In the late 1940s, while I was a student in Canton, N.Y., a favorite break from studies was a visit to a palatial camp located at a place called Dexter Lake. It was about a 40-minute drive from the campus to the lake, which was near the village of St. Regis Falls. More than half a century has passed since those blissful undergraduate days, but those weekend “getaways” and the lasting friendships that developed remain as prevailing memories in an exciting time of life.
The camp was owned by the family of classmates, and Martha Thompson and her father generously allowed us use of the Dexter Lake enclave.
As I remember it, we were only dimly aware that the camp and property of 7,000 acres were once owned by a wealthy eccentric named Dexter, and that he had been mysteriously murdered.
In later years, Marty’s father (Rex) gifted the property to the University (S.L.U.). Under this ownership it became a conference center and retreat for a number of years before it was eventually purchased by Shania Twain, well-known singer and recording artist.
Ms. Twain has abandoned extensive building plans that included a recording studio and other major projects. This was unfortunate and was greeted with dismay by residents of nearby Santa Clara and St. Regis villages. Not only was Ms. Twain welcomed as an important and talented personage to have as a neighbor, but she and her husband, Robert Lang, were also found to be warm, friendly folks who were well liked in both of those communities and the surrounding area. Needless to say, their significant contribution to the local economy was an important loss.
It turns out that the murder of the original owner was, in fact, a sensational event. I have even discovered, as we shall see, a Tupper Lake connection! The first part of this two-part column is from the chapter entitled Santa Clara and Brandon in the Limelight and is found in Alfred Donaldson’s History of the Adirondacks.
“Santa Clara, as has been told, was a shantied creation of Hurd and his railroad. Besides his residence, he established his machine shops there and built two mills. For a while, therefore, it was a lively, bustling little place, but after Hurd’s failure it relapsed toward the nothingness from which it sprang, the mills fell into disuse and were dismantled, and in 1915, fire destroyed the machine shops and other buildings that were never replaced.
“In 1903, the name of the little hamlet was suddenly thrust into headline notoriety through a sensational murder that occurred near it. Not far away, and in the town of the same name, lay a private park of 7,000 acres belonging to Orlando P. Dexter. Near the center of the estate was a body of water called Dexter Lake, and on its shores was a rather ornate and fantastical residence modeled after the Albrecht Durer house in Nuremberg. Here the eccentric owner spent much of his time.
“Orlando Dexter was a bachelor and 40 years of age at the time of his death. He was a graduate of Yale and a lawyer by profession. Having large means, however, he retired from active practice and devoted himself to the intellectual pursuits of history, genealogy and the higher mathematics. Absorbed in these studies, for which he had marked aptitude, he became more and more of a recluse in his habits and showed an increasing moroseness of disposition and irascibility of temper. His relations with his Adirondack neighbors developed a harvest of unusually bitter animosity. He bought his large estate by a process of gradual acquisition. When he had secured all the land he wanted, he fenced it in, ‘posted’ it, placed guards upon it and bid all men keep off it. These perfectly legal acts appear to have been the signal for a persistent campaign of lawlessness among his neighbors. They hunted and fished and even cut wood on his preserve with a reckless defiance of consequences that could have been prompted only by malice and hatred. He sought such relief and redress only as the law afforded, but then applied it, it is said, to the last limit of the letter and in a spirit of relentless retaliation. Under such conditions, however justified, it was bound to rouse resentment to the danger point. Personal violence was finally threatened in a series of anonymous letters, but Mr. Dexter was a fearless man and paid no attention to them.
“On the afternoon of Sept. 19, 1903, he started to drive, as he often did, to the nearby post office at Santa Clara for his mail. He drove alone, but was followed by one of his employees. He had gone but a quarter of a mile on the lonely, winding road that led to the little village when someone fired a shot from ambush as he passed. He fell from his wagon and was found a few moments later lying dead in the road.
“His aged father, Henry Dexter, the millionaire founder of the American News Company, was at once notified of the murder. After the first shock, he said he would devote his life and all of his wealth, if necessary, to ferreting out his son’s assassin. But all his efforts and all his wealth failed to unearth the culprit. Besides hiring detectives, he had trained bloodhounds carried to the spot and offered rewards that would have made a poor man rich for life. But they unloosed no tongue, although it was said that even children knew the murderer’s name. Be that as it may, it has remained sealed forever in a strangely impregnable conspiracy of silence.