In a recent Transitions article, it was noted that the discovery and production of iron was an important and significant chapter in Adirondack history.
In the 1880s, mines in northern New York were turning out nearly one-fourth of the iron ore in the United States. By 1900, however, according to Floy Hyde in Adirondack Forest, Fields and Mines, “activity in the Adirondack area entered a long decline and downgrade, and by the 1930s, it had become relatively unimportant in the nation’s economy.”
In a slender little volume entitled, Camps and Tramps in the Adirondacks, a rare booklet written in 1870 by Judd Northrup, a Syracuse newspaperman, the author offers an interesting note of explanation on why mining iron was so fraught with failure: “This strange region is a vast bed of iron ore. Untold wealth is hidden in these mountains. Strong men have grappled with the problem of its removal; money and thought and skill and tremendous toil have been expended lavishly to that end, but all to no purpose. The wrecks are scattered here and there, monuments of ill directed energy and warnings against any future endeavor of the kind without the use of such modern appliances as shall absolutely conquer the stern resistance of this region to all attacks upon its treasures.”
Good advice – but if you were Felix Trombley and you stumbled across deposits of iron ore on a nearby mountain, the compulsion to make your fortune had to be strong, no matter the obstacles. Indeed, so strong was the conviction that the mountain contained a rich lode that it was named Iron Mountain, located near a small settlement called Blue Pond (later Derrick), 12 miles from this village.
Trombley tried his best. A company was formed and excavation was started. However, insufficient transportation (Hurd’s New York and Ottawa had not yet reached Derrick), primitive excavation tools and the remote location doomed the iron-mining project almost from the start, and it was short-lived.
About this time, Charles Turner of Potsdam-Malone arrived in Derrick and began lumber operations. The small village grew rapidly. A sawmill, shingle mill, lath mill and smaller structures were erected. Then followed the construction of churches, stores, hotels and homes. The U.S. Census of June 1905 reported 514 people living in Derrick that year. Such progress was not to last. Misfortune in the form of two severe forest fires, one in 1903 and another in 1908, devoured large amounts of valuable timber, and only rains that ended a 49-day drought saved the village. Mr. Turner closed his operations in 1910. Then followed another brief period in which iron mining reopened.
Mike LaPorte, a familiar figure in Derrick in those years, and Art LaPorte of this community, took out samples of ore, but to paraphrase Northrup: “All to no purpose. The region continued to sternly resist all attacks on its treasures.”
In 1913, Charles Elliot started a mangle roller mill that shipped up to three carloads of hardwood rolls per week to markets abroad. Elliot only ran that mill for two years before he moved it to Tupper. In 1917, the Oval Wood Dish Company started another lumber boom at Derrick. A 19-mile railroad was built and logging operations flourished. But it died out after three years. In 1937, railroad service between Moira and Tupper was ended and Derrick began a steady decline, with many of its families moving to this community. Today, only one original building – a New York and Ottawa Railroad section house – remains, and Derrick became close to being on of the Adirondack’s forgotten villages.
In 1980, however, a group known as the Township 10 Hunting Club leased property that included Derrick. (Note: The observations that follow are ones noted as I intermittently followed over the last two years the route of John Hurd’s New York and Ottawa Railroad from Moira, near the Canadian border, to Tupper Lake – a vital part of our local history.) The club has a spacious clubhouse, neat and clean, with a well-appointed interior that includes a large fireplace and a gallery of related photographs. Comfortable seating arrangements sit on a height of ground overlooking Blue Pond, the centerpiece of the club’s property. It is a communal place designed for members to meet and converse and to avail themselves, on weekends during the hunting season, the offerings of the current chef de saison. Two roads intersect here: one from Floodwood was the original stagecoach road that brought guests from the station directly to the famous Saranac Inn, guest capacity 121. (In the late 1940s, when I caddied at that exciting place, it had grown to an 800-guest capacity.) The other road comes in from Tupper and follows exactly the former railroad grade. Both roads have gate attendants.
Small hunting camps are located randomly within the club’s boundaries and some can be found along the ponds, such as the Twin Willis Ponds, Mud Pond and Blue Pond, to name several. The club is managed by its members under enlightened guidelines. The surroundings are inviting and well maintained. Rules in place for deer hunting are based on Quality Deer Management techniques. The dues structure is modest (under $400 annually), and the club has a long waiting list for membership openings. Nearby is Spring Pond Bog, the second-largest open expanse of peatland (sphagnum) in New York. (The land where my grandmother was raised in Ireland was rich in similar peatland, and her family supported their farm by harvesting, drying and selling peat for fuel. It remains a valuable commodity there and in Scotland.) Efforts to harvest Spring Bog peatland for fuel and gardening purposes were sidetracked when the Adirondack Nature Conservancy purchased the site to “protect it in its natural, undisturbed condition for all to enjoy and study.”
Gone today in Derrick is the high-pitched whine of the busy sawmills, some of which produced (in a 16-hour day) as much as 110,000 board-feet daily. Gone also is the rumbling clickety-clack, clickety-clack of four trains daily that coursed through the hamlet (early fare 5 cents a mile). Derrick is now a place of quiet, of recreation, a place to unwind and disconnect, and where – mirabile dictu – the natural beauty has remained. Blue Pond still reflects the color of the stately pines along is shorelines that, together with the unique mineral content of its water, produces the impossible cerulean blue that gave it is name. The sunsets over the great bog are as spectacular as Louis Grenier, a late Tupper Lakem, who as a childhood resident of Derrick from 1899 to 1912, remembered them at age 90. In an oral interview, he said, “Derrick has the most beautiful sunsets that I ever saw in my life!”