In a recent Transitions, a boat trip down Little Wolf Creek as far as the former N.Y. Ottawa Railroad bridge on Wolf Avenue in the Junction was described. We continue that boat trip in today’s column. The creek continues under yet another bridge, one that allows traffic to cross on Rte. 3 near Vern Friend’s Auto Repair.
Stay center in the river under the bridge and then river right as the passage narrows and the current accelerates you along for a short distance to bridge #4 of the five bridges on that route, the N.Y. Central Railroad crossing that bears the date 1927 on its underpinnings. The original bridge was built in 1891 by Dr. Seward Webb’s railroad crews as they were laying rails north and south from Utica and from Malone.
Older residents will remember the pump house along the tracks above the bridge that pumped water from Little Wolf Creek into twin towers adjacent to the Main Street crossing (now under repair), where locomotives could take on water. Those tall towers were familiar landmarks until they were taken down in the late 1950s.
Mr. St. Onge was, for many years, the operator and custodian in the pump house building there, and veteran railroader John Amoriell has told me that on his lengthy walks inspecting the track on foot, he would sometimes seek refuge here to chat with St. Onge and get warm on the many below zero days in winter.
Dr. Webb’s crew laid 3,000 ties to the mile here, 400 more per mile that the standard. That was a wise decision because Tupper Lake engineer Willie Roumonado, in later years, freight-hauled a record 100 cars with his UMI Diesel across this rail bed (Willie was fire chief of Tupper Lake in 1938-39 and retired from the railroad in 1952 after 37 years on the job).
The creek now flows alongside the well-tended grounds of the Savard property and goes under bridge #5, located on what is called Pine Street extension. From this point, at some earlier time, the former winding creek underwent a major “face lift.” In what must have been a work-intensive effort, it now becomes a straightened, almost canal-like, stream – wider and deeper, hugged by a lush marsh on both sides until it empties almost unannounced and hidden as it braids unobtrusively through the grasses to become part of the Racquette River.
Here, dear readers, is a puzzle. Who straightened this crooked stream? And how? And why? One more question: etched into the concrete wall of that Pine Street bridge is the date 1934. Huh? How is that correct? And if it is, why was it built?
The bridge serves only two structures: one a handsome home on a road that soon dead ends in a twisted mass of alders, and the other, today’s the town garage building – an orderly, neat-appearing complex that is a credit to the town crew that maintains it. That building didn’t exist until it was constructed in 1960, 26 years after the bridge was built. You may remember that the building was financed by a successful funding effort conducted by the Greater Tupper Lake Industrial Development Corporation. An item in the Nov. 10, 1960, Tupper Lake Free Press tells us that it then became the new factory to house the expanded operations of the North Country Manufacturing Company, which was expected to employ up to 200 people, mostly women, to make dresses for the parent firm, the Helen Whiting Company. Rod Beaulieu won the bid at $92,593 for the construction of the 70-ft. x 183-ft. building, with an interior that stretched 180 feet of clear span without a pier or post. The dress factory operated until 1972, and then it was sold to the McDonald Steward Textiles of Montreal.
So what is the story behind this 1934 bridge that accessed a road that went no where and serviced nothing, other than a small planning mill, until 1960? The clue lies in the date 1934, and the newspaper files of that year provide an answer. First, we have to remember this was the time of the Great Depression, a slowdown in the economy that became the worst in the country’s history with the many failed businesses and huge unemployment. Tupper Lake probably weathered those “threadbare thirties” better than most communities. McDonald in 1934 had a large lumbering job going on at Whitney Park. The first river drive in years was ready to bring millions of logs down the Racquette River to the Jack Works at Underwood. Sunmount was well established, but at the same time, as the economy became further throttled by the Depression, local firms like the huge O.W.D plant were experiencing financial difficulties as sales dropped sharply, causing job layoffs. Many people simply could not find work.
But Adirondack people are survivors! A friend now living in Maine wrote to me recently, commenting of those days: “I learned years later that my father, who was a caretaker of a prominent camp on Upper Saranac Lake, received no salary for two years during the Depression. (The wealthy owner had lost everything in the stock market crash.) He continued to clothe and feed a family of eight. I was too young to realize that white fish, trout and venison, along with my mother’s vegetable garden, met the needs of that growing family. I have such great respect for our parents who endured with faith and fortitude.”
Help came under Franklin Roosevelt when billions of dollars were poured into work and home relief programs. Workers (anyone unemployed was eligible) were paid 40 cents an hour for a 40-hour week, enough to get by on Depression prices.
The result in Tupper Lake was more civic progress than at any other time in our history. The golf course was expanded from nine holes to 18, and a beautiful log clubhouse was erected. The Municipal Park was developed, which was a $137,000 project. A new junior/senior high school was built at a cost of $300,000. The Rod and Gun Clubhouse was built with a crew of 32 men using selected spruce and hemlock logs. The process to gain these federal and state funds under what was called the Civil Works Administration was for the town to submit any project under consideration to the Federal Relief Administration for approval, all work to go to the unemployed listed on the relief rolls. The first projects our town fathers recommended in 1934 were:
- the rebuilding of the Setting Pole Dam to employ 25 men at a cost of $30,000,
- the extension of Murray Street to Little Wolf Creek and the construction of two 20-foot bridges with a dam across the outlet at a cost of $3,656.50,
- the construction (called the Big Simond Project) of a road along the south shore of that lake leading off the Moody Road, making possible building sites, which was certainly a prophetic recommendation,
- and, the laying of a road (aha!) beyond Pine Street to Underwood and then along the shore of Big Tupper Lake to the American Legion Camp. Also the construction of a bridge across Little Wolf Creek off Pine Street to access that road.
Of these four applications, all of which were approved, three succeeded wonderfully, but for reasons I haven’t discovered, the Big Tupper shoreline project, except for the bridge, failed completion.