The year was 1899. The surveyor named Tupper, who long ago had named Tupper’s lake after himself, could never in his wildest dreams have imagined the frenetic activity that was taking place in the settlement near that lake he had stumbled across in 1795.
A rush of settlers touched off by the completion of railroad access and the potential of employment opportunities by the start of mill operations had transformed a wilderness into a frontier town as real as any in the famed Wild West. It was build now – civilize later. Sewage: Dig a hole in the ground. Water: Tap one of the many springs or dig a well. It was as though the town had come in on the wind. No thoughts of infrastructure and only the beginnings of any sort of administrative organization.
Yes, one accomplishment did occur: a demand by those pioneers to have their own local government. Ten years before, in 1890, they had formed the Town of Altamont, setting itself off from the Town of Waverly. That division included three townships and a geographic area to be governed of some 15 miles in length along its north/south line and about six miles wide along the southern baseline, or about 70,000 assessed acres.
We became the last of Franklin County’s 19 towns to be established. “One thing is certain: our town fathers were literally starting from scratch to create a clearing in the wilderness to an outpost of civilization.” In the words of former historian Louis Simmons, “It proved to be a lusty baby.”
Unfortunately, only a few scattered copies of the early newspaper, the Tupper Lake Herald, still exist dating back to 1911 and, as Louie lamented, “they would have constituted an irreplaceable record of Tupper’s growing pains.”
Descriptions by others of that period were not always complimentary. Donaldson, in his History of the Adirondacks, noted: “(Tupper Lake) grew with surprising rapidity, but as a lumbering center only. Its structures were crude and ugly and its inhabitants were tough and lawless.”
Donaldson was a well-to-do former banker who came to Saranac Lake for his health. He only devoted a very short paragraph about this village in his basic history. I’ve often wondered (uncomfortably because of his ability) if this was due to a certain snobbishness that existed for many years among some Saranac Lake residents toward Tupper Lake’s lumber town image. A feeling, perhaps, encouraged by that community’s more cosmopolitan status. It was, of course, a world-famous center in advanced research for the cause and cure of pulmonary disease, and it attracted artists, writers and the wealthy and famous, all seeking the fresh air cure that before the advent of wonder drugs was the last hope for a fatal disease.
Today that feeling about our sawdust town has largely evaporated, as well is should, and I hear only admiration from Saranac Lake friends about the progress and many exciting happenings occurring here.
The point is, my suspicions not withstanding, Mr. Donaldson’s two-volume history is a valuable contribution to Adirondack history, and Tupper Lake was a major part of that history. At the time it was published in 1921, this community, after all, had just (against great odds) successfully convinced the federal government to build a huge cure facility here. The Oval Wood Dish Company was at its peak in sales, production and employment. We were the lumbering capital of New York State. The American Legion Mountain Camp had been established. It was also a significant economic and cultural engine, and its presence was due, in part, to an enlightened citizenry that contributed influence and substantial financial support – all monumental achievements that were totally ignored by Mr. Donaldson.
Donaldson did mention (and concede) that the town improved after purification in our big fire of 1899, which he termed “a blessing in disguise, for on the site of the old village, there soon rose a far more slightly, more cleanly, more orderly, and more prosperous one.”
It is pretty well agreed that the so-called “Big Fire” of 1899 was a “blessing” in some respects, but it was also a paralyzing blow to our embryo town. Imagine the distress, the anguish, the absolute horror that those Tupper Lakers must have experienced as the sun rose that July day and revealed an entire business section as well as areas around Lake and High streets laying in the smoldering ashes of fire ruins. Close to one hundred buildings were destroyed within three or four hours, and 700 people became homeless with a loss of all their possessions that ill-fated night.
Next Transitions: More on the Great Fire.