Mt. Morris has taken on a new and increased prominence in recent weeks with the announcement of a planned resort and seasonal home complex on its forested shoulders.
In recent Transition articles, we have taken a cursory glimpse at the Litchfield and Read preserves that include substantial portions of Township 25, in which the geographical boundaries of Mt. Morris are located. In today’s column, we will take yet another “cursory glimpse” at a current Township 25 land owner, the Oval Wood Dish Liquid Properties, Inc.
That look starts by noting that in the late 1800s, a firm owned by the Sisson family of Potsdam, known as the Racquette River Paper Company, had logged the lands of Mt. Morris heavily for its softwood. The Sissons had acquired the “Big Mill,” located on what is today’s Municipal Park near Racquette Pond. That mill was one of the largest of its day and held for many years the world’s record for lumber cut in a single day.
In 1913-1914, the Santa Clara Lumber Company purchased the mill and some of its land holdings from the Racquette River Paper Company. In need of funds, Santa Clara resold, in 1914, 11,805 acres in Townships 22, 25 and 26 to the Oval Wood Dish Corporation (the Follensby Tract, with the exception of the Follensby Pond and its shoreline, a portion of the Mt. Morris Tract and lands in Township 22 that adjoined the Follensby Tract). The price of that transaction was $225,000.
That sale came about, in part, when two years before (1912), two principals of the Michigan-based Oval Wood Dish firm, while on vacation in the Adirondacks, were amazed at the rich source of hardwoods – so necessary in the company’s production of wooden articles such as spoons, dishes, clothespins, flooring, etc. Not only were there large amounts of beech, white and yellow birch and maple, it was also available at low prices. At that time, except for a rare logging railroad, water was the only means of transportation for logs, and the lumberjacks didn’t touch hardwoods. Not only was there no market, it had not yet been discovered that it could be used to make pulp paper. More importantly, it didn’t float and there was no way to get the logs out.
That problem didn’t faze O.W.D. They were highly successful, resourceful lumbermen who had operated for 30 years in Michigan, and they would know how to get the logs out. As so often happens in ventures that turn out successfully, timing is important, and the Oval Dish was in the right place at the right time. A fellow named Lombard had designed a machine powered by a steam engine that, in place of wheels, had a broad band of lugs that furnished traction and could haul up to 20 sleds.
World War I had ended, and the O.W.D. also made use of surplus military tanks and gasoline tractors. Such a machine was the Linn, made in Morris, N.Y. Mechanization had arrived! In addition, while they didn’t use railroads on Mt. Morris, they did utilize them heavily in other sections, especially in Township 19 around Kildare. Indeed, at one time they owned two locomotives and 65 rail cars, and they laid many miles of railroad trackage. One line, designed by Floyd Hutchins Sr., used three switchbacks that climbed 500 vertical feet to the 2,060-ft. level of Mt. Matumbia, a feat rare in logging railroads, according to railroad historian Michael Kurdish of Paul Smith’s College.
However, in the years before trucks and tractors largely replaced horses, the O.W.D. relied greatly on them, especially on the slopes of Mt. Morris.
My father loved to relate how, as a young man, he walked his cherished horse from the family farm, located alongside the Racquette River near Norwood, up through Colton and the South Woods 80 miles to Tupper Lake, where his horse was used to log the slopes on Mt. Morris. This was, at the time, before big western horses became common, and lumbermen depended on the surrounding farms to supply horses during the winter months when they were not being used on the farm. Hundreds of horses were supplied this way, a win-win for both farmer and lumberman alike.
As the O.W.D. began its harvest of hardwoods, Mt. Morris became a scene of renewed and frenzied activity. If you look carefully, you can still today find traces of the many camp bottoms where camps were established to house the lumbermen. The camps were usually built near a spring or brook and consisted of a cook shack and dining room, a men’s bunk room, a small office, a filer shack for men to sharpen saws, a blacksmith shop and, downstream from the spring, a horse stable and multi-seated outhouse.
Also discernable today on Mt. Morris is a clearing that the 3-mile water supply line from Little Simon Pond crosses on its way to Lake Simond Road. The clearing is on O.W.D. land, currently under lease to the Teacher’s Camp hunting club and is still called Donahue Clearing. It was named for Jack Donahue of Potsdam, well-known lumberman who ran lumbering operations until 1913 on Mt. Morris as superintendent for the Norwood Manufacturing Company. Donahue Brook, which is born from a spring close to the Mt. Morris summit on Read lands, was also named for Mr. Donahue. The course of this beautiful brook takes it close to the Sugar Loaf Hunting Camp, also currently under lease from O.W.D Liquid Properties, before it empties into Adams Bay on Lake Simond.
There is an interesting story that concerns Mr. Donahue and the discovery of coal on Mt. Morris. Moody resident and famed guide Chester Gile was digging in the ground on Mt. Morris searching for ginseng roots when he discovered coal. He excitedly brought samples to town and sent them to the State Department in Albany, who informed him it was high-grade bituminous (soft) coal. This created quite a furor here with dreams of fortunes being made, not unlike the gold strikes of Alaska. Unfortunately, it was learned from Mr. Donahue that a load of blacksmith’s coal, being hauled up the mountain to a camp’s shop, had overturned on a steep bank the previous winter and only a part of the load had been salvaged from the snow.
This was a time of great human energy – hundreds of men working in the woods, booming hotels, busy stores, river drives, mills operating 24 hours a day – lumber was king! Tupper Lake, then only 12 years old, was on the move, and the O.W.D. became a powerful economic engine.
Next Transitions: More on Mt. Morris.