Mount Marcy

Mount Marcy, seen from Newcomb Farm (in Emmons, 1842)

Thomas Cole’s September 1846 Newcomb Farm sketch, a follow-up on the 1842 Emmons engraving (though it has nothing to do with Mount Marcy).

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

An engraving, possibly from a painting by Keene Valley artist Roswell Morse Shurtleff (1838-1915) (from Wallace’s Guide, 1887 edition)

Mountain View House(Scott’s; Ames’)

A well-known hostelry on the Plains of Abraham in the town of North Elba, north of the Indian Pass, that figures in several of the entries in “Tales from the Deserted Village.”

Engraving from Seneca Ray Stoddard’s Adirondacks Illustrated, 1881 edition. Mountain View House, also known as Scott’s and Ames’, was spoken of at some length in several pieces included in the anthology.

The first of two photographs from a promotional brochure for the Mountain View House. This photo is labeled in a way similar to that used by Seneca Ray Stoddard. The label appears to say, “Mose Ames House, North Elba, Adirondack.”

A second photo from the Mountain View House brochure, this one credited to the Troy Times.

The New Furnace

An engineering diagram of the “New Furnace,” built in 1854, from the Historic American Engineering Record study of the McIntyre iron works (1978)

A pencil sketch by Benson J. Lossing of the New Furnace, completely enclosed in a building above and below. The sketch was made in 1859,

after the McIntyre works had been shut down for less than a year.

An 1886 photo by Edward Bierstadt, shows the buildings enclosing the New Furnace, both above and below,

completely gone, but the charging bridge still partially intact.

A photo taken by Seneca Ray Stoddard in 1888, two years after the Bierstadt photo, also shows the charging bridge still partially intact, along with the

framework and roof surrounding the wheelhouse on the Hudson River below.

A photograph from the Tahawus Club collection (ca. 1900, used in the 1978 HAER report) shows even the charging bridge for the New Furnace gone, twelve years after Stoddard’s photo was taken (debris appears to lie on the ground on the left side of the photo), but a portion of the wheelhouse (at right) apparently still intact. Note that all five stacks at the top of the furnace tower are intact in this photo.

This diagram from the 1978 HAER report shows how the wheelhouse worked, where pistons forced air into a pipe to feed oxygen to the blast furnace.

The remains of the gear pit, as Jet Lowe’s camera found it in 1978.

Another 1978 HAER shot of the gear pit.

A 1978 image taken by HAER photographer Jet Lowe from the east shows the New Furnace tower, sans stacks, in a condition very similar to that in which it may be found today.

Another Jet Lowe photo from the 1978 HAER study shows the New Furnace as seen through a wide-angle lens.

People

In addition to images of many of the authors whose work is contained in this anthology, we have access to engravings or photos of several key players in our Tales from the Deserted Village. Here is an engraving of Archibald McIntyre, published in the September 25, 1891 issue of the Plattsburgh Sentinel.

This charcoal drawing shows Sabael, the father of Lewis Elijah Benedict, the Indian guide who led the David Henderson party from North Elba through Indian Pass to the Iron Dam at what later became the McIntyre iron plantation, also known as Adirondac or the Upper Works. It was Sabael who actually discovered the vast iron lode lying at the source of the Hudson River, although it was his son who brought the Henderson party to it. Sabael is sometimes mistakenly called “Sabael Benedict,” though the last name was one that his son Lewis Elijah took for himself from the geologist, Professor Farrand N. Benedict of the University of Vermont, for whom he served as guide.

John Brown, the hero of Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s second (and partially fictionalized) account of his visit to the Deserted Village. This image is an 1856 engraving made from a daguerrotype, contained in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Besides David Henderson and Archibald McIntyre, the one recurring character in most of the narratives in our anthology is McIntyre guide John Cheney, pictured (above left) in an engraving made around 1873 by Seneca Ray Stoddard from a photo provided by Cheney.

Above right, Cheney’s headstone can be found standing in the Newcomb cemetery.

Mills Blake, lifelong friend of Adirondack Survey superintendent Verplanck Colvin. Blake was the last person known to possess a copy of the unpublished Colvin manuscript from which his literary description of the discovery of Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds, contained in this anthology, was taken. The manuscript can no longer be found, and may have been destroyed by Blake.

Two images of Native American guide Mitchell Sabattis. Left, an unattributed photograph. Above, an engraving from a drawing by Benson J. Lossing, 1859.

Reuben Sanford, founding father of the town of Wilmington on the north side of the High Peaks, in an engraving from the February 12, 1903 issue of the Elizabethtown Post. Sanford surveyed much of the lands purchased by the McIntyre company around the Deserted Village. It was for him that Lake Sanford was named.

William B. “Bill” Nye (1816-1893), renowned Adirondack guide from North Elba, in a Seneca Ray Stoddard photo dated September 16, 1878. Just five years earlier, in 1873, Nye was accompanying Verplanck Colvin when they discovered Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds, the highest source of the waters that feed into the Hudson River.

Schoolhouse, sawmill and iron dam

Benson J. Lossing’s 1859 drawing shows Adirondac’s famous “iron dam,” immediately below which stood the iron works’

sawmill and, later, the schoolhouse-cum-trout hatchery.

An unattributed, undated sketch shows Adirondac’s former schoolhouse and church, here apparently relocated from the hamlet’s main (only!) street to the banks of the Hudson, where the Adirondack Club used the building for a trout

hatchery. (Sketch from Arthur Masten’s Story of Adirondac)

An unattributed, undated photo from the 1978 HAER report shows the Adirondac sawmill, situated on the Hudson River adjacent to

the site where the schoolhouse was eventually relocated.

The former “Church of Tubal Cain,” aka the Adirondac schoolhouse, shown here in a photo taken by Tahawus Club member Norman Foote around 1910.

Next to the “church,” used as a fish hatchery by the Adirondack/Tahawus Club, is the McIntyre iron works’ old sawmill. Immediately upstream is the

famous “iron dam.” (Photo from the Adirondack Museum)

A picture postcard, postmarked “Tahawus N.Y., July 23, 1914,” shows the schoolhouse/church, sawmill and iron dam, with several Tahawus Club cottages visible behind them. (Courtesy Newcomb Historical Society)