1900 APR 5 The Malone Paladium - "Tupper Lake Village a Cow Pasture Ten Years Ago"

This is the pond view of the “Big Mill” from the South West end of Raquette Pond. The view shows two jack- ladders, but the large silo looking burner has not yet been built. A forest still stands not very far from the mill.

As we move south along the shoreline we get a good view of the recently built houses. Logs and stumps a clearly visible in pond. The houses look quite substantial; mostly two story each with their brick chimney and clapboard siding. The houses were built with the lumber sawn at the mill. Today the shore area is part of Flanders Park. Shown also are the earliest houses to be built in the Village.

The long building with the cloths hanging on the line is known locally as the tenement building. After all these years, it still stands and operates today as it did over a hundred years ago, renting rooms to the local population. The largest building in the center of the photo is the Altamont Hotel. The first hotel built in the Village.

1900 APR 5 The Malone Paladium - "Tupper Lake Village a Cow Pasture Ten Years Ago" 

Tupper Lake village is the town that Uncle John Hurd built over night in McLaughlin's cow pasture, and that very shortly grew to such proportions as to admit only one rival in the Adirondacks in point of population and none in point of trade. It has risen since Phoenix-like from the ruins of a disastrous fire that swept away the entire business part last summer, and proved by its marvelous recuperative power, though a town of mushroom growth in the beginning, that it has a substantial reason for existence. 

The pioneer and patriarch of Tupper Lake is old William McLaughlin, who was born at Calais, Me., in 1812, and came into the Adirondacks with a lumber company 47 years ago. Previous to McLaughlin a trapper named Cole hid built a little shanty on the river bank and cleared an acre of ground for a garden patch, and supported his family on venison and fish as the mainstay and a few vegetables by way of a relish. McLaughlin cleared 40 or 50 acres of land and started the typical backwoods lumber farm, which is designed primarily for raising hay for the horses employed in drawing logs. 

The first year McLaughlin was at Tupper Lake hay for the requirements of the lumber company was hauled from Lake Champlain through the center of the Adirondacks, over frozen lakes and roughly constructed roads across the portages. The distance as the trail ran was about sixty miles, and a considerable part of the hay was eaten by the horses on the way. At times when storms delayed progress some of the teams ate up all their hay, and turned back without ever seeing Tupper Lake. It was customary for three or four teams to travel together, and all were fed from the load from one of the sleds. At that time nothing but pine was cut, and spruce was regarded as of little consequence.

The logs were driven down the Raquette River to Hewitville, three miles from Potsdam, and there sawed into lumber. The river was then in much better condition for floating logs than it is today, and only 35 days were required for the first drive, whereas logs that go by this route at present are from 75 to 100 days on the way. Continuous driving has scooped out the banks and widened the stream, and with less water it is a vastly more difficult and tedious matter to get the logs through than it was in the early days of lumbering.

In 1871 the State built the reservoir down below Raquette Pond that backed up the water of the river for miles and killed hundreds of thousands of growing trees, many of which still stretch their gaunt limbs heavenward.

Ten years ago there were only half a dozen families living in the neighborhood of Tupper Lake. McLaughlin, Sim and Mart Moody, Sim Ratty, George McBride and Ernest Johnson were the permanent residents, living at intervals of a mile or more from each other.

Four years before John Hurd had gone to Moira at the northwest corner of the woods and started a railroad south into the wilderness without any very apparent objective point unless it was his purpose to bisect the Adirondacks and connect the existing Delaware and Hudson Branch at North Creek at the diametrically opposite corner, first the road was built to St. Regis Falls, a distance of 12 miles from Moira. Then, after a time it was extended six miles farther to Santa Clara, then 14 miles to Brandon, and finally, by the longest jump of all to the shores of the Raquette. It was a spasmodic piece of railroad progression, characteristic of the eccentricity of the man who planned it. If John Hurd intended to piece out his road at the ends and make it a connecting link in, a trunk line from New York to Ottawa he was doomed to disappointment, for the work came to a standstill so far as work on its southern extension is concerned. Hurd named his terminus Tupper Lake, although it is, as a matter of fact two miles from Tupper Lake and on the shores of an entirely distinct sheet of water, known as Raquette Pond. It was his way to anticipate events. 

The road ran through unbroken forests and ended nowhere. As there was no traffic that could be counted to pay operating expenses. Hurd set to create this necessary adjunct. Although other men construct railroads to supply a real or prospective demand, but John Hurd was not built, on the ordinary plan and reversed the process. Having finished his road he decided that he must have lumber as the most available freight to carry over it, and to supply this he built what was then said to oft the largest saw mill in the world. In this enterprise his usual plan of putting the cart before the horse was adhered to.

First he built the mill and afterwards he began looking around for logs on which to set it workng. Here he encountered a snag of more than ordinary proportions. In all sides were hundreds of square milts of timber land, but not one acre was his, and the companies owning the land all had use for their logs and could not profitably be persuaded to part with them, There were three mills in Potsdam and three just above that got a considerable more of their logs from Tupper Lake, by way of the Raquette River, and not one of them was anxious to share with Uncle John. Nevertheless, he finished the big mill with its capacity for turning out a million boards in four days, and then it was that the hunter, returning from his winter trapping, rubbed his eyes to see a town of 2,000 inhabitants and the busy stir of industry where before had been the stump dotted field and the cows belled so that they could easily be found in the thickets when milking time came.

 It was a heterogeneous assemblage of bustling Yankees and voluble French Canadians that awoke mornings in the little unpainted frame dwellings and fell to their task of converting forest trees into daily bread. Money circulated freely and there was good fortune for everyone with the single exception of the man who made the town. He had met and conquered successive barriers, but at last there was one that he could not surmount, and if report is to be credited it was the lack of logs to convert into lumber to carry over his railroad. The big mill ran a year. Hurd tried making wire reels and baskets and similar articles, but if there was a profit on these the volume of business was not large enough and the crisis could not be averted. Today John Hurd walks the streets of Tupper Lake and sees prosperity on every side, but the control of his various enterprises has passed into other hands and he does not share the prosperity.

 Tupper Lake village at present is said to have a population of 3,000. Two years ago a Raines law census was taken to regulate the license fee and the returns then gave something in excess of 2,500 inhabitants. It has three churches, but the Roman Catholic far out-numbers the others in point of attendance, ministering to the spiritual needs of 800 families.

The fire which swept the business part of the town started in the pioneer store of King & Page, and was probably of incendiary origin. It was at its height at midnight and carried everything before it, fanned by strong southwesterly winds. There was then no city water and no mains in the streets of the village, and the fire department had trouble with their hose and could do nothing to combat the flames. Persons on the streets of Utica hundred miles away, saw the reflection of the fire in the sky. But the residents of the little town of Axton, fifteen miles North of Tupper Lake, were unaware of the holocaust till the following morning, when they awoke to find the ground strewn with cinders from the burned town. 

Many men lost their all in the fire, but the embers had hardly cooled when the work of rebuilding the town began. A water system was installed, supplied with high pressure from a mountain lake three miles away, while larger and more substantial business houses were erected, and despite the crushing loss only a few months ago the town at the present time appears to the casual visitor at least to be better and more prosperous than ever before. That there is an .abundance of cash in circulation is indicated by the fact that a fair held by the Catholic church a few weeks ago netted $1,200, and also by the statement that no poor people can be found to receive some money that has long gone begging for a recipient. Immediately after the fire Dr. Seward Webb sent a check for $500 to. be used in alleviating the destitute, which was expected to result, and Mr. Barbour, a member of the thread firm, who has a camp on Tupper Lake, added $250. The committee to which the fund was entrusted has found no one, it is said, to whom to give the money, and not a penny in charity has been asked for.

It was said recently that the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 would require 10,000,000 feet of lumber for building purposes, and that the placing of this great order would affect the lumber market of the country. Tupper Lake could, in an emergency, fill the contract in 30 days without unduly affecting the local market or straining the facilities of production. Hurd's great mill, which is now owned by the New York Export Lumber Co. would have to be put in operation, it is true, but this could easily be accomplished if the proper inducement was forthcoming.

At present, however, only a part of the spruce logs cut around Tupper Lake are converted into lumber. The Santa Clara Lumber Co., the International Paper Co. and the Norwood Manufacturing Co. convert their logs into pulp stock for the manufacture of paper. The spruce for lumber is cut something over 18 feet long, while for pulp manufacture it is cut in four-foot lengths and afterward stripped of the bark. The Sisson mill is the largest plant manufacturing lumber at Tupper Lake.

Exclusive of the old Hurd mill, and including both pulp and lumber, Tupper Lake will probably manufacture the equivalent of 60,000,000 board measure of spruce and pine logs during the open season of 1900. The mills are not run in winter, as the logs can not be handled when the ponds are frozen. The production could of course be greatly increased if the mills were able to saw the year round. One of the companies talks of forming a hot pond by turning its escape steam into the water, on the Western plan. The logs would be thawed out in the pond and only hauled out as required. 

The fall and winter months are devoted to securing the logs which later will be sawed into building material or converted into paper. The trees are felled by axe-men, or, as is more commonly the case at present, they are sawed down with the big five-foot cross-cut saws handled by two men. They are sawed into 13-feet 6-inch lengths or thereabouts, and dragged to the skidways, which are depots for collecting the logs on the nearest available lumber roads. From the skidways the logs are hauled on bob-sleds to the railroad, or some suitable driving stream for the final stage of their journey to the mills.

The horses used in the woods are fine animals, and the best Percheron (The Percheron is a breed of draft horses that originated in the Perche valley in northern France) and dray horse stock is frequently met with. Assemblyman Beede of Essex County had two-horse teams at work during the winter that hauled loads of logs weighing as much as 35 tons a number of miles to the driving stream. Of course such loads can be hauled only under the most favorable conditions, and over most roads a record like this can not be approached. The lumbermen are wonderfully expert at constructing surfaces that admit of the greatest weights with the least friction. The inequalities are filled with corduroy or brush, and the snow, which is essential for the success of the plan, is treated as road-building material, and beaten down and smoothed and finally glazed with a coat of ice by sprinkling. Under favorable conditions these roads afford a means of conveyance that is far superior to the finest macadam when wheels have to be used. 

Mountain lumbering is gaining in vogue in the Adirondacks and here the courage and .ingenuity of the boss and his men come into full play. The Santa Clara Lumber Co. has earned its operations to the top of Mount Seward, the largest mountain in New York and one of the highest. The logs are drawn to Calkin's Brook, six miles, and from there pass into Cold River and eventually reach the Raguette River and the mill at Tupper Lake, miles from the summit, where they grew. 

Their journey to the water is eventful. They are "slooped" down the mountain, one end chained to the front part of a lumberman's bob-sled and the other end dragging on the ground to retard the progress of the descent. Steep parts of the road are sanded to keep the load from coasting too fast and running over the horses, and at times ropes are attached to the sleds and the loads lowered with block add tackle down the very worst grades. At one place the road terminate at a precipice, and here the logs are cast loose to slide down. It is dangerous work guiding-these heavy, sap-soaked logs down the mountain-side, but on Mount Seward remarkably few accidents have occurred and only two horses have been killed in a season’s hauling.