GRAPHIC SUPPLEMENT TO

Tales from the Deserted Village

An anthology edited by Lee Manchester

The Adirondack Lodge

The Adirondack Lodge, on the north side of Indian Pass, about 10 miles away from the Deserted Village, was closely linked to the Upper Works by its builder and proprietor, Henry van Hoevenberg, who visited the Adirondack/Tahawus Club colony at least once a year. Two items by van Hoevenberg are included in “Tales from the Deserted Village.”

A promotional postcard, made from a photograph taken in 1888 by Seneca Ray Stoddard. (From the postcard collection of Chris Beattie.)

Henry van Hoevenberg telling one of his famous campfire stories to the guests at his Adirondack Lodge, in this Seneca

Ray Stoddard photograph (date unknown). (From the Mary MacKenzie Historic Slide Collection)

Henry van Hoevenberg amidst the ruins of the Adirondack Lodge after the devastating firestorm of 1903. The photo is

probably by Seneca Ray Stoddard, but not certain.

Calamity Pond, Lake Colden,

Avalanche Lake & Pass

Accounts of visits to these nearby sites in the High Peaks are integral parts of many, if not most, of the “Tales from the Deserted Village.

Engraving from a drawing by Benson J. Lossing, 1859, from his book, The Hudson, From the Wilderness to the Sea

David Henderson monument at Calamity Pond (Benson J. Lossing, 1859)

A photo of the Henderson monument at Calamity Pond by Seneca Ray Stoddard (date unknown).

Lake Colden (Benson J. Lossing, 1859)

The great trap dyke at Avalanche Lake (artist unknown), from Ebenezer Emmons’ 1842 Geology of New York, Part Two: Second Geological District

“Hitch Up, Matilda!”, an illustration of a story that figures in Seneca Ray Stoddard’s description of Avalanche Lake in his Adirondacks Illustrated.

Henderson LakeHenderson Lake is the body of water immediately adjacent to the Deserted Village. The outlet of Henderson Lake is the Hudson River; one can point to several streams and ponds that feed Henderson Lake as the “source” of the mighty Hudson, but it is only at the point where their waters flow out of Henderson Lake that anyone calls those waters “the Hudson.” It was the water of the Hudson that powered the mills and blowers of the McIntyre iron-works village.

An engraving by John Henry Bufford from an 1837 drawing by Charles Ingham

An engraving by Charles Burt from a painting by Hudson River School artist Regis-Francois Gignoux, published in Joel

Headley’s The Adirondack; or, Life in the Woods (1869 edition)

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

From an 1883 card containing multiple Adirondack illustrations by Theodore R. Davis, known for his

illustrations in Harper’s Weekly magazine

An illustration (artist unknown) published in the 1887 edition of E.R. Wallace’s Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks

A charcoal drawing by Tahawus Club member Robert H. Robertson, ca. 1914, included in the 1978 Historic American

Engineering Record report on the Adirondack Iron & Steel Co.

The Indian Pass

It was through the Indian Pass, coming out of North Elba, that the David Henderson party, led by Native American guide Lewis Elijah Benedict, first came to the site of the Deserted Village, in 1826. Ever after, the village served as the take-off point for many an expedition to view the wonders of the Indian Pass.

“The Great Adirondack Pass, Painted on the Spot,” by Charles Ingham, official artist on the New York State Geological Survey expedition from the McIntyre iron works to the Indian Pass and Mount Marcy, 1837. This is the earliest known image of the Indian Pass, looking southward from what was later called Summit Rock. (Painting now in the collection of the Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake)

John Henry Bufford’s lithograph from Charles Ingham’s painting, published in Ebenezer Emmons’ 1838 report on the Geological Survey

“Indian Pass, Tahawus,” by Thomas Cole, 1847.

This is an interesting painting, but it has almost nothing to do, visually, with either the actual Indian Pass or the real Mount Marcy. The painting is mostly significant as an indication of the extraordinary degree to which stories of the Indian Pass and “Mount Tahawus” had served to spark the nineteenth century romantic imagination.

An undated Courier & Ives print

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

An engraving from Seneca Ray Stoddard’s Adirondacks Illustrated. This illustration first appeared in the 1873 edition.

Photo by Seneca Ray Stoddard (date unknown)

“The Indian Pass,” an engraving from the drawing by Harry Fenn, published in Picturesque America #42, edited by William Cullen Bryant, (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1872)

Lake Sanford

Lake Sanford used to be a wide spot in the Hudson River about 5 miles below the Deserted Village; it was filled in with tailings from the titanium mine at Tahawus by the National Lead Company in the 1960s. The lake was named for surveyor Reuben Sanford, the founding father of Wilmington, a township on the north side of the Essex High Peaks.

An engraving by Charles Burt from a drawing or painting by Charles Ingham (1837), published in Joel Headley’s The Adirondack

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

An illustration from Seneca Ray Stoddard’s Adirondacks Illustrated. This illustration appeared in the very first edition of Stoddard’s famous guidebook (1873).

A charcoal rendering by Robert H. Robertson, ca. 1915, from the Historic American Engineering Record report of 1978

Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds

Verplanck Colvin’s drawing of Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds being documented during the famous Adirondack Survey, of which he was superintendent. Colvin and North Elba guide Bill Nye discovered Lake Tear in 1873, first identifying it

as the highest source of the water feeding into the Hudson River. This illustration was published in Colvin’s seventh official report.

Photo of Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds by Seneca Ray Stoddard (date unknown)

The Lower Works(Tahawus)

The Adirondack Club (later, the Tahawus Club) clubhouse at the Lower Works, or Tahawus, ca. 1888, from Harold K. Hochschild’s 1952 history,

Township 34. According to Seneca Ray Stoddard, the earlier workers’ boarding house at Tahawus, which was later used as a hotel run by guide John Cheney and his wife, was burned to the ground by Cheney’s adult son in 1874.

The clubhouse above was built to replace the former boarding house.

Another view of the Lower Works clubhouse, provided by David U. Hunter (1913-2006), great-grandson of “Deserted Village” caretaker Robert Hunter, grandson of Teddy Roosevelt’s “Midnight Ride to the Presidency” carriage driver David Hunter. In his childhood, the Lower Works clubhouse was the winter home of David U. Hunter’s family.

Building wooden cribs for the stone piers that would support the bridge over the Hudson River to the Lower Works. Today, the stone piers still stand in the river

just upstream of the modern vehicular bridge. (Photo provided by David U. Hunter)

Charcoal rendering by Robert H. Robertson, ca. 1915, of the Lower Works bridge. (HAER, 1978)

Maps

An 1837 map of the High Peaks, Indian Pass, the McIntyre settlement, and Henderson and Sanford Lakes. This map accompanied William C. Redfield’s November 1, 1837 account of the summiting of Mount Marcy earlier that year by a New York State Geological Survey exploratory party led by Ebenezer Emmons. Redfield’s account was published in the January 1838 issue of the American Journal of Science and Arts.

The southwest corner of David Burr’s 1839 map of Essex County, showing not only the Adirondack Iron Works by Henderson Lake, but the projected course of the wooden-railed Adirondack Railroad to Israel Johnson’s clearing on Clear Pond. The railroad project was started, but never finished.

A portion of an 1840 map of the region surrounding the McIntyre iron works, showing the McIntyre settlement itself.

A map of the iron-works area, developed for an 1854 real-estate sales prospectus.

Two maps from Gray’s Essex County atlas of 1876: At left, the townships to the north of the

High Peaks and the McIntyre iron works; above, Newcomb and North Hudson

townships, featuring “Adirondack, the Deserted Village, 1836” between Lakes Henderson and

Sanford. (No explanation for the 1836 date included with the “Adirondack” label.)

A 1993 map of the surviving buildings of the Tahawus Club colony at the Upper Works, made by architectural historian Wesley Haynes of

the Preservation League of New York State for his March 1994 documentation report, prepared for the Newcomb Historical Society.

Miscellaneous

Essex high peaks, seen from Warren County (in Emmons, 1842)

Benson J. Lossing (1859)

Three illustrations from Benson J. Lossing’s The Hudson, made reference to in the text included in our anthology

Blin’s, a Keene Valley hotel referred to in passing in the anthology. (Illustration from Wallace’s Guide, 1887 edition.)

Because the McIntyre iron works were so isolated, the Adirondack Iron & Steel Company operated its own bank (a one-room annex to the MacNaughton Cottage) and

issued its own notes. This note was sold at auction on January 4, 2007, for $3,250.