Most observers will agree that the coming of the railroads in the late 1800s contributed more than any other factor to the rapid growth of this community. Indeed, when John Hurd completed his railroad from Moira to Tupper Lake in 1890, it triggered the construction of over one hundred buildings in one year. The population, which consisted of 17 families in 1889, exploded to an amazing 1,051 residents just two years later, and by 1900 the number had reached 3,045 residents.
Of course, the sawmill Hurd erected on the shores of Racquette Pond also became a huge incentive for people to establish here. It was arguably the largest sawmill over built in New York State. Over two hundred feet wide and four hundred feet long, it was a two-story structure with a capacity of 300,000 feet of lumber per day.
Its seven huge boilers were fired with sawdust and shavings blown through a system of pipes. A large percentage of the slabs and edgings that were a by-product of the sawing operation was transferred over a high tramway that crossed above Demars Boulevard near today’s White Birch Restaurant. It then continued above ground along what is now Pleasant Avenue (Railroad Street in my youth) and served several kilns that turned the waste product into charcoal.
Thousands of cords went to “floor” the marsh along the pond, which helped create today’s Municipal Park, and the rest of the waste was burned in a huge burner that towered 100 feet into the air.
Readers may be interested in what was termed a world record for sawn lumber at this mill. According to the Pittsburgh Gazette and Times of July 1919, Tupper Lake workers converted 2,303 spruce logs into lumber in nine hours and 20 minutes. The newspaper further stated:
Two saws making the cut on an 8-ft. band saw running 1,500 revolutions a minute. All spruce was 12 to 16 feet in length. No cut was made over 10 inches in width and all were cut to 1¼-inch lumber.
The mill was set up to do 60,000 feet a day but rarely fell below 100,000 feet, which meant an average of 2,000 logs each day.
Is it any wonder, I ask you, that historians such as Floy Hyde, in her book, Adirondack Forests, Fields and Mines, declared that “many of today’s residents are descendants of long lines of sturdy, enterprising, hard workers who did not come and go with the change of seasons. They were not summer ‘guests.’ They stayed put.” The mountains became their homeland, wherein they found or developed their own way of making a living.
Year by year, other persons joined them, perhaps enamored with the lakes and mountains, possibly seeking to regain their health in the Adirondack air or, in rare cases, sensing an opportunity to develop a promising business enterprise from the mountain resources.
From the days of the pioneer, the road has been “uphill” all the way. Yet somehow, according to Mrs. Hyde, “despite the forbidden circumstances of isolation, poor soil and a short growing season when only 10 to 12 weeks can be counted on to be free of frost, many people made their homes here accepting as part of their way of life, not only the beauty and allure of Adirondack summer, but the biting cold and severe hardships of the long, cold winter.”
Those sturdy people who set that world record sawmill cut and other pioneers who established themselves here have many descendants in this community. Like their ancestors, those descendants have also, “surmounted the odds and have adapted and prospered and would not choose to live anywhere else.” Tupper Lake remains a wonderful place to live and raise a family. Let’s hope we can keep it that way!
When that rush of settlers arrived here in 1891, they found an ideal location for building. An early lumber company had cut all the virgin white pine along Racquette Pond and up to what is today’s Main Street as far as Tallman Hill above Vachereau Street. This left a clearing that was being used as a pasture by a man named Bill McLaughlin.
McLaughlin had been a foreman for the Pomeroy Lumber Company, the firm that had made that early clear cut of pine. He had stayed behind when Pomeroy moved out and owned most of the land upon which the village was built.
Geologist Jim Carl has noted, “The combination of high ground for living below Tallman Hill (the highest point of which is a bedrock knob, but the hill itself is mostly glacial depositional material) and the low ground next to the lake for industry (perfect for stacking and storing logs prior to sawing) was utilized for the full extent.”
In 1880, G.W.F. Smith, a surveyor from Potsdam, came through Tupper on his way to Tahawus to meet Verplank Colvin, the state surveyor. He wrote the following observations (in part) to his wife:
“The people here have all gone crazy. They seem to think they are going to have a city immediately. There is a large clearing here and this clearing and all surrounding woodland is all run out (surveyed) and laid into streets and lots. This embryo city now has a genuine western boom. If beauty of location could ensure a city, however, this would be one, for the ground rises gradually from the shore of the pond back quite a distance, with then an abrupt rise of 20 or 30 feet and then a gradual rise again, giving every part a fine view of Racket Pond for miles and when the woods are cut away a view of the lower end of Big Tupper Lake.”
Next Transitions: Growing pains in a new community.