by Charles Herr
PART Three
The railroad’s strongest opponent would be the Old Forge Company who owned the transportation monopoly on the Fulton Chain’s first four lakes and who did not know that the deeds on the Railway’s Fulton Chain portion already contained right-of-ways from the days of Thomas C. Durant’s Adirondack Railroad Company, a line that ended at North Creek.
Webb’s 1896 deal with the state also provided right-of-way easements through transferred state lands for a projected Clearwater to Raquette Lake “highway.”
In Appendix C of Craig Gilborn’s Durant biography (1981) is Huntington’s letter of November 20, 1899 to E. M. Burns at Herkimer that fully described the poor service of the existing five-hour journey and that both the wealthy and the “public” would benefit from the Railway.
In his letter, he expected the Forge Company that owned the little steamers would fight the Railway’s application to protect their interests, which they did, unless the Railway bought the lines, which they did in 1901.
Huntington wrote that if opponents feared danger from fire, he would draw from his western experience and use hard coal or oil so risk from fire would be minimal.
This was definitely “Huntington’s Railroad”.
Huntington did not need to hear Morgan, his wife’s threats or sit on a keg of nails for the Railway’s justification.
You can almost feel his anger as he described his trips before the Railway: after leaving the N.Y. Central’s train at Fulton Chain station, travelers would “take a little two-mile railroad up to Old Forge; there change to one of the little lake boats, transferring baggage and summer supplies as well; steam for an hour through the Chain until the east end of 4th Lake was reached; there the passenger and his baggage and stores were deposited on the wharf, transferred to wagons and pulled across a “Carry” to 5th Lake.
There another little steamer was taken and baggage and supplies were put on board, and another hour was spent in steaming through 5th, 6th, and 7th Lakes, again came a transfer of the passenger and his bag and baggage to wagons, and another ride to 8th Lake; here there was still another transfer to a third steamer with baggage and stores, and when 8th Lake had been traversed again the passenger was alighted with his baggage and was transported across another carry to Brown’s Tract Inlet, where still another steamer awaited him; and after the seventh transfer of parcels and baggage had been made, the traveler began a long, slow and tiresome trip through that narrow, shallow and tortuous little stream, the steamer often striking the bottom and running into the bank, long poles being used to push her off.
At last the beautiful Raquette Lake was reached, after five hours or more of a journey which had for its only recommendation some charming scenery more than counter-balanced, after the novelty had worn off, by the discomfort and inconvenience attending antiquated and out-of-date methods”.
In closing, a November 1897 article, published shortly after the latest pro-deCamp decision that Dix’s lawyer probably felt would not be reversed, announced that a “Clearwater to Raquette railroad” touching the head of Fourth Lake, would be built with Dr. Webb and W. W. Durant as the interested parties. It said the public would benefit greatly and did not mention Dix.
The right-of-way purchase was probably recent and the article had all of the points favorable to deCamp.
But by the summer of 1898, the papers were informing the public that Dr. Webb and Dix’s company were the “projectors”.
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Sources for this article came from issues of the Lowville Journal & Republican, The Malone Farmer, the St. Regis Adirondack News available from the Northern New York Library Network’s website, and the books by the authors mentioned above, especially Craig Gilborn’s “Durant: The Fortunes and Woodland Camps of a Family in the Adirondacks.”