We continue today a few aspects of this community’s history as it celebrates 100 years as an incorporated village.
Following the Revolutionary War, the lands we now call the Adirondacks, which had formerly belonged to the British Crown, were appropriated by the State of New York. They accomplished this by a bill in the legislature in 1779, which declared that the lands belonging to the crown before 1776 were “forever after to be vested in the people of this state.”
As historian Frank Graham has noted, “forever” turned out to be a very brief time, indeed, for five years later the legislature, in desperate need of money, passed another measure calling for “the settlement of the waste and unappropriated lands within the state,” and providing for their “speedy sale.” While lands in other parts of the state went quickly, those in the Adirondacks were generally ignored, despite the promise that all taxes on them would be waived for seven years.
Finally, a group headed by a speculator named Alexander Macomb purchased one enormous bundle of four million acres (at eight pence an acre). That purchase included this area, and thus it was that a surveyor named Tupper, while working on the original survey in 1796 of the Macomb Purchase, discovered the lake and named it after himself. The lake subsequently bore several names, including a number of Indian names. One of those was Paskungameh, meaning “going out from the river.” The name Tupper’s Lake has prevailed, of course, with the “s” later being dropped to simply Tupper Lake.
The lake is slightly over seven miles in length and. with a surface of 3,200 acres, is second only to Cranberry Lake in this section of the park.
According to Frank Morrison, the energetic and knowledgeable former president of the Tupper Lake Rod and Gun Club, the lake has a unique range of depths that support a two-tiered fishery.
Deep spots, Frank notes, that approach 100 feet, support lake trout, salmon and whitefish. It also has shallows that are warm enough to support walleye, northern pike and small-mouth bass. It has many indented bays and rocky cliffs harboring peregrine and raven nests and its many beautiful wooded islands clothed with towering pines hundreds of years old. One of those pines was chosen by a pair of bald eagles (for the first time in many years) and resulted in the successful fledgling of two eaglets early this August.
Nor can we discount the glorious sunsets and the breathtaking change of lights and colors, all of which make the lake such a special place.
Five years ago on a July 4th day, my son, sitting on the summit of Mt. Morris with the full expanse of the lake below, counted not a single boat passing his field of view in an hour’s time. With the new boat launch and the popularity of “party boats,” which has allowed to many people to enjoy the lake (many for the first time), and the new camp properties, this isolation is changing – but in a nice “slow growth” way that is, so far, easily absorbed by the size of the lake. Indeed, on many afternoons I’ll not observe another boat, a rare thing not found on neighboring lakes that have sadly become overwhelmed.
Lake Simon Trio
No account of the Tupper area waters would be complete without a note
about Lake Simon, one of the trio of lakes linked by the Raquette River,
in close proximity and sharing a common water level. Old timers remember
it better as Big Simon Pond. It was named for Elijah “Life” Simon,
reputed to have been the first white man to establish a year-round
home on its shores. Along about 1840, he cleared a patch of land at
the foot of the lake near the present Moody Bridge and built a log
cabin, which he occupied for several years before selling his “betterments”
in 1850 to Cortez Moody.
The lake, a handsome body of water encompassing some 537 acres, was the setting for the usual tall tales. One was reported by Albert B. Street, New York historian, after an 1858 hunting and fishing trip to this area. It was related to him by Harvey Moody, his guide, and concerned another hermit named Kelsey, who “shantied” in the area 20 or so years earlier and was described by Moody as “about the worst-looking man I ever saw.” Hunters found him dead near a wolf trap he had set near Little Simon Pond, and on searching his cabin, they found a cutlass, sailor’s jacket and an old New Orleans newspaper account of the breaking up of a “nest of pirates,” some of whom were hanged while others escaped. The newspaper description of “the fieriest and bloodiest one of the lot” convinced Harvey Moody that Kelsey was, indeed, the missing buccaneer. Who knows?