In the early 1950s, my summer vacation job was that of working for my father delivering soda produced in his bottling plant here in Tupper Lake. One of those deliveries was a grocery store in Long Lake. Some of the store’s inventory, including beverages, was stored in the cellar that was accessed by a set of steep, narrow stairs. The cellar was a dimly lit place with just enough headroom to avoid the massive timbers supporting what must have been a very old building.
On one of my deliveries to the store, I discovered a large auger alongside one of the log beams resting on the cellar’s stone wall foundation. The store’s manager told me that it had been there as long as he could remember, and knowing that I collected lumbering items like branding irons, peavey’s, etc., told me that if the auger was of interest to me, it was of no value to him and that I could take it.
The auger was of an unusually large size, and when I removed the accumulated dust and grime, I discovered a handsome wooden handle with the initials W.W.D. professionally branded on the flat face where the bit was embedded in the T-shaped handle.
To be honest, I remember thinking that the D was probably for Duane, a prominent name in Long Lake at the time. It wasn’t until some years later when reading Harold Hochschild’s Township 34 that I realized that the W.W.D. was probably William West Durant. In building his many architectural masterpieces, he often employed over 200 workers, mostly moonlighting lumberjacks and guides, many no doubt from Long Lake, and thus it is not surprising the splendid auger found its way to that community.
The point of all this is that in the Transitions column mention was make of the Marion River Carry Railroad that, at .85 mile, was the shortest standard-gauge railroad in the U.S.
That railroad was built by W.W.D.! Its main purpose was to transport passengers and freight across the short carry necessary because of shallow rapids in the river connection between the Blue Mountains Lake and Raquette Lake where his steamboats could not go.
Still the question remains: why would anyone build a railroad grade and trackage equipped with three passenger cars and an H.K. Porter engine to go only slightly less than a mile?
Part of the answer to that question lies in the fact that in the early 1800s, the section we know today as the “Adirondacks” was labeled on the maps as unexplored, unpeopled terrain called the “Great Northern Wilderness.”
In 1837, Gov. William Learned Marcy recommended to the legislature a natural history survey of that state’s northern wilderness. That challenge and assignment was taken on by a William’s College professor named Ebenezer Emmons.
In his survey, Emmons climbed what proved to be the highest summit in the state (it was previously thought the highest peak was in the Catskills). Later in his report he named not only this mountain (“Marcy” in honor of his boss, the Governor) but also gave the name “Adirondack Group” to the entire mountainous region. A name, he wrote, “by which a well-known tribe of Indians, who once hunted here, may be commemorated.”
The region now had a name, and the public was surprised such a wilderness remained in the Northeast United States that contained such scenic wonders and unbelievable fishing and hunting opportunities. They soon began to explore and visit not only the fringes but also the interior lakes and mountains.
Writers and artists at the same time began to publicize the region as “a place of refreshment for the body as well as the spirit,” and the rush to the Adirondacks was on.
The journey to get here, however, was a tough one. In truth, you had to be vigorous with what I would call a high tolerance for hardship and even pain. Consider getting to Raquette Lake from New York City in the middle of the 1800s. First you took a train to Albany, then changed to one bound for Saratoga and then still another on Durant’s Adirondack Railway to its terminus at North Creek. You would then have to board a stagecoach for a 30-mile bone-jarring, tiring ride (that took an entire day) to Blue Mountain Lake. From there, a fleet of 22 rowboats were available that you either rowed yourself or hired a guide for the 12-mile water route to Raquette Lake.
Despite those arduous difficulties, escaping the turmoil of the city and its oppressive heat, crowded and noisy conditions, and dirt and disease was reward enough to make the trip to the lakes.
It soon became fashionable to build a camp in the Adirondacks, and super-rich industrial and financial giants such as the Webbs, J.P. Morgan, Litchfield, the Vanderbilts. etc. built luxury camps not only on Raquette Lake, but also on Upper St. Regis, Upper Saranac Lake, etc.
W.W.D. built many of the finest camps on Raquette Lake, and his architectural genius set the style for many of the lavish camps that followed.
In 1921, Alfred Donaldson, regional historian from Saranac Lake, wrote, “In planning his camps, he had the happy inspiration to combine the Adirondack features of the crude log cabin with the long, low lines of the graceful Swiss Chalet.
“From this pleasing blend there sprang a distinctive school of Adirondack architecture. Before it was built, there was nothing like it; since then, despite infinite variations, there has been nothing essentially different from it.”
Today, many local contractors are involved in building and creating homes and camps based on Durant’s designs. They may question some of those “architectural inspirations” as they contend with such things as bark infestation from wood borers, premature peeling of the bark on the requited cedar logs (they need to be cut only on the coldest of winter days), the inherent varying diameter of the logs (that requires painstaking measurements) and the high cost of a shrinking supply of proper cedar and pine logs, etc.
Thus said, Tupper Lake craftsmen have gained the reputation of being among the best builders in the North Country, and many of the recently constructed, multi-million dollar “camps” stand as tribute to those skills.
In our next Transitions, we will explore how the rigors of travel to the Adirondacks were greatly reduced as Dr. Seward Webb completed the first railroad to cross the heart of the mountains, running from Herkimer to Malone. We will also look at the ultimatum given to her husband by Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and how that demand created another new railroad line that included the tiny Marion River Carry Railroad.