In 1890, Clarence King, Edwin Page and Robert Page, partners in a hardware store in Moira, made a corporate decision. They would build a store in Tupper Lake.
Their friend, a go-getter named John Hurd, who had started building his Northern Adirondack Railroad from Moira seven years earlier in 1883, had pushed his trackage 54 miles into Tupper, and the place was booming. Hurd had also begun surveying and grading an extension of his railroad southeast from Tupper, up the Racquette River to Racquette Falls and Long Lake. Note: The plan was to connect with the Delaware and Hudson at North Creek. However, newly enacted legislation prevented laying tracks on Forest Preserve Land that the route would have crossed. Part of this grade remains, now under several feet of water in Racquette Pond, and can be readily seen from Rockridge or the south end of Lake Street.
Meanwhile, three trains each way were running daily between Tupper and Moira. By 1900, Hurd’s line, now known as the New York and Ottawa, was connecting at the Canadian border with the Canadian National Railroad at Helena. Travel to Ottawa, 128 miles away, could now be accomplished in four hours if all went as planned. Travel to the Canadian capital city became a popular excursion for Tupper Lake residents. It also allowed cordwood from here to be shipped to Montreal for use as fuel, hemlock bark and charcoal (Seaver, 1918, p. 535). It also opened vast new areas for lumber cutting, transportation and, consequently, employment opportunities.
Robert Page stayed in Moira temporarily that year of 1890 to close out that store’s inventory, and Clarence and Ed built a large general store here on the corner of Lake and Cliff streets, across from today’s post office. It was a case of “right place at the right time,” and by 1899, the venture was an established success.
Let us go now to what was a beautiful summer weekend in July 1899. Robert Page is at his camp on Tupper Lake at a place still referred to as Page’s Bluff and which has remained one of the most beautiful and outstanding locations on our lake. Patriarchs of an earlier generation of pine can be found towering 100 feet in height here today, many with an impressive diameter breast high (DBH) of 40 inches or more. Page’s Bluff has been under the careful stewardship of the Gibson family for many years and has remained as pristine as Mr. Page would have found it over one hundred years ago.
Mr. Page didn’t hear the St. Alphonsus Church bell that was the signal for a fire (there was no fire department at the time). However, his partner, Mr. King, who lived on the cliff above High Street, did hear the bell and along with other able-bodied men ran to answer the alarm only to discover that it was his store that was ablaze. The time was 11:45 p.m., July 29, 1899. The fire had started in a small building located to the rear of the King/Page store. It was a place where the owners kept their kerosene supply, an important commodity in those days of no electricity. The cause of the fire would remain unexplained, although arson was suspected but never proven.
In less than five hours, almost one hundred buildings would be destroyed and 700 people would be homeless with the loss of all their possessions.
How, you might ask, could this have been allowed to happen? Find the answer in the next Transitions.