If you remember when milk was delivered to your doorstep in glass bottles with three inches of heavy cream suspended on top of the milk, perhaps you will remember the magic of a ride aboard the New York Central’s Adirondack Division Railroad. For some the magic was simply hearing the whistle of the morning train as it crossed Demars Boulevard, signaling its moves, speaking a language only railroaders understood. Or perhaps it was the awe of the black smoke billowing from a stack, a vaporous suggestion of the coal-fired engine’s power, enough to haul the 150-ton engine and as many as twenty coaches and passengers up the infamous 2,000-foot Big Moose Hill that railroaders called Purgatory Hill.
That magic of the train rides might also have been the memorable sensation of the gentle side sway and rhymitic clicking and clacking of wheel against rail as the train puffed its way along the scenic wonders of places like the Beaver River corridor with its sparkling lakes and streams and fascinating bog lands. Or was it simply the throbbing of those powerful engines as the idling train took on water from the tower that was located near what is now Bill and Sherry’s Main Street Restaurant parking lot? (And which, of course, backed up traffic in both directions on the Junction’s main street.)
Sometimes that magic was strained, however, such as when the train couldn’t make the before-mentioned Big Moose Hill. The train would then have to back down, uncouple the cars and take the “head end” into Otter Lake and put it on the siding. It would then have to back down again and pick up the rest of the train and haul it over the hill back to Otter Lake.
I was on the train one January night when the temperature was hovering around the minus 20 mark. As soon as the train was uncoupled (I was in the rear one half), the passenger car, with its source of heat cut off, almost at once became colder than the cold-storage locker in Bill Spark’s Armour plant. I was dressed only in “city clothes,” and it was only determined pacing up and down in that car for what seemed like hours that kept me and the other passengers from freezing. As I recall, several passengers did have to be treated for superficial frostbite to their extremities, especially their feet. Perhaps that’s why even today I don’t venture out without a pair of Sorel pack boots in the trunk of my car, along with extra mittens and a fur hat to my passengers’ amusement.
Accompanying this week’s column is a map that shows in great detail the railroad lines of those Adirondack and Ottawa Divisions. It might be of special interest, especially to the younger residents and also to our newer residents.
It shows, for example, John Hurd’s Northern Adirondack railroad, the first line to reach here when it was established in 1889-1890 and was later (1900) called the New York & Ottawa when construction of the line was completed to Canada’s capital city. It also shows the route of Dr. Seward Webb’s Malone and Mohawk railroad, which went to Montreal. Dr. Webb’s rail line was the first to traverse the Adirondacks and crossed the Hurd line here in 1891. This “junction” with its roundhouse, shops, and large railroad yard developed into the most important rail junction point between Utica and Malone. It also gave rise to the name “the junction, “ which even today is considered by many to be a separate section of the village. Actually the last time that name could be accurately applied to our “downtown” was at 6:04 on the morning of May 6, 1937, when train number 62 pulled out of town on its last run to Ottawa. Citing “lack of patronage,” the New York Central the very next morning pulled ties and rails on the 32-mile stretch between here and Santa Clara (named after Hurd’s wife Clara, who he considered a saint). Seven miles of track along what we now call the Pitchfork Pond Road were allowed to remain for a few months so the Oval Wood Dish Corp. could remove the harvested timber from its Kildare operations.
There was no more railroad junction since only the Montreal line remained. It was a sad ending for “Uncle John’s” railroad, which he built by gradually extending it “nowhere in particular and then creating a semblance of somewhere.” One of those somewheres.
One of those sudden somewheres was this village. When it became the terminus of his railway, there was nothing but a cow pasture and clearing belonging to old Bill McLaughlin, a pioneer settler. Hurd built an enormous mill and Tupper Lake began to grow. According to the historian Donaldson: “It grew with surprising rapidity. Its structures were crude and ugly and its inhabitants were tough and law lease. It was like a western frontier town. Then, on July 30, 1899, it was almost completely wiped out by fire. This proved really 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.
If you will again look at the map, you will notice that from the junction almost to the Canadian border the two line parallel each other. Why didn’t Dr. Webb, whose railroad came along after Hurd’s Ottawa line, use the existing trackage at least to Moria before turning to Montreal? Not only would he have saved the immense cost of laying a new line, but he would have avoided the very real problem of having to cross state lands. Interestingly, Dr. Webb’s line would not have gone through Tupper, as originally planned, but the State refused him right-of-way on his route south of this village. Webb then had to buy 115,000 acres of private land for an alternative route. That brought Webb’s line to this village. If he could have used Hurd’s connector, it would have solved his problem of crossing State lands, which lay north of this village. Webb, of course, was well aware of those facts, but he was negotiating to buy Hurd’s line. Hurd allegedly sold it out from under him. This infuriated Dr. Webb and he vowed he would parallel Hurd’s line within a year, and he kept his promise.
We know “Uncle John,” who more than any other individual was responsible for the founding of this village, was a reckless speculator in lumber lands. A lover of “the deal,” he often took extreme gambles that threatened him financially.
He was also like many other magnets, as aggressively religious on Sundays as he was aggressively worldly on business days. Why did he apparently play the wrong card in this game with Dr. Webb? And how did Dr. Webb overcome his need to cross constitutionally protected land with his projected route? We will try to answer these questions in next week’s column. Stay tuned . . . .