The Worst Guides… and The Worst Landowners

PART ONE

Before railroads and automobiles, travelers depended on the quality and skills of North Woods guides to show them the region’s natural beauty, to feed them and provide the best in hunting and fishing.

Often, guides were entrusted with taking ladies in the woods.

The guides, especially those not aligned with large hotels, depended on per diem fees for subsistence and quality reputations for honesty, dependability and woodcraft benefited all guides.

So when two guides brought dishonor to the profession, guides hoped people realized these two were the exception.

In 1901, a group including the largest Adirondack landowners formed the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks.

This group’s goals have been to preserve the health of the Park’s forests and inhabitants for present and future generations.

Its initial critics felt it formed to protect its members’ large preserves.

But its immediate opening of the membership to individuals helped bring about a broad base of support and today it is still a force benefiting the Park.

But two preserve owners brought unneeded bad press nationally upon the group.

Charles Parker. Continue reading →

Lt. Gov. Timothy L. Woodruff’s Letter to W.W. Durant

Just when I think I have learned all of the origins and instigators for the building of the Raquette Lake Railroad during 1899, I find a new participant.

I have read of Collis Huntington’s impatience with the inefficiencies of the Fulton Chain steamers and stages from Old Forge’s transportation monopoly’s companies, his sitting on a keg of nails during a long wait.

Then his wife refused to visit him at Pine Knot until a builder of the transcontinental railroad built a railroad to their camp.

Dr. Webb did plan on a road from Clearwater to Raquette Lake; the Raquette Lake Railroad would use the two mile lumber railroad built in 1897–1898 by John Dix to Rondaxe Lake as the beginning of this road’s route. Continue reading →

The Navigation Companies from Inlet to Raquette Lake

Part Seven

Imagine the reaction of Charles Moshier when he received a message in December 1897 from Fred Kirch informing him that three steamers, three scows, a tally-ho coach, buckboards and other property were sold for $5000 cash to brother-in-law Frank Tiffany, especially when a recent inventory by Kirch tallied in excess of $5100.

Frank Tiffany’s plans will remain unknown and if they involved Kirch.

Pages are missing from the diary he kept for this period.

When no proceeds from Kirch’s sale were forthcoming for prorated distribution among the stockholders, Moshier had Kirch arrested in March 1898 and charged with grand larceny.

April 1898 would be newsworthy in more ways than one.

E. H. Myers and Charles O’Hara posted bail for Kirch.

In April, court testimony revealed that Kirch claimed the defect in corporation papers and that he was majority stockholder in what was really a partnership.

As general manager, he had authority to sell the property.  Continue reading →

Part four

Benjamin T. Gilbert, the top shareholder in both companies—the Fulton Chain and Raquette Lake Transportation Company, and the Fulton Chain and Raquette Lake Steamboat Company, both formed in 1896—was the son of Benjamin D. Gilbert.

Benjamin T. left Yale in 1894 to hunt in Colorado, then started for Italy and ended up hunting boar in Morocco, then studied literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and returned to get a B.A. at Columbia.  Continue reading →