Bidding adieu to 'the deserted ,' Part 1 Pending Tahawus Tract subdivision will secure 210 acres for a historic district — but it probably won't preserve the Tahawus Club

by LEE MANCHESTER, Lake Placid News, March 24, 2006

ADIRONDAC — It’s been three the surviving buildings at the site, how- ance at [the old works’] gate,” wrote years since the Open Space Institute ever, we knew almost nothing about 90 one of the party, David Henderson, in a bought the 10,000-plus acre Tahawus percent of the structures comprising letter to McIntyre. Tract, in Newcomb township, from NL today’s “deserted village.” “The Indian opened his blanket and Industries. In mid-March, on one of the very took out a small piece of Iron Ore about If all goes according to plan, the last days of the Adirondack winter, we the size of a nut. ‘You want see ‘em Adirondack Park Agency will meet sent our reporter to the site to take a ore, me know ‘em bed, all same’,” said next month to approve the subdivision look at the remnants there of the the man, Lewis Elijah Benedict. of the tract into three major pieces. Tahawus Club — because they proba- Benedict led the party through the About 6,800 acres will be added to the bly won’t be around in a few more Indian Pass to the headwaters of the Forest Preserve. Almost 3,000 acres years. Hudson River in Newcomb township, will be dedicated to sustainable Before he tells you about what he where an outcropping of very high- forestry. Finally, 210 acres will be set saw there, however, let’s first walk grade iron ore formed a natural dam aside for a historic district that will pre- through the amazing history that led to across the stream. serve the remnants of a 19th century, the Tahawus Club’s creation. By 1832, a small community had backwoods iron-mining plantation. been established there, with forges Most of the “ghost town” that visi- From iron dam to deserted village built to extract iron from the hard-rock tors see when they come to the High The story of today’s Tahawus Club magnetite ore. First called McIntyre, Peaks trailhead at the Upper Works, ghost town actually started, early in the after the primary owner, it was however, is not currently slated for autumn of 1826, on the edge of what renamed Adirondac (no “k”) in 1848 by preservation. At this point, plans are would later become the village of Lake the U.S. Postal Service when a post being made only for the preservation of Placid. office was finally opened there. the 1834 MacNaughton Cottage and Several associates of Archibald Two perennial problems plagued the 1854 stone blast furnace. McIntyre, founder of the Elba Iron the Adirondack Iron & Steel Today’s “ghost town” buildings are Works that had closed shop outside Manufacturing Co., as McIntyre’s ven- mostly the remnants of the Tahawus Lake Placid in 1817, were poking ture was called: the extreme remote- Club colony at the old mining village around the old forge site when “a strap- ness of the site, making it prohibitively site, built from the 1880s through the ping young Indian ... made his appear- expensive to ship the company’s prod- late 1930s. They do not have nearly the historic significance of the MacNaughton Cottage or the furnace, but “it is the modest and deteriorated architecture of the Tahawus Club that establishes the sense of place” at this important historic site, wrote architec- tural historian Wesley Haynes. The Lake Placid News has pub- lished several features on the iron mines that were established on the Tahawus Tract in the 1830s by Archibald McIntyre and David Henderson, in part because numerous magazine articles, books and scholarly studies have been published on that operation. An engraving of the deserted village of Adirondac, from a drawing made in 1859 by Until we procured a copy of Benson J. Lossing, just one year after mining operations had been shut down for Haynes’ 1994 documentation report on good, published in E.R. Wallace's 1887 "Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks." Woodcut by Theodore R. Davis, published in the Nov. 21, 1868 issue of Harper's Weekly. uct to market, and the admixture of tita- Empire State!” only inhabitant of the deserted village, nium with the iron in the raw ore. Richard Henry Dana Jr., writing in we dined. The little deserted village of In 1845, works manager David 1871 for the Atlantic Monthly of his Adirondack, or M’Intyre, appeared Henderson was accidentally killed by 1849 visit, said that Adirondac was “as cheerful to us weary wanderers, his own pistol while looking for ways wild a spot for a manufacturing village although smoke was to be seen from to harness more water power for the as can well be imagined — in the heart only a solitary chimney.” iron works. of the mountains, with a difficult com- Naturalist John Burroughs came In 1856, a flood washed away half munication to the southward, and none through seven years later, in 1866. Like of McIntyre’s setup, 11 miles down- at all in any other direction — a mere Lossing, he boarded with the Hunter stream from Adirondac. clearing in a forest that stretches all the family. When McIntyre, age 86, died two way to Canada.” “Hunter was hired by the company years later, in 1858, the works sudden- It took some time, however, before at a dollar a day to live here and see ly closed down, never to be revived. the mining village closed in 1858 that things were not wantonly Writer Benson J. Lossing visited the became known as a place of true deso- destroyed,” Burroughs wrote, “but site just one year later, in 1859, sketch- lation. allowed to go to decay properly and ing it for later publication in his travel In 1859, the year after the iron decently.” book, “The Hudson.” Lossing was the works shut down, Benson Lossing Burroughs described Adirondac as first to call Adirondac “the deserted vil- described his excursion to the site: “At an abandoned settlement, but one that lage,” an allusion to a then very well- the house of Mr. [Robert] Hunter, the had not yet started its steep decline to known poem of the same name, written in 1770 by British writer Oliver Goldsmith.

Travel writers exploit ‘ghost town’ For many years thereafter, whenev- er a regional travel writer would describe his visit to Adirondac, he would always follow the hamlet’s name with “the deserted village.” That is the reputation which, through all the years — and through several metamorphoses — has stuck with the site. Even in 1846, Adirondac was described by visitor Joel Headley as “the loneliest place a hammer ever struck in. Forty miles to a post office or a mill — flour eight dollars a barrel, and common tea a dollar a pound in these woods, in the very heart of the An 1886 postcard, possibly by Edward Bierstadt. (Courtesy Chris & Nancy Beattie) disintegration. Seneca Ray Stoddard’s. His account by whom the mines had been operated. “After nightfall we went out and was primarily derived from a visit Even the ledgers had been left in the walked up and down the grass-grown made in 1873, and substantial portions safe, the doors of which were open. In streets,” he wrote. “It was a curious and of it were published unchanged in his this he occupied himself until he real- melancholy spectacle. The remoteness illustrated regional guidebooks through ized that the night was upon him. and surrounding wildness rendered the 1919, long after the “deserted village” Deciding to make the best of the situa- scene doubly impressive. had been revived as a private summer tion, he returned to the house he had “There were about thirty buildings community. first entered and, taking possession of in all, most of them small frame houses In 1870, however, three years one of the silent bedrooms, threw back with a door and two windows opening before his best-known visit to the musty bed covers and made himself into a small yard in front and a garden Adirondac, Stoddard had made another as comfortable as possible for the in the rear, such as are usually occupied trip to the village. That earlier visit was night.” by the laborers in a country manufac- briefly alluded to in his 1873 account, A ghost, “the founder of the vil- turing district. but was not fully described there. lage,” appeared to the man in the story “The schoolhouse was still used,” It was not until many years later, that night, searching for a letter written Burroughs continued. “Every day one after Stoddard had begun publishing to the ghost’s daughter by the lover he of the [Hunter] daughters assembles his Northern Monthly magazine in had sent away. The next morning, her smaller brothers and sisters there 1905, that the story of his 1870 visit to “moved by the pitiful tale,” the visitor and keeps school. The district library Adirondac was written up, wrapped hunted around the house, eventually contained nearly one hundred readable around a ghost story. The finding the letter. books which were well thumbed.” Elizabethtown Post & Gazette of Nov. “That night he placed it on the cen- Two years later, in 1868, Alfred B. 7, 1907, offered its readers a much- ter table in the house where he had Street likewise found the abandoned condensed version of that story, enti- passed the night before. Again his mid- hamlet to be still in surprisingly good tled “The Forsaken Village.” night caller came, and the sleeper was condition. “The story on which the legend awakened by a great cry of joy. When “On each side [of the street] stood founded,” the Post columnist wrote, he finally reached the table where the the houses, so perfect, except here and “runs that a New York businessman in letter had been, it was gone,” the Post there a broken pane, I almost saw peo- the Adirondacks for rest and recreation, & Gazette story ended. ple at the windows, or on the porches,” when wandering afield one day, Stoddard concluded the guidebook Street wrote. “One week of repairing chanced across the moss-covered account of his 1873 visit to Adirondac would make them comfortable remains of the little village abandoned with a vague allusion to the incident: dwellings again.” years before. Entering one house better “Well do I remember the night than the rest, he found it perfectly fur- when they [the Hunter family] sent us Stoddard puts the nished, as its occupants had left it years to sleep in one of the deserted houses ‘ghost’ in ‘ghost town’ before. having the reputation of being haunted. Perhaps the best-known traveler’s “A little further down the street he We did imagine that we heard curious description of deserted Adirondac was came across the office of the company sounds during the night,” Stoddard

LEFT — The Adirondack Club, photographed in 1888 by Seneca Ray Stoddard. (Credit: "Photograph #81.800s courtesy of Adirondack Research Room, Saranac Lake Free Library") RIGHT — Looking north up the Adirondac road earlier this month. wrote, “but whether uneasy spirits or some poor dog that we had robbed of his nest we could not tell.” Only in the very first account of that visit, however, was this final sentence included: “This is reminiscent, however, and occurred three years previous to the time when in 1873 the professor [Stoddard’s traveling companion] and myself tramped that way and beyond.”

