Ghost Towns: What Remains of the Mining Era

Just off the road to Mt. Marcy lies the town of Tahawus. In the ruins and crumbling structures one can faintly make out the warmth and life that once filled it’s streets over 200 years ago. Having seen two eras of progress and development in American history, the town of Tahawus was birthed by the same thing that destroyed it: mining.

In the early 19^th century, the industrial era had begun to take its foothold. Many young prospectors combed the largely unexplored lands of the Adirondacks looking for the “gold” of the northeast, iron ore.  In 1826, two industrialist prospectors, Archibald Mclintyre and his partner David Henderson, were lead through the woods by an Indian of the Saint Francis tribe to an ore deposit right at the mouth of the Hudson River.

With the discovery of ore, in the following years a settlement was born called Adirondac. The town was complete with a school, church and meeting room. It was also the site of the first bank opening in the Adirondacks. However, the prosperity and success of Adirondac was short lived. In 1858, with the end of McIntyre’s Adirondack Iron and Steel Company, the last few inhabitants moved on. Much like other “boomtowns” in the Adirondacks, transportation, ore impurities and a downturn in the global economy were contributing factors to the towns demise. Ultