Since the earliest of time, a section of the Racquette River located near this community has been known as the “Oxbow.” It has gradually grown to denote a location as well as a particular configuration of the river’s course. For example, one might say, “I saw an eagle near the Oxbow,” or, “I caught a huge pike near the Oxbow.”
The Oxbow name, as is well known, derives from the fact that at this location, the river’s course originally made a large bend that resembled the shaped frame forming a collar about an ox’s neck, which supported the yoke and was called an oxbow. It has become a term used throughout the world to describe such a bend in a river.
The Tupper Lake Oxbow is a well-known feature of our river and is especially notorious to those boaters who often became confused in its twisted maze (this to the wonderment of locals familiar with the river). Rather than making a left downstream and turn through a break in the bank (dug out before 1865 to expedite log drives), they continue around the “bow” in the river’s original course and soon find themselves heading back upstream, passing once again Walt Zurawski’s River Road home, signaling their mistake.
Increased prominence has been given to the Oxbow recently as planners involved in the proposed Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, soon to be built on lands overlooking the river, have quickly recognized that the wetlands surrounding the “bow” are a living ecosystem.
One researcher has called it a classroom without walls, and it has become one of the focal points that will further enhance the learning experience and enjoyment of those visiting the museum. What they will see as they look out over the river from the museum grounds is this very unique wetland framed by the Seward Range and neighboring Santanoni (French corruption of St. Anthony) with its spectacular defining rock slide car cleaved into its flank. (Rendered from the sword of the mythical god Thor?)
The wetland is an exhilarating landscape of green, dotted with the reds of the high-bush cranberries – cattails standing sentry-like, fluffy brown puffs resembling the whitetail’s ear, reminds us that our ancestors used this plant, not only for its nourishing food value, but also as torches to light their darkness. Other plant species include pickeral weed, sundew and water lilies, all emerging in an explosion of varied and dramatic beauty.
You may remember from your science classes that the character of a wetland is determined in large part by the amount and quality of water moving through it. My neighbor, Dan Spada, a wetland specialist, tells me “the most fundamental difference between a marsh and bog or a swamp (all wetland types) has to do with groundwater movement. Bogs have almost no groundwater circulation and thus are nutrient-poor and highly acidic so that relatively few plant species live there and not much animal life as a result. The wetland at the Oxbow, on the other hand, is seasonally flooded and so we have a marsh and a forested swamp very rich in nutrients that is much more productive than other wetland types, and it supports plant growth and teems with wildlife – mammals, birds, amphibians, fish.”
What a superb classroom for the many students from all over the north country and beyond who will one day visit the Tupper Lake museum!
The Racquette River, so rich in Adirondack history, flows 68 miles before it makes its twisting turn at the Oxbow (from its traditionally acknowledged lake source, the Eckford Chain: Blue Mountain Lake, Eagle Lake and Utowana Lake). It still has 104 miles to go before joining the St. Lawrence River, making it the second-largest river in the state.
As early as 1860, New York State appropriated large sums of money for the improvement of the river for lumber purposes, and as one river traveler put it, “We occasionally see where rocks that interfered with the floating of the logs have been blasted out of the stream and booms and piers constructed to turn the logs in the right direction where otherwise they might run off into ponds or slews.” It was about this time, probably in 1860, that the bank of land was cut at the Oxbow to eliminate floating logs having to curve around the bow as evidenced in The Journeyings of James Wood, September, 1865, private printing: “We ran the rapids with good success (note: Dugal Road location), Henry and John walking the rocks, but Harry and Jim running successfully in their boats, a light shower sprinkled us as we put through the ‘Dutch’ Gap Canal a narrow cut of 30 feet in length and 10 feet deep across the ‘Big Oxbow’ saving a distance of a mile and a quarter.”
By the 1900s, steam boats such as the Altamont, the Forester and the Adirondack, to name a few, were making scheduled runs on the river between Trombley’s Landing (Sweeney Carry) and the hotels on Tupper Lake. Unregulated water releases at Setting Pole Dam raised havoc with the river, however, and by 1930, a project was initiated to clear the approximate 16 miles of river from Moody Bridge upstream to the Oxbow. This section of the river was too shallow and full of debris to be used even by guide boats except in high water periods.
The work was done by a crew of CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) recruits from Camp 15 at Cross Clearing, working under the supervision of foreman Paul Delaire. An item in the Tupper Lake Free Press, Nov. 2, 1933, noted, “1,550 deadheads and logs were removed from the river in the 16-mile stretch covered, which constituted a serious menace to boating.” The article concluded with the statement that the project “required a total of 125 man-days of labor.”
A note of interest: The large island formed by the river’s circular course at the Oxbow was at one time used by the McCarthy farm (later, Pisanchin farm) to harbor large numbers of pigs destined for the slaughter house, located to the rear of the St. Alphonsus cemetery above the river.