The Mohawk Indians called it “To-War-Loon-Dah,” or Hill of Storms. It has also been called Clinch, Emmons and Tallow. Today we know it as the more aptly named Blue Mountain. You can spot its imposing, recognizable profile that dominates the landscape as you travel south to Long Lake on Rte. 3 from this village. Tiny rivulets are born in the hidden springs and spongy mosses of its steep flanks, adding their ice-cold waters to the St. Lawrence Watershed, one of the five major drainage basins in the Adirondack Park.
The Racquette River, one of the rivers in that watershed and a powerful force in the history of this community, rises in the shadow of Blue Mountain in a series of lakes knows as the Eckford Chain, named after Henry Eckford, a noted shipbuilder and early surveyor of is waters. The three lakes that make up the chain were originally named after Eckford’s daughters, but regretfully like so many Adirondacks place names, they have been lost to change.
Janet Lake, augmented by underground seepage and springs, its clear waters reaching depths of over 100 feet, is now called Blue Mountain Lake. Catherine Lake is now called Utowana, and Marion Lake is now Eagle Lake. Marion’s name has survived in a fashion because the 11-mile water connection between Blue Mountain Lake and Raquette Lake (Utowana and Eagle lakes are simply a widening of this water connection) is called locally the Marion River.
The Racquette will flow 170 miles from this source before it joins the mighty St. Lawrence, the widest, longest, deepest river in the northwest Adirondacks. No river within the Blue Line can match it for its boating mileage. To be sure, in the river’s lower sections, dams and power demands often dry up the river for short distances, and penstocks and turbines divert its flow in places.
July and August certainly are busy times on the river corridor, enjoyed by scores of recreationists of all stripes. In early spring and late fall, however, when the river is at its most appealing, there are many days when you can have most river routes entirely to yourself.
The river has been a main artery of travel for at least two centuries, and many of the early settlers who located on its watershed reached these places by its water route. Some came up the river from the St. Lawrence, others crossed Lake Champlain and accessed the river via the Saranac chain of lakes, perhaps by trail to Long Lake from the road that, in 1862, went as far as the Henderson Iron Works (Tahawus). Or they came from the Mohawk Valley via the Fulton Chain to Racquette Lake.
Thus a trip along the river is a trip through Adirondack history. Sir John Johnson used it as a route to escape into Loyalist Canada. He was met (where the river joins the St. Lawrence) by Caughnawaga Indians, who escorted him safely to Montreal. It also includes the terrible clashes between the Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois confederacy, whose domain included the upper river watershed, and who resented and resisted intrusion from the Algonquin Indians of eastern Canada, who would claim the area as their hunting ground.
Among many other such gems of history is one that occurs just five river miles below where the river emerges as the outlet of Blue Mountain Lake. Here in 1878, a dam, which still exists as a low concrete wall, was built to deepen the water upstream for navigational purposes.
Below the dam is a shallow stretch of rapids that requires a carry or portage on a wide pleasant treadway. You are now walking on what once was the roadbed of the shortest standard-gauge railroad in the United States – .87 mile. It was built in 1900 and called the Marion Carry Railroad. The carry today ends on state land at the site of a former trestle that crossed the river. The lower half of the railroad grade is across the river and is on private land, but the river here (the trestle long gone) is navigable for small craft and continues for five miles to Racquette Lake. (Note: Some writers have incorrectly described the railroad trackage as narrow gauge, 3.5 feet wide. However, in the files is a public service inspection report that indicates the track’s width was 4 feet, 8.5 inches – standard gauge.)
Why, you may be wondering, even in the so-called Gilded Age of the rich and powerful, would anyone build at great expense a railroad less than a mile long and equip it with its own 0-4-0 locomotive and three passenger cars with a capacity of 125 per trip, which took only a matter of five minutes or so of travel? We will attempt to shed some light on that intriguing question in the next Transitions.