In a recent Transitions column, it was noted that the Open Space Institute (O.S.I.) had reached an agreement to acquire 9,600 acres of land owned by the National Lead Company. The land located near Tahawus will be sold for $8.5 million.
The Tahawus operation was the largest open pit ilemite (titanium ore) mine in the world before certain market conditions forced its premature closing. At the height of its operations, few would have guessed that (along with Benson Mines near Star Lake) these important industrial giants, so vital to commerce and the daily lives of the many families involved, would ever become hauntingly abandoned and vacant, as is the case today.
The Sanford Pit at National Lead, 3,000 feet long, 1,599 feet wide and 300 feet deep, from which more than 80,000,000 tons of rock had been mined, now lays idle, its very isolation and stark appearance not unlike photos of the moon’s landscape. It is a sad ending to a once thriving place that employed many residents of this community and neighboring communities such as Long Lake.
It was a wonderful place to work – a happy family of engineers, electricians, millwrights, pipe fitters, mechanics and other skilled workers. It had vital, visionary, intelligent and caring management that fought hard to keep it operational, and it cared about the employees – their wellbeing and future.
If we look back into history, the discovery and production of iron in the Adirondacks has been a significant and important chapter. A brief look at some items of that chapter may be of interest to readers. We know, for instance, that the earliest settlers were aware of iron deposits. In fact, the Adirondacks were formerly named the Peruvian Mountains for Peru by the early French settlers in allusion to that country’s mineral treasures. It was the same for the settlement, still known as Peru on the shores of Lake Champlain.
In my files is an 1858 map by Edwin Merritt of the Tupper Lake region. The map shows an Indian encampment of such permanency that it rated inclusion as a map feature. The encampment was located on what is today known as Indian Point, which is owned by the International Paper Company on Tupper Lake’s west shore. As a youngster growing up on that lake, I was always told that, among other attributes, the Indians favored this location because a long reef (still there) allowed them to throw their fishing nets without the impediment of brush, etc., and they could more easily reach deeper water.
An account of a very early visit to this region by a writer for a sporting magazine tells how a family of Indians camped there took the writer and his companions to a bed of iron ore only a short distance from where today the Sorting Gap lean-to is located.
There were also iron deposits discovered on the aptly named Iron Mountain near Big Wolf Club property. Sometime before 1889 (and before Hurd’s NY and Ottawa Railroad), Felix Trombley of Derrick made that discovery. Today the holes and pits of his short-lived operation can still be seen above the old railroad spur built by Brooklyn Cooperage to haul lumber from that area, now under lease to Township 19 hunting club.
The ridge northeast of Arab Mountain near Piercefield’s Station Mountain has iron, and compass bearings can be influenced by its presence.
That same kind of magnetic influence led to the discovery of the Star Lake-Benson Mines ore body (Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation). In 1810, engineers surveying for a highway between Albany and Ogdensburg found their instruments affected by magnetic ore, and those extensive deposits were thereby revealed. In its heyday, Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation was to ship annually about one million tons of iron ore sinter from those deposits in Benson Mines to their plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio. They would employ over 500 people living in a 50-mile radius from the mines. In short, iron deposits became of paramount importance to the Adirondack economy.
The first forge was established near Plattsburgh in 1789. Many of the ventures were short-lived, but some of the present villages of the Adirondacks grew up around those early forges. In 1817, for example, a forge was unsuccessfully established near Brown’s Tract in the central Adirondacks. The “old forge” became a landmark and, years later when a village grew up on its site, it became known as Old Forge.
Thirty miles from Tupper Lake a dam was built in 1811 on the Chubb River, very near what is today Lake Placid’s beautifully restored railroad station. Here a substantial ironworks was erected on the present Power Pond. It was the creation of State Comptroller Archibald McIntyre and two partners, Malcom McMartin and David Henderson, and it was called the Elba Iron Works (the name Elba was derived from the Mediterranean island of Elba, noted for its rich source of minerals. That island would later become the place where Napoleon was exiled). The ore for the works was mined at Cascade Lakes, which motorists pass today on their way to Keene from Lake Placid.
That operation at North Elba lasted only six years – transportation and the quantity and quality of the ore were major obstacles to success. However, the principal owners never gave up their quest, no matter the financial risk and hardships involved. They would develop the McIntyre deposit that would lead to the giant National Lead operation many years later. We’ll follow that adventure in the next Transitions.