Lost in the Adirondacks: Mining booms and busts at Tahawus

I dwell in a lonely house I knowThat vanished many a summer ago, And left no trace but the cellar walls, And a cellar in which the daylight fallsAnd the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow... I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart... - Robert Frost ("Ghost House") TICONDEROGA | Like most American mining camps, the Adirondack ghost town of Tahawus had its share of booms and busts. Today, there isn't much left of the 10,000-acre Tahawus site since many, but not all, of the old buildings, have either crumbled away or been removed, for safety concerns, since the 1990s. T.R.'s Midnight Ride Tahawus rose and fell between two periods of iron and titanium-related mining booms spanning over a century. Perhaps the town was best known for the role it played in New York-born U.S. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt's legendary "midnight ride" following the Sept. 6, 1901, assassination of U.S. President William McKinley in Buffalo located 318 miles away. "Roosevelt embarked on a hiking trip up Mount Marcy from Adirondac, where his family was staying," C-SPAN journalist Brian Lamb writes in his 2004 book titled "Booknotes on American Character." "Three hours into the trip, a mounted park ranger alerted him that McKinley was in critical condition." Next, "Roosevelt embarked on his 'midnight ride' from the Tahawus Club, making his way by a series of horse-drawn wagon rides through the night, over rough terrain and wilderness. McKinley passed when Roosevelt was somewhere between Tahawus and Minerva, effectively making Roosevelt the 26th president," according to one of the few online histories of the 1901 incident which appears on Adirondack.net. While neither lawless nor rough-and-tumble like its Wild West counterparts, this New York mining town had its appeal to roustabouts as well as skilled laborers in search of a living and a roof over their heads. Between the mining booms of the 1800s and 1900s, the site of the old town became a popular place for sportsmen by the late 1800s and early 1900s being rebooted as a North Country-style "safari club." The days of Tahawus' lodge and hunt club ended just after World War II when titanium mining expanded only to fold, forever, in 1989. The naming game Several online sources add confusion to the various names of Upper Hudson hamlets. Sources cite Tahawus as being first christened as the village of McIntyre in the 1820s, but it appears not to have been previously named Adirondac as some sources note. Consider an 1854 prospectus: "A village has also been located about 11 miles south of the above-named village (Adirondac) on this estate, called 'Tahawus'..." And an 1858 map shows two distinct settlements, too: Adirondac and Tahawus. Tahawus — a purported Native American name for New York State's tallest peak, Mt. Marcy, "the Cloud Splitter," is located nearby. But the origin of the Tahawus name is questioned by several researchers. And who knows for certain if ancient native people had a name for the peak since there appears to be no bonafide record of it? According to Charles Feno Hoffman's 1839 book, "Wild Scenes at the Sources of the Hudson," "Mount Marcy, as it has been christened, not improperly, after the public functionary who first suggested the survey of this interesting region, presents a perfect pyramidal top when viewed from Lake Sandford (Sanford)…. soaring as it did far above them, and seeming to pierce, as it were, the blue sky which curtained them, that the poetic Indian epithet of Ta-ha-wus (he splits the sky), was hardly too extravagant to characterize its peculiar grandeur." "Thus, was born the romantic myth that the Native Americans in the region called the highest peak in New York Tahawus," according to former NL Industries manager, researcher, and Newcomb Historical Museum board of trustees member Don Seauvageau. "Many travelers to the region in later years referred to this as the 'proper' name for the peak... Several historians seriously questioned the native name, however, most notably Alfred Donaldson in his 'History of the Adirondacks...' Tahawus is defined as 'He splits the sky.' The term was, as it turns out, not only from Western New York but was not a place name at all." Three hamlets "Archibald McIntyre and David Henderson (founders of McIntyre Adirondack Iron & Steel) discovered iron ore on the banks of the upper Hudson in 1826," according to Adirondack.net. "This prompted the creation of a mining operation that would continue on and off for decades. A nearby village was constructed to support workers and was named McIntyre... The village included two farms, a blast furnace and forge, a puddling furnace, charcoal and brick kilns, trip hammers, a grist mill, and a sawmill. There were 16 dwellings and a building with a cupola that was used as a school, a church, and a general assembly room. The village even had its own bank, the first organized state bank in the Adirondacks, called McIntyre Bank." The McIntyre Adirondack Iron & Steel Company closed due to multiple problems including a recession and less than ideal iron ore transportation routes into and out of the tract. "The 1855 population for the entire Town of Newcomb was 226, and this included all three hamlets; Adirondac, Tahawus, and the Pendleton Settlement (Hamlet of Newcomb now)," according to Don Seauvageau. "Postal record shows the establishment of a post office at Tahawus in 1873. It was continuously occupied at the Lower Works site until December 1942, when the name and post office were transferred to the new community of Tahawus at the National Lead mine site. In 1941, National Lead had proposed calling the new hamlet 'Elijah' to honor the Native American Lewis Elijah who had shown the ore deposits to the ultimate mine owners in 1826." (See The Saratogian, Oct. 21, 1941.) Heavy metals and today Rich deposits of iron oxide and titanium oxide — accreted deep inside the Earth during its formation 4.5 billion years ago and later raised "skyward" by mountain building — helped put Tahawus on the map. After the iron mines closed in the late 1800s, the need for titanium found in-situ alongside the local iron deposit, saw a new boom and reopening during World War II. NL Industries reopened the site in 1941 at the request of the U.S. War Department. By 1962, NL facilities had relocated to nearby Newcomb. And when the big mine closed in 1989, Tahawus reverted to a ghost town once again. "One point of order on the titanium ore mined by National Lead," adds Don Seauvageau. "Ilmenite is a titanium-iron oxide mineral, FeTiO3. Its primary use is for the production of TiO2, a pure white, opaque pigment used extensively in coatings and plastics. National Lead shipped its ore to company TiO2 plants, primarily in Sayreville, New Jersey, and St. Louis, Missouri. None of the ore was used commercially for the production of titanium metal. When the Sayreville plant was shut down in the early 1970s, ilmenite mining ceased at Tahawus. The magnetite, an iron ore by-product from ilmenite production, continued to be shipped from the mine until November 1989, when the last rail car of ore rolled through North Creek." Flash forward to 2022. Today you can still see a few remnants of old Tahawus but don't expect to stumble upon a classic, frontier ghost town. At the site, all you can clearly see now are mostly the ruins of MacNaughton Cottage and the company town's pre-1900s old iron ore blast furnace. In 2004, the Open Space Institute of New York City purchased the entire site eventually returning all but 212 acres to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to preserve as wilderness. Special thanks to Don Seauvageau, Adirondack.net, and Petersent's public-domain photography. This story was revised April 27, 2022.

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Lost in the Adirondacks: Mining booms and busts at Tahawus

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