Plattsburg—Saranac Lake—Tupper Lake—Watertown—Hannibal; State 3.247.9 m.
Two-lane concrete and macadam.
Delaware & Hudson R.R. parallels route between Plattsburg and Saranac Lake; Grass River R.R. between Tupper Lake and Cranberry Lake; New York Central R.R. between Benson Mines and Sackets Harbor.
Running north of the more popular Adirondack tourist routes, State 3 loops across the northern lobe of the State between Lakes Champlain and Ontario through regions where the ugly scars left by ruthless nineteenth-century lumbermen have not yet been covered over by second growths and where the tourist trade and thin-soil farming have been unable to take up the slack left by the declining lumber and iron-mining industries. The Black River Valley was part of the lands purchased by French émigrés in the early decades of the nineteenth century with the aim of establishing here a ‘Little France.’
Section a. PLATTSBURG to TUPPER LAKE; 72.2 m. States 3
The Saranac Valley, which the highway follows for 40 miles, is a slice of backwoods America left stranded by the receding lumber and iron industries in the eighties. On the farms are weatherbeaten houses without barns but with rambling outhouses. Here and there a pioneer log cabin still serves as a home—logs hewn square around two or three rooms, the crevices chinked with plaster, the whole sometimes made gruesome with a ghostly coat of whitewash. But the Saranac Valley is no Tobacco Road. Besides farming, the men work on the roads, bolster the larder by hunting and fishing, and get a little hard money by selling surplus milk or lumber cut on the farm woodlot and sawed at one of the three or four sawmills operating in the valley.
Southwest of Saranac Lake, rugged, heavily timbered, mountain-bound State land is broken by innumerable ponds, lakes, and streams; in the Raquette River Valley are swamps ugly with the rotting stumps of once magnificent stands of timber.
West of PLATTSBURG, 0 m. (140 alt., 14,713 pop.) (see Tour 21), State 3 follows for several miles the route of a plank road built in 1850 to haul iron ore out of the mountains.
At 9.3 m. is the junction with State 374.
Right on State 374 through mountainous country to DANNEMORA, 5.2 m. (1,400 alt., 3,348 pop.), named for the city in Sweden because of the high quality of its iron deposits. A forbidding, 20-foot-high concrete wall (L), topped by round, glass-enclosed lookouts, encircles the CLINTON STATE PRISON (not open to public), with some 40 buildings and 2,000 inmates, on a tract of about 14,000 acres.
In 1845, 90 convicts from Sing Sing and Auburn were brought here to work privately owned iron deposits on Dannemora Mountain; the mines were taken over by the State in 1866, but, showing a steady loss, were abandoned in 1880. The combination of labor in the mines and the long, bitter winters earned the place the name ‘Siberia of the North.’ But mining has been replaced by the manufacture of toweling, ticking, and yarn, and by farming. Some 1,500 prisoners study courses ranging from reading and writing to engineering and the arts. In July 1929, a riot took place, said to have been led by ‘lifers,’ in which three prisoners lost their lives.
West of Dannemora, State 374 climbs the shoulder of Dannemora Mountain, descending to touch the foot of CHAZY LAKE (fishing), 11 m. At 14.2 m. is the beginning of a foot trail to the summit and fire observation tower of LYON MOUNTAIN (3,830 alt.), 3 m.
LYON MOUNTAIN, 17.6 m. (1,753 alt., 1,136 pop.), with its streets of uniform, frame company houses, is near the northwestern base of Lyon Mountain; dust from mine tailings covers the countryside and huge piles of slag identify the mines of the Chateaugay Ore and Iron Company, which has worked these beds since 1873. From a shaft sunk more than 1,600 feet into the mountainside, miners blast out the ore, which is crushed, separated, concentrated, and sintered in a tangle of buildings and conveyors on a hilltop, to emerge ore of such high quality that it is in demand in every part of the United States and Canada. The great cables of the Brooklyn and Golden Gate bridges get their strength from iron mined in the bowels of Lyon Mountain.
State 374 continues north through an almost primitive wilderness to LOWER CHATEAUGAY LAKE (bathing, boating, fishing, hunting), 27.8 m.
CHAUTEAUGAY, 35.8 m. (972 alt., 1,169 pop.), is at the junction with US 11 (see Tour 18).
State 3 follows the Saranac River past several decadent villages that were built around nineteenth-century lumbering activities and iron mines. The Saranac Valley iron industry reached its peak in the early forties and declined about 1880 because of competition from the western ore beds and the exhaustion of the local supply of wood for charcoal burning.
In REDFORD, 21 m. (1,100 alt., 500 pop.), Charles Corning and Gersham Cook of Troy established a glass factory in 1831 and permanently abandoned it 20 years later. The secret of manufacture died with the men who invented the process; white Potsdam sandstone was a principal ingredient and was melted in imported pots made of Stonebridge clay. Today the pale green Redford glass, in the form of goblets, vases, balls, canes, and crown window glass, is a collector’s item.
In MERRILLVILLE, 35.1 m. (1,725 alt., 130 pop.), is the junction with State 99.
Right on State 99 to LOON LAKE POST OFFICE (golf, riding, tennis, boating, bathing, fishing), 3.3 m. (1,759 alt.), on the southeastern shore of Loon Lake. In 1879 Fred W. Chase built his crude 31-room hotel here; Chase’s successors run a 3,000-acre resort colony with hotel rooms and sumptuous private cottages for 500 wealthy guests.
Loon Lake is one of the many lakes comprising a chain between here and Old Forge (see Tour 15), which affords a scenic canoe route.
State 3 crosses a rolling hill land of small farms with weatherbeaten houses, tangles of little outbuildings, fields of hay, corn, and potatoes, and thin pastures grazing a few cows and sheep.
Clinging to a hillside above the highway, TRUDEAU, 49.8 m. (1,650 alt., 225 pop.), is the home of the TRUDEAU SANATORIUM, the tuberculosis hospital established in 1885 as the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium by Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau (see Tour 16). Around the large central buildings the 22 large cottages housing 300 patients are grouped on the terraced hillside, each with its large screened or glass-enclosed cure porch where the ‘curers’ rest on their white cots. Near the entrance gate is the famous LITTLE RED (open), a small, two-room, red-painted wood cottage, one of the two structures in which Dr. Trudeau started his sanatorium, preserved as a memorial and containing mementos of the great pioneer in the cure of tuberculosis. In front of the Administration Building is the bronze TRUDEAU STATUE, a life-size figure by Gutzon Borglum representing the doctor in a reclining position, shawl over his shoulders, gazing thoughtfully over the panorama of river, valley, and mountain.
SARANAC LAKE, 51.2 m. (1,540 alt., 7,132 pop.), is at the junction with State 86 (see Tour 16).
Southwest of Saranac Lake State 3 cuts for nearly 16 miles through an almost unbroken wilderness and swampland along the eastern and southern shores of Lower, Middle, and Upper Saranac Lakes; the road, although graded, has not been completely surfaced (1940).
At 60.5 m. is the beginning of a foot trail.
Left on this trail, 2.7 m., with a 1,700-foot ascent, to the crest of AMPERSAND MOUNTAIN (3,365 alt.). At its southern base is Ampersand Lake, along whose shore William J. Stillman bought 22,500 acres from the State in 1858 as a home for the Adirondack Club, which grew out of Camp Maples, as it was named by James Russell Lowell, or the Philosophers’ Camp, as the guides called it. The Philosophers’ Camp of August 1858 was an excursion of Boston’s Saturday Club intelligentsia into the wilds of the Adirondacks on Follensbee Pond, near Tupper Lake; the company included, besides Stillman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, Louis Agassiz, Ebenezer R. Hoar, and Jeffries Wyman. Longfellow was invited but, it is said, declined when he heard that Emerson was taking a gun along. Emerson, who wrote a dull poem describing the expedition, tried to smoke a pipe and be ‘one of us’ and got sick.
At 64.4 m. the highway crosses the INDIAN CARRY between Upper Saranac Lake and the Raquette River. Indian relics discovered here support the theory that a thoroughfare or chain of settlements extended between the Champlain Valley and that of the Upper St. Lawrence. The carry is one of the overland links in the 150-mile canoe route between Old Forge at the southern end of the Fulton Chain of lakes (see Tour 15) and Loon Lake (see above).
At 66.6 m. is the eastern junction with State 10 (see Tour 18), with which State 3 runs in common to Tupper Lake. The route skirts the lowlands and backwashes of the Raquette River and passes SUNMOUNT (R), 71 m., the United States veterans’ hospital for tubercular victims of the World War, a group of interconnected three-story brick buildings.
TUPPER LAKE, 72.2 m. (1,569 alt., 5,271 pop.), is two parts industrial and one part resort center. The village attracts fishermen in the spring, idlers in summer, hunters in the fall, and skiers in the winter. It was once the industrial and commercial metropolis of the Adirondacks, with large lumbering, papermaking, and woodworking plants. Only one plant remains, the Oval Wood Dish Company, making wooden butter dishes and employing about 200. In 1889 ‘Uncle John’ Hurd extended his Northern and Adirondack Railroad to the shore of Tupper Lake and built a giant sawmill, around which the early village grew.