‘An air of solitude and desolation’ It seems that 1873 was the point at which the old mining village turned a corner. No longer could it be described as a temporarily vacant, but essentially sound, settlement; it had become an authentic ruin. “It is a strange feeling which one experiences as he comes suddenly, after days of tramping through unbro- ken wilderness, upon this desolate The Debevoise Cottage, built ca. 1900 hamlet,” wrote an anonymous reporter for the Plattsburgh Republican in 1873. pointed to the ruin that must surely venture created in February 1876. A “The forges will soon be overgrown come. fisherman’s club, based in the ponds with vegetation, and the water-wheels “Near the center of the village was just north of Adirondac, it was quickly converted into masses of rotten wood. a large house said at one time to have succeeded by the Adirondack Club in “You enter shops and are startled by accommodated one hundred boarders, January 1877, which based itself in the the strange echo of your footsteps, now grim and silent. old mining settlement. which seem to threaten the intruder “Near-by at the left stood the pretty The following year, Adirondack with disaster for disturbing their long school house [and church]. The steps, Club member Francis Weeks took on repose. worn by many little feet, had rotted and the job of repairing the sturdy, two- “The wide and hansom [sic] street fallen, the windows were almost pane- story frame house built in 1834 by the is covered with a thick mat of green less, the walls cracked and rent asunder McIntyre company for use by the turf, while the houses have a muffled, where the foundation had dropped mine’s owners and supervisors. Then funereal air. ... The little church [which away, and the doors yawned wide, known as the Hunter House, it later did double duty as the schoolhouse] seeming to say not ‘welcome’ but was occupied by McIntyre grandson still stands, but its back is bent with ‘go’,” wrote Stoddard. James MacNaughton, whose name has age, and it will soon fall beneath its been associated with it ever since. own weight. ... Creation of the clubs Today, the MacNaughton Cottage is the “Over the whole scene there reigns Adirondac’s previous caretaker, only extant dwelling left over from the an air of solitude and desolation which Robert Hunter, had left the hamlet McIntyre iron plantation. the tourist is glad to leave behind,” the between Stoddard’s first and second As Adirondack Club members Plattsburgh paper concluded. visits after Hunter’s wife, Sarah, died moved in to the former mining settle- Stoddard’s guidebook, “The in 1872. Her tombstone stands in the ment, they took over surviving mine- Adirondacks Illustrated,” described the Adirondac cemetery between the vil- era buildings before tearing them down settlement as “the ruined village, where lage and nearby Henderson Lake. and, in many cases, building new cot- a scene of utter desolation met our view Hunter’s successor, “the independ- tages on the old foundations. [and] the grass-grown street led away ent Californian” John Moore, was the The Adirondack Club had only a into shadow. last custodian of Adirondac before it 20-year lease on the McIntyre property. “On either side once stood neat cot- became the headquarters of a series of When that lease expired in 1898, the tages and pleasant homes, now stained new sportsman’s clubs, founded by the terms of the new lease required a reor- and blackened by time. Broken win- descendants of Archibald McIntyre. ganization of the club, which renamed dows, doors unhinged, falling roofs, The first such club, called the itself using the popular faux-Indian rotting sills and crumbling foundations, Preston Ponds Club, was a tentative name for Mount Marcy, a major por- tion of which the McIntyre company gate to the abandoned National Lead The 1834 MacNaughton Cottage, owned. titanium mill. the only building surviving from the Thus was born, on Nov. 26, 1898, The “New Furnace,” an 1854 blast Adirondac iron-mining days, stands on the Tahawus Club. furnace from the McIntyre era, rises on the right at the beginning of the ghost the right side of the road at 9.1 miles, village, at 9.7 miles. NEXT WEEK, we will walk you looking like a small Mayan pyramid At the end of Route 25 is the park- through the 16 structures still standing that somehow got lost in the North ing lot for the southern trailhead to the at the site of Archibald McIntyre’s 19th Country woods. High Peaks, at 9.9 miles. century iron settlement. Two former residents of the desert- ed village will also tell you a little bit about what it was like for them as they grew up there. One of them spent her childhood summers at the Tahawus Club before World II. The other former resident lived there after the village had been appro- priated as workers’ housing for the National Lead Company’s nearby tita- nium mine, following World War II. He left for college before the tiny settle- ment was closed down by NL in 1963 when, in the words of another former resident, the mining company “got out of the landlord business.” After that, the workers’ hamlet again became an abandoned village — though a completely different aban- doned village than the one written about by 19th century travel writers.

Getting there To get to the deserted village from Lake Placid, you will drive on state Route 73 through Keene and Keene Valley to Northway (I-87) Exit 30, then jog south to Exit 29 (North Hudson). From Exit 29, it’s a 17.5-mile drive westward on the Boreas/Blue Ridge Road, heading toward Newcomb, before you reach county Route 25 (Tahawus Road), where you will turn right. Zero your trip meter as you make that turn, then watch the mileage so you don’t lose your way. You’ll pass the Lower Works Road on the right at 0.4 miles (Route 25 curves left). The Lower Works is the site to which the Tahawus Club moved in 1947 after its former headquarters was taken over by National Lead. At 6.3 miles, county Route 25 branches off to the left toward the Upper Works. Make sure you make that left turn; don’t keep going straight onto county Route 76, or you’ll end up at the Interior of Mrs. Taylor’s Cottage, also known as Lazy Lodge, built ca. 1890