ...