Many readers of this column will no doubt remember the large structure that stood like some sculpture’s masterpiece near the present grandstand site at Municipal Park along Demars Boulevard. It was all that remained of the “Big Mill,” which was once located there and was a magnet that attracted the kids of my generation. The big challenge was to scale the 15-ft. cement foundation wall to the platform where the massive band-saw machinery was once in place. Memories of that time and place came flooding back this week as I watched Tinker Hollingsworth deftly maneuver his large bulldozer, reducing multiple piles of earth into a sub base for a new board walk, a part of the revitalization project for the wonderful asset that is our municipal park.
Of historical interest is the fact that the “Big Mill” was started by John Hurd in 1890 to take advantage of his Northern Adirondack Railroad, which was to reach this town that year. The sawmill was said to be the biggest in the state, producing the chips for pulp and bark for tanneries as well as sawn lumber. The world’s record for a single day’s sawing was twice broken here.
It may be hard to believe, but an aerial tramway from that mill was built across Demars Boulevard to a series of charcoal kilns that were situated along the north side of Pleasant Avenue. The tramway was nearly an eighth of a mile long. Its purpose was to carry wood chips and other waste from the mill to the kilns where charcoal was made. A railroad siding, which ran along the rear of today’s McDonald’s restaurant, served the kilns to haul away the charcoal, which had a high value in those days.
Accompanying this week’s column is an item contained in the Sept. 23, 1937, edition of this newspaper. It may be of general interest as the project to revitalize our park progresses:
RAZING OF ELLIOTT MILL WILL REMOVE LAST TRACE
OF LUMBER LANDMARKS FROM THE PARK SITE
Machinery Walls Stripped From Abandoned Demars Blvd. Plant
– Workers Start on Roof Today – Ship Salvage to Potsdam Mill
Another mute reminder of Tupper Lake’s one-time status as the Adirondack lumber capital is rapidly being effaced.
Employees of the C.H. Elliot Hardwood Lumber Company are engaged in tearing down the Elliott mill on Demars Blvd. Already the walls have been stripped away, except for a spidery tracery of joists and cross-pieces. This morning they started to rip off the roof. The job will take at least two weeks longer, they estimate, after which nothing will remain to mark the spot on the shore of Raquette Pond which was the scene of four decades of lumbering activity.
by crane from the interior of the building – and shipped to Potsdam, where the lumber from the structure is also going. The crew, pausing to reminisce a moment before tackling their job of destruction this morning, recalled that this same machinery once figured in a world’s record of cut lumber. It was hooked up in Hurd’s “Big Mill” at the time, the mill which was owned successfully by the Norwood Manufacturing Company and the Santa Clara Lumber Co. Carriage, band-saw edgers and other machinery used in that record cut are still in good condition, and may see service again soon at the Potsdam Elliott plant. Mr. Elliott bought the old mill and machinery from J. Ferris Meiggs.
Back in 1923 C.H. Elliott erected a rambling, red mill on the site of the plant now being torn down. It burned down about three years later. In 1927 he put up the present plant and engaged in the manufacture of mangle rollers and lumber. 1931 and the depression era saw the mill shut down, never to reopen. In October, 1932, the Village of Tupper Lake purchased for $5,000 a strip of land flanking Raquette Pond from Cliff Avenue to the O.W.D. line, for municipal park purposes. The Elliott mill lies midway in that tract, and is being torn down to make way for the park development. Sand and top-soil have been trucked in to the tract for the past two years, and the filled in and graded section of the park now reaches close to the Elliott plant. The greenery of an attractive park will cover the old Santa Clara and Elliott millsites in the near future, leaving nothing but a concrete bandsaw foundation on the site of the “Big Mill” to mark those once-busy spots.
William Collett, foreman, and Vincent Kavanagh and Fred Brunette are pushing the razing of the Elliott Mill.