Archeology in the Adirondacks

The Last Frontier

David R. Starbuck

• Publisher: University Press of New England
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781512602623
• eBook ISBN: 9781512602630
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

While numerous books have been written about the great camps, hiking trails, and wildlife of the Adirondacks, noted anthropologist David R. Starbuck offers the only archeological guide to a region long overlooked by archeologists who thought that "all the best sites" were elsewhere. This beautifully illustrated volume focuses on the rich and varied material culture brought to the mountains by their original Native American inhabitants, along with subsequent settlements created by soldiers, farmers, industrialists, workers, and tourists. Starbuck examines Native American sites on Lake George and Long Lake; military and underwater sites throughout the Lake George, Fort Ticonderoga, and Crown Point regions; old industrial sites where forges, tanneries, and mines once thrived; farms and the rural landscape; and many other sites, including the abandoned Frontier Town theme park, the ghost town of Adirondac, Civilian Conservation Corps camps, ski areas, and graveyards.

1.1.

A view from the edge of my farm, looking north into the Adirondack Mountains.

TRACES OF THE PAST IN THE ADIRONDACKS

ONE

The Adirondack Mountains are one of the greatest natural wonders in the eastern United States. Blessed with abundant mineral resources, woodlands, lakes, rivers, and spectacular natural vistas just about everywhere, the Adirondacks have welcomed visitors for thousands of years (fig. 1.1). For their part, both residents and visitors have left behind a great many historical and archeological sites that scholars have studied for only the past forty to fifty years (Folwell 1992; Masten 1968; Tyler and Wilson 2009; Williams 2002). Today, archeologists, historians, hikers, and cross-country skiers are able to enjoy viewing the remains of past life in the Adirondacks, with many of the ruins largely undisturbed.

Given the size of the Adirondack region, archeology has only lightly sampled its traces of the past. (The Adirondack Park is defined as being within “the blue line,” an area of 3,125 square miles, or about 6.1 million acres.) Professors and their students from colleges on the fringes of the Adirondack Park arrive in the summers to carry out archeological research, perhaps following much the same routes as the Native Americans who entered the Adirondacks seasonally to hunt and fish. In a seasonally recurring pattern, it seems only natural that college field schools would come here for a few months each summer to give students hands-on experience in archeology, and then we all go home again (or back to school) in the fall. Most modern vacationers follow the same pattern, arriving seasonally to occupy summer camps or wintertime ski areas in the Adirondacks.

In my own case, I have been fortunate to be involved in archeological fieldwork in New York State since 1970, and I have directed excavations since 1991 at the southeastern corner of the park through the auspices of the State University of New York (SUNY) Adirondack, formerly Adirondack Community College. Far to the north, SUNY Plattsburgh has worked on industrial sites and cellar holes at the northeastern corner of the Adirondacks for many years, thanks to the efforts of Drs. Gordon Pollard, James Dawson, and their colleagues. On the western side of the Adirondack Park, faculty based at SUNY Potsdam have worked on both historic and prehistoric sites in the Adirondacks for even longer. There is no direct collaboration among these disparate schools, but clearly we all recognize that the Adirondacks offer very special historic and prehistoric resources that provide solid learning experiences for our students.

Given the modest scale of many of these research projects, it may require an institution more centrally based within the Adirondack Park to generate a year-round program of field investigations. Archeology has great potential here, because the seasonal nature of many activities in the Adirondacks resulted in residents often “walking away” from their camps, ski areas, industries, and logging operations, such that the woods are now relatively full of abandoned huts, camps, mines, and equipment (Bramen 2016). An immense number of cultural survivals remain within the Adirondack Park, awaiting hands-on documentation by scholars today and those of generations to come.

What Can We Hope to Find?

Among the many historical sites in the Adirondacks offering excellent research potential are the abandoned towns, popularly referred to as ghost towns. Best-known among these is the community of Adirondac, first occupied by a mining community between 1826 and 1858, later by cottages used as hunting lodges (1876–1947), and then by mine workers while titanium mining was going on nearby (Manchester 2007; Verner 1968). The community was abandoned for good in 1963. I remember visiting here with my Boy Scout troop while I was in the seventh grade, as we were about to ascend Mount Marcy, and I recall that the buildings were still standing but no longer occupied. Today most of the houses have collapsed (fig. 1.2), and the only building that has been preserved is the MacNaughton cottage where Vice President Theodore Roosevelt and his family were staying in 1901 when they received word that President McKinley had been shot (Esch 2012) (fig. 1.3).

Perhaps not as well known, but just as interesting in its own way, is the community of Graphite (fig. 1.4), which has a great many cellar holes, as well as industrial ruins. The settlement of Graphite was the largest of several small communities in the eastern Adirondacks that grew up around the mining of graphite in the late 1800s; these hamlets stretch from the town of Wilton in the south for a distance of about sixty miles north to Ticonderoga. A crushing mill, boardinghouses, sheds, sawmills, and other specialized buildings were all necessary to support the mining operations around Graphite. When cheaper labor and other sources of the mineral elsewhere brought mining operations to a halt in 1921, salvage activities soon removed the buildings and machinery, and the forest quickly obscured the foundations that were left. This pattern has been repeated hundreds of times over in the Adirondacks, with extractive industries lasting only as long as easily accessible veins of ore and low-priced labor were available.

1.2.

The ruins of one of the houses at Adirondac in June 2017. Of the many crumbling dwellings at this abandoned ghost town, this one has the most intact fireplace and chimney.

1.3.

The MacNaughton cottage in the community of Adirondac in June 2017. As noted on the interpretive panel, this “is the only wood frame structure that remains from the iron mining era.” Facing collapse, it was acquired and restored by the Open Space Institute.

1.4.

Historical plaque for the abandoned town of Graphite.

Also of note are abandoned camps of the public works program known as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Eleven of these camps were constructed in the Adirondacks, to provide work for unemployed men during the Great Depression, and between 1933 and 1942 they built roads, camps, trails, dams, fire towers, and more, and nationwide they planted nearly three billion trees (Podskoch 2011; Hodges 2016). One of the best of the Adirondack camps is in Pack Demonstration Forest in Warrensburg, where the ruins of mess halls and abandoned mines (both lime and graphite) are attractively dispersed throughout the forest (fig. 1.5). My father worked as a foreman for the CCC (at a different camp), and he recounted fond memories every time we drove past the turnoff on Route 9 for Pack Forest. Across the country some 2.5 million young men worked for the CCC, and the ruins of their Adirondack camps should provide wonderful fodder for archeologists and labor historians.

There also are small, nearly abandoned hamlets and crossroads almost everywhere in the Adirondacks, many of which would be ideal candidates for archeological research. As an example, a recent publication featured a hamlet that is very close to me:

Starbuckville: In 1846, Isaac Starbuck started a tannery along the Schroon River in the area now known as Starbuckville. Starbuckville grew into a thriving community. In addition to the tannery, there were several mills, including a carding mill and a grist mill all operating in and around the mill dam. The Sunnyside Hotel was built in the late 1870s on the south side of the bridge by Edgar Bentley. There was also a school district & several boarding houses for tannery workers. A shoe manufacturing business, started by Isaac Starbuck and his brothers Edward and George, burned down in 1870. The Sunnyside Hotel was destroyed by fire in 1905. The other remaining buildings have either burned, fallen down or been remodeled. (Adirondack Journal, June 8, 2013, 10)

1.5.

The surviving fireplace and chimney from a CCC mess hall in Pack Forest. CCC Camp S-101, Company 289, established its camp here on May 17, 1934; about two hundred men lived in tents and worked on forestry projects in 1934–1935. The camp was closed on January 9, 1936.

I clearly have a personal interest in Starbuckville, which is only two miles from my home in Chestertown; in fact, Isaac Starbuck grew up in the farmhouse that I now occupy. Sadly, the type of abandonment that occurred in Starbuckville is all too frequent throughout the Adirondacks, with highly mobile populations often seeking higher wages or cultural amenities farther west or closer to major population centers (fig. 1.6).

1.6.

Abandoned house in the hamlet of Starbuckville, a community that has shrunk greatly since the 1800s.

Of course, structures in the built environment that are rapidly becoming archeological sites do not have to be the size of a town or even a hamlet. There are some thirty-two steel observation (fire) towers scattered throughout the Adirondacks, and one tower has become an outdoor exhibit at the Adirondack Experience, the Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, formerly the Adirondack Museum (fig. 1.7). Given the changing methods for detecting fires, these towers are no longer used to spot fires in the park and now are simply beautiful “relics” on the summits of mountains (Stoltie 2016).

1.7.

The Whiteface Mountain Observation Tower...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Traces of the Past in the Adirondacks
• 2. Native Americans
• 3. Forts and Battlefields
• 4. Industrial Ruins in the Adirondacks
• 5. Family Farms and the Rural Landscape
• 6. Tourism and the Hospitality Industry
• 7. Life and Death in the Adirondacks
• 8. What Does the Future Hold?
• Appendix. Adirondack Attractions with Collections and Exhibits of Interest to Archeologists
• Further Reading
• Index