At Tupper Lake is the western junction with State 10.
Left on State 10, at 2.7 m., is the beginning of a foot trail; left on this trail to the summit of MOUNT MORRIS (3,163 alt.), 4.5 m. The first fire observation tower in the Adirondacks was erected on Mount Morris in 1909.
Arising from the surface of BIG TUPPER LAKE (fishing), 6.4 m., are many islands, gnarled and fistlike. Private camps line the lake shore; fishermen troll and cast for trout, whitefish, and landlocked salmon.
At 8.7 m. is the junction (R) with State 421; right here 1.6 m. to the AMERICAN LEGION MOUNTAIN CAMP for convalescent war veterans.
State 10 crosses LONG LAKE (fishing), 25 m., a long, narrow body of crystal-clear water, which is actually the widened channel of the Raquette River. During spring floods the water level is sometimes raised as much as 14 feet; therefore boathouses stand on stilts.
LONG LAKE, 27 m. (1,660 alt., 225 pop.), is at the junction with State 28N (see Tour 15).
Section b. TUPPER LAKE to WATERTOWN; 103.1 m. State 3
For more than 50 miles west of TUPPER LAKE, 0 m., State 3 twists past swampy backwashes and fields of rotting stumps, a wasteland despoiled by lumbering operations and slowly being reclaimed by second growths of birch, beech, and spruce. The few villages, bunched around lumber and paper mills, are ghosts of their former prosperous selves.
CRANBERRY LAKE (fishing, hunting), 26 m. (1,502 alt., 85 pop.), on the lake of the same name, is a summer resort of hotels and cottages.
At 34.2 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
Left on this road 1.7 m. to the NEW YORK STATE RANGER SCHOOL, associated with the State College of Forestry, Syracuse University; the school offers 45 or 50 young men between 18 and 35 years old a 44-week course in forestry, ranger service, management of forest estates and nurseries, and general conservation work.
West of the Adirondack State Park, whose western boundary is crossed at 54.5 m., the countryside levels out and farms grow more numerous; but cultivation is a struggle, and farmers ‘sow pebbles in the spring and reap boulders in the fall.’
At 66.8 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
Right on this road 1.5 m. to LAKE BONAPARTE, named for Joseph Bonaparte (see Tour 18), who bought several large North Country tracts as part of a plan to erect a ‘Little France’ in the northern wilds of New York.
NATURAL BRIDGE, 74.8 m. (820 alt., 400 pop.), is named for the arch eroded from the limestone by the Indian River; caverns (boat trip 25¢) extend 1,000 feet underground.
CARTHAGE, 84.2 m. (742 alt., 4,205 pop.), is an important papermaking town; the paper mills, on both sides of the Black River, produce tissues, bags, kraft, and board. One plant produces chemicals used in papermaking.
West of Carthage State 3 closely follows the Black River, which in the 26 miles to Lake Ontario drops 480 feet through a series of rapids and waterfalls, supplying water power for a number of paper mills, nuclei for communities of millworkers living in clusters of company houses. One of the largest of these is DEFERIET, 90.3 m. (641 alt., 739 pop.), which sprang up almost overnight after a paper mill was erected in 1900 by the St. Regis Paper Company. The place was named for Baroness Jenika de Ferriet, who about 1830 built a beautiful mansion, called the Hermitage, on the bank of the Black River. Here she lived with her servants, entertained other French émigrés including Joseph Bonaparte, cared for her flowers, and played on the first grand piano in the North Country. Shortly after her return to France in 1840 the house burned down.
In GREAT BEND, 92 m. (677 alt., 400 pop.), a papermaking village, is the junction with a country road.
Right 1 m. on this road to PINE CAMP, 13,000 acres of submarginal sand plain used by the U.S. Government as a summer military training camp and maneuver ground.
WATERTOWN, 103.1 m. (478 alt., 33,323 pop.) (see Tour 18), is at the junction with US 11 (see Tour 18), State 37 (see Tour 19), State 12 and State 12E (see Tour 25).
Section c. WATERTOWN to HANNIBAL; 72.6 m. State 3
State 3 pushes toward the blue expanse of Lake Ontario over the bed of the old Sackets Harbor-Watertown plank road and courses down the lake shore past War of 1812 battlefields, sandy bathing beaches, and summer cottage colonies.
West of WATERTOWN, 0 m., are prosperous dairy farms, pastures close-cropped by blooded stock, and stretches of corn, oats, and hay broken by woodlots.
