You will undoubtedly detect a certain circumlocution in today’s column. I plead guilty, and in my defense, I hope “writing around” the main topic, which is Dr. Thissell and his tireless career of physician and businessman in this community, will be excused as I attempt to include historical items of interest.
When Dr. Thissell first arrived in Tupper Lake in 1875, a Maine outfit, the Pomeroy Lumber Co., had already logged off the virgin pine (1850). Sears Hill and the French village (Broad Street section) remained totally wooded, but the clear-cut area overlooking Racquette Pond and along its shores would become the site where the village was to spring up some forty-odd years later. Dr. Thissell would have a front-row seat and become a major player in the growth of the Tip Top Town that expanded with the rapidity of magic.
The clearing would prove to be an ideal location. Racquette Pond, according to geologist Jim Carl, retired professor at SUNY Potsdam, was once a huge lake (which was completely separate from Tupper Lake). In post-glacial time as the lake receded, it left behind a flat, sandy floor that was perfect for industrial operations to locate. Here, logs could be floated from long distances on navigable rivers (the dam at Setting Pole, having been built as early as 1870, raised the level of the pond, making it contiguous to Tupper Lake).
It would no longer be necessary to ship all logs downstream to Potsdam, and the huge sawmills erected here as well as the arrival of railroads would provide immense employment opportunities, resulting in a mushrooming population as people located here. Not only was this flat floor of the old lake ideal for building, but is also provided plenty of room for storing and stacking logs and lumber before they were shipped out by train, whose rails reached into and through the terminus next to the present-day Coca Cola plant on lower Wawbeek Ave.
Professor Carl, who was from the Illinois plains, where “there was no shortage of flat land, unlike the Adirondacks,” noted that the “vast acreage of flat and sandy land at Tupper Lake and Racquette Pond was a Godsend for railroad surveyors.” What better place to build freight sheds, yard facilities, row houses for workmen (Webb Row) water towers, coal chutes and round houses.
The high mound that rose above the pond further embellished this ideal industrial location. This was a glacial hill that professor Carl described as “having its highest point, a bedrock knob (Tallman Hill), but that most of the hill consisted of glacial depositional material,” perfect for building homes and the business section that would be needed to service the residents who would occupy those homes.
In 1877, as the embryonic village began its feverish building boom of hotels, stores and homes, G.W. Smith, a surveyor from Potsdam, arrived in Tupper Lake one April morning in 1895 onboard “Hurd’s Railroad” from Santa Clara and wrote the following in a letter to his wife:
“If beauty of location could ensure a city, this would be one, for the ground is gradually rising from the shores of the pond back quite a distance with then an abrupt rise of twenty or thirty feet and then a gradual rise giving every part of the fine view of Racket Pond and when the woods are cut away of the lower end of Tupper Lake.”
Readers who enjoy walking might consider a short detour from their usual route and walk up Tallman Ave. and pause at that pinnacle of bedrock now known as Tallman Hill. For a tiny extra effort, the view is quite rewarding.
Look down at the village and its wide main street – a tribute to the foresight of those early village planners. Note how the village is built on the high ground and how the streets are laid out north, east/south, west, parallel to the side of the hill so that houses can face the lake and its view, and how further west on more level ground the streets are planned to be aligned north/south, east/west. Look out to the Sorting Gap, Moody Flow and across the pond to the ghost town called Underwood and the bridge Dr. Webb found necessary to build so his rail line could cross the Racquette River.
In the distance, Arab Mountain, Station Mountain, Matumbia Mountain, Iron Mountain, Floodwood Mountain and Long Pond Mountain, all modest in height but impressive nonetheless, rise as sentinels overlooking the pond and our special village.
As the community expanded, the need for water, both for drinking and for fire protection, became a priority. Only a 2-inch pipe, laid on the top of the ground from the Big Mill along Lake St. and Wawbeek Ave. to the Park St. corner, was in place, which, of course, was totally inadequate. Providing that need launched Dr. Thissell on a dual career as both a physician and businessman. He established, with others, a private company incorporated as the Tupper Lake Water Co. This company quickly completed negotiations with the A. Sherman Co. to buy a marshland body of water called Cranberry Pond (currently owned by Big Tupper and located near the seventh tee at the Tupper Lake Country Club). Pipe was then laid from the pond to be fed by gravity to a pumping station on Simond Pond. The water company then installed hydrants to serve the new fire district, established after the disastrous 1899 fire, with a charge to the town of $25 for each hookup.
The need for a backup supply soon became advisable, and Dr. Thissell, who was now the sole proprietor of the company, hired a contractor to erect a dam that would contain the waters of a brook located below Cranberry Pond on top of the hill above Moody Bridge. The reservoir thus formed was 150 feet by 160 feet, with a depth of 8 to 10 feet.
In our next column, we will relate how, upon the first filling, the reservoir wall failed, and tons of water bore down the hill. The wall barely missed the McBride home (today’s veterinary clinic) and tore a huge hole in Rte.30, just beyond Moody Bridge.