Historians' Challenge Preview

Here on the banks of Mill Creek in downtown Lake Luzerne we find the Pulp Mill Museum, a space that tells the remarkable story of Albrecht Pagenstecher and his brothers who came here from Germany to start a paper mill. They brought two pulping machines from their native Germany and had another one built up in Watertown.

Nowhere else in the nation had this American-made approach been incorporated in pulp-making. This mill was the first of thousands that would adopt it in following years.

Here at the intersection of the roads to Warrensburg and Wilcox Lake, the Stony Creek Inn has been a fixture for more than a century.

The first lodging at Stony Creek's "four corners" was the Creek Center Hotel, which Richard Rhodes opened in 1869 just as Thomas Durant's Adirondack Railroad was nearing its completion in North Creek. But it succumbed to fire in 1888.

By the late 19th century, the population of Warrensburg had gown steadily since its founding in 1813, but it lacked one very important asset that helps communities thrive. It had no library.

In early 1890, two prominent women – sisters Miss Clara Richards of Warrensburg and Mrs. Mary Richards Kellogg of Elizabethtown – established the “Warrensburgh Circulating Library” in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross parish house, with their own private collection of 200 volumes. For a $2.00 annual fee, patrons were allowed to borrow one book at a time.

Clara and Mary Richards were sisters born into a family that had strong Warrensburg roots dating back decades. Their paternal grandfather, Peletiah Richards, owned extensive property in town, served as Warren Country sheriff, was the Warrensburg Town Clerk and Supervisor, and a New York State Assemblyman. Their maternal grandfather was Col. B. P. Burhans, who had a prosperous tannery in town, was a New York State Assemblyman, and served as President of Glens Falls National Bank. Their father, Samuel Richards, was a successful businessman who also made profitable investments.

The Richards sisters were the beneficiaries of their ancestors’ successes, inheriting both the interest in enhancing life in the community where they were raised, and the wealth that made their philanthropic pursuits possible.

The Hudson Riverwalk commemorates the history of the Hudson River Bridge, Mill Pond, and the historic Waddell Buildings. It comes out on Main Street at the Tannery Pond Community Center. Highlights of the walk are vistas and close-up views of the waterways near the confluence of the river and the creek, and Main Street shops and businesses.

If you have a passion for history, we suggested you do this mile and a half loop counter-clockwise while listening to our North Creek and Hudson Riverwalk Audio Tour, which starts at the North Creek Depot Museum. You'll find it right on your phone alongside this tour.

Right here near the parking lot we have the William R. Waddell and Lee Waddell buildings, which were built in 1901 to serve as a stabling area for William W. Durant's “Red Ball” North Creek-Indian Lake Stagecoach line. They were later adapted for the storage and sale of coal and animal feed

Continuing clockwise on the trail, you'll be treated first to a great view of the Hudson River Bridge. You'll see its old abutments which date back to the construction of the original span in 1875. Over the years, ice jams took their toll on the bridge, and it was replaced in 1929 and renovated in 1974.

Continue onward and you'll come to North Creek, where a team of loggers established the first camp and sawmill that would evolve into the community of North Creek a half-century later when Milton Sawyer and Wheeler Mead built a tannery here just downstream from here.

The tannery -- which had a pond that generated water power -- produced tough leather used for saddles, horse tack, and shoes for distribution to eastern seaports. The hides came mostly from Central and South America, brought in first by horse-driven wagons and then the Adirondack Railroad. Hemlock bark provided the tannic acid necessary for the tanning process, and the region's abundance of hemlock trees supported the local tanning industry. But the hemlock grew scarce and the building burned in 1890.

The Riverwalk was completed through a collaboration of the Johnsburg Historical Society, the Community Fund for the Gore Mountain Region/Adirondack Foundation, the North Creek Rotary Club, and the Warren County Occupancy Tax Grant Program.

The easiest way to get to Pottersville in the late 1800s was via Thomas Durant's Adirondack Railroad from Saratoga Springs to Riparius, and catching a Waddell & Emerson stagecoach, which took you to the Wells House or to the Schroon Lake landing. That's where you would continue your trip via steamboat to a hotel, such as the remarkable Leland House, with its six-acre gardens and huge dining room which seated as many as 300.

The Horicon Historical Society tells the story of the town in two parts.

Part One is the restored nine-room 19th-century farmhouse in Brant Lake that serves as a window on the lives those who lived in Horicon in the 1800s. In later years, a carriage house and barn were added to house farm equipment and a military display dating back to the Civil War and beyond. These three buildings were the beginning of the Horicon Historical Museum.

Part Two is its new annex right here in Adirondack, which opened in the summer of 2021 in the historic Union Church, built in 1881 by local Adirondack families who pooled resources to make it happen.

Back in those days, Adirondack was called Mill Brook. Methodists and Baptists worked together, building the church on land donated by Benjamin T. Wells, owner of the local tannery and general store. In 1887, the congregations raised $83 to purchase the bell that still tolls there.

Starting on the summit of Graphite Mountain at the privately-owned Wintergreen Lake, Hague Brook tumbles four miles into Lake George. In some places, it runs so close to Graphite Mountain Road -- also known as Route 8 -- that heavy rains will sometimes undercut the pavement, necessitating repairs with huge boulders and new asphalt.

That proximity to the road makes it easy to get to Hague Falls from its parking lot.

By the spring of 1775, the Revolutionary War had come to northern Upstate New York in earnest. Two British forts on Lake Champlain had been captured by revolutionary forces, and their munitions and artillery seized. By early summer George Washington had taken command of the Continental Army.

But by fall the effort to drive the British troops out of Boston, an important strategic asset, had stalled. The colonists did not have enough gunpowder and heavy artillery to retake the city.

A young Boston bookstore owner named Henry Knox, who was commissioned as an officer after volunteering at Bunker Hill but who otherwise had little military or artillery experience, promoted a plan to transport the captured cannons from Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point to Boston to help with the siege. Washington put the bookish, self-taught artillerist in charge of the army’s nearly nonexistent artillery and sent him to New York to bring back the guns.

The 25-year-old Knox, accompanied by his 19-year-old brother William and a servant, arrived at Lake Champlain on December 5 and selected 59 artillery pieces for the 250-mile trek to Boston. He estimated the trip would take two weeks.

Assisted by soldiers from Fort Ticonderoga, Knox began moving the cannons, which weighed a total of nearly 120,000 pounds, on ox carts, boats, then sleds pulled by oxen—and later horses— south on the lake and along the Hudson River to Albany where he crossed.

According to Bolton historian Ted Caldwell, transporting such a heavy load would have been impossible at any time other than midwinter, since the presence of ice on the lakes and rivers and snow on the ground enabled Knox and his team to rely on sleds rather than wheeled vehicles for much of the distance. But even with the aid of the abundant snow and ice during the harsh winter of 1775-76, Caldwell said, the trip was an undertaking of monumental proportions.

While the ice and snow made the trip possible, there were several incidents when cannons broke through the ice, but none were lost along the way. Hindered at other times by rain and mud, Knox led the weary men and animals through the slopes of the Berkshire Mountains and across Massachusetts. On January 24 – 56 days after leaving Lake Champlain – Knox’s “noble train of artillery” arrived in Cambridge.

By early March, with Knox’s heavy guns positioned for the siege, General Washington prepared to bombard the British entrenched in Boston. Recognizing they were trapped, the British troops—accompanied by many Loyalists—began to leave. On March 18 the victorious Continental Army marched into the city.

Knox later rose to become the chief artillery officer of the Continental Army, accompanying Washington on most of his campaigns. He established training centers for artillerymen and manufacturing facilities for weaponry that were valuable assets to the army.

Following the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1789, he became President Washington's Secretary of War.

Today the Knox trail features 56 commemorative plaques along the length of the trail across New York and Massachusetts. The second plaque in the sequence is here in Bolton Landing, where the team spent a night during the traverse of the length of Lake George.

If you'd like to visit the remaining Knox markers in Warren County, check out our driving tour.

Welcome to Prospect Mountain, Lake George's most popular peak for more than a century.

James Ferguson was the first to see the commercial potential of its panoramic view. An esteemed Lake George physician, he went into real estate upon retiring from medicine and in 1877 bought the summit of what he would name "Ferguson Mountain." Then built a hotel there that he called the "Ferguson House," but it burned down just three years later. When he rebuilt, he promoted it as a sanatarium for tuberculosis patients.

"The tonic air seems to give unaccustomed vigor during the day, and you would only need half the sleep," he said.

William Peck bought the building in the early 1890s and reconfigured it as a hotel that he called the Prospect Mountain House, adding a restaurant and dance hall.

Getting to the Mountain House required paying $1 for a bumpy carriage ride or walking up the mountain's winding trails -- but that all changed in 1895. That's when, in the dead of winter, the Otis Engineering & Construction Company started building a cog railway to the summit from a point near the terminus of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad. The first passengers were transported up the mountain in June, just six months later.

"Finest Mountain View in America," said their ads. "Cars run every 30 minutes. Fare for round trip, 50 cents.”

Carrying its passengers more than a mile steeply upward, it was the longest cable railroad in the nation – but it ceased operation just eight years later. Over time, the track, trestle and cars rotted and the metal was donated a decade later to the effort to win World War I. The dance hall and bowling alley on the summit eventually burned down.

In the 1920s, George Foster Peabody, the mountain’s last private owner, ultimately donated all of the land to the state to be used for recreational purposes. Today, we can still hike the route of the railway to the summit via a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Northway.

City Hall makes quite a civic statement. Designed by the prestigious Albany-based architectural firm of Fuller & Pitcher, this Neoclassical jewel was completed when Glens Falls was still a village. It became the seat of city government in 1908 when Glens Falls incorporated as a city.

The Village purchased the property from Benjamin F. Lapham for $10,000. Local architect W. E. Lawrence designed the building. John Reilley did the excavation. Peter Keeler built the superstructure. The project took two years to complete. The first regular board meeting was held here on May 26, 1902.

Many departments have been moved over the years to new locations in the building. Only the Clerk’s Office has remained in the same location since the building was built.

The clock at the building's apex was installed as part of the city's Centennial celebration and made operational on December 31, 2007.

City Hall is part of the 93-building Three Squares Historic District that includes select locations on Glen, South, Warren, and Ridge Streets. The district is now listed on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Hovey Pond today is the centerpiece of a beautiful park. It wasn't always such. Starting in the 1780s, it played an instrumental role in Queensbury's economic development.

Walter Briggs was the first to see the industrial potential of Halfway Brook, which runs into the pond. When dammed, the brook became "Briggs Pond" and powered his sawmill and gristmill.

For an authentic window into Adirondack life, it's hard to beat Martin's Tree Farm, the striking center of which is the great barn that Andy LeBlanc built a dozen years ago for the big saw that's sheltered within it.

Even before completing the barn, LeBlanc recalls, people started gathering there as though it were a kind of community center, especially for artisans.

As a kid, LeBlanc spent a lot of time at his grandfather's farm in New Hampshire. “The barn there was always a center of activity, whether we were working or playing,” he says. “That experience stayed with me, and as a carpenter years later I found myself drawn to barns."

LeBlanc met Gary and Winefred Martin after restoring the huge barn at nearby Nettle Meadow Farm.

"They asked if I could build them a new barn. Gary had a sawmill and needed a permanent structure to replace a temporary one he'd been using for years. We quickly became friends. Most of the wood for the barn came from their property. We'd walk through the woods, select the trees, and he'd cut them down and mill them.”

A big challenge was finding exactly the right tree to form the arch over the barn's main entrance. LeBlanc has an unusual approach: first he talks to trees to see how they feel about being taken down.

“It's more of a non-verbal connection where I get a sense of yes or no answers,” he explains. “It's like dowsing, but without any tools—just a feeling in my body."

“On the day I went looking, I was in a sunny southern part of the forest when I saw a bright light in the distance. I started walking towards it. When I got close, I looked up and saw a beautiful beech tree with a perfect arch. It had a canker, which meant its life was already compromised. That made it a suitable candidate for harvesting.

To get the tree out, they built a logging road and Gary used his skid steer to transport it. With a traditional Dutch design, the barn took about nine years to complete, with breaks during winter.

“The barn became more than just a building," says LeBlanc. It evolved organically with input from Gary and Wini, making it a true collaborative effort. Now, it's a central hub for their community of artisans. The whole project was a blend of traditional craftsmanship and modern needs, and it's a testament to what can be achieved when people work together with respect for both nature and heritage.”