In 1823 Stephen Blanchard erected BLANCHARD’S LIBRARY (L), 3.9 m., as an inn for the slowly developing North Country. Converted into a library in 1913, it houses a collection of rare manuscripts and books on the settlement of the area.
At 8.8 m. is the junction with the concrete Sackets Harbor Road.
Right on this road 0.5 m. to the GUTHRIE HOME, a two-story brick dwelling erected in 1801 and occupied from 1817 to 1848 by Dr. Samuel Guthrie (1782–1848), physician, chemist, and inventor, one of the three men credited with the discovery of chloroform, though he was unaware of its anesthetic value and used it to ‘needle’ his whisky. His invention in 1823 of a highly improved percussion pill and firing lock made the old flintlock obsolete.
SACKETS HARBOR, 1.5 m. (246 alt., 742 pop.), is a lakeside village of wide, shaded streets and spacious old dwellings settled in 1801. On July 19, 1812, five British battleships sailed into the harbor and were met by the American ship Oneida and a land force of farmers equipped with a single cannon, the ‘Old Sow’ (see Tour 25), which fired the first shot in the War of 1812. The men wrapped 24-pound balls, the only ammunition available, in old carpet to make them fit the 32-pound gun. The British fire ‘broke nothing but the Sabbath,’ most of their shots falling short of the bluff; a 32-pound ball from a British gun fell beyond the bluff and was rushed to the Old Sow, a sergeant crying, ‘We’ve caught ’em out now, boys, send it back.’ The shot tore the mast from the Royal George, British flagship; the Oneida’s 16 guns had crippled the other ships; and the British withdrew.
MADISON BARRACKS (R), at the east village line, a U.S. Army post accommodating 45 officers and 1,040 enlisted men, consists of rows of brick and stone barracks and officers’ homes around an oval-shaped parade ground. U.S. Grant was stationed here in 1843–9; contrary to popular legend about Grant’s fondness for liquor, it is said that he organized the Sons of Temperance in Sackets Harbor.
In the OLD MILITARY CEMETERY (L), Broad St., surrounded by a fence that once enclosed the White House in Washington, are the graves of General Zebulon Pike, discoverer of Pike’s Peak, and other soldiers of the War of 1812.
SACKETS HARBOR BATTLEGROUND, north end of Main St., a public park overlooking the lake, contains a monument to the memory of the soldiers who fought in the Battle of Sackets Harbor.
The OLD UNION HOTEL (L), Main St., a stone building erected in 1817, is a museum maintained by the Sackets Harbor Civic League, containing Indian implements and documents and relics of the War of 1812.
The AUGUSTUS SACKET HOME (L), Main St., a spreading, white frame dwelling built in 1801 and still occupied, was used as a hospital during the War of 1812.
At 18.5 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
Right on this road 0.6 m. to HENDERSON HARBOR (bass fishing), a popular summer resort with hotels, cottages, and inns overlooking Horse Island in the Bay. During the War of 1812, sharpshooters were stationed here to harass the British in their attempt to reach the mainland from Horse Island.
The OTIS HOUSE (R), 28.5 m., a weatherbeaten frame structure with gable roof and end chimneys, was used as a hospital for British soldiers following the Battle of Big Sandy. A granite boulder, 28.8 m., marks the scene of that night skirmish.
The Americans at Sackets Harbor were building the Superior, a great ship of war, which was to carry 66 guns. A fleet of rowboats, loaded with guns and supplies for the ship, started up Lake Ontario from Oswego. Discovered and fired on by British men-of-war, the Americans put in at Sandy Creek, unloaded their stores and defeated a British landing party. All supplies, except a four-ton cable, were loaded into oxcarts and transported to Sackets Harbor. But no vehicle was sturdy enough to carry the cable. After a week’s delay 100 soldiers from Colonel Stark’s militia regiment shouldered the cable and trudged the 20 miles to Sackets Harbor in two days.
Southward several roads swing right from State 3 to lakeside resorts (fishing, golf, bathing). In PORT ONTARIO, 40.2 m. (280 alt., 75 pop.), is SELKIRK SHORES STATE PARK (parking 25¢), of 800 acres, opened in 1928. Improved by CCC workers, the park has 200 fireplaces and tables for picnics, a long pier jutting into the lake, and trails through dense woods. Fishing is good.
MEXICO, 48.2 m. (384 alt., 1,297 pop.), is at the junction with US 104 (see Tour 26). FULTON, 64.4 m. (400 alt., 13,337 pop.), is at the junction with State 57 (see Tour 26). HANNIBAL, 72.6 m. (330 alt., 410 pop.), is at the junction with US 104 (see Tour 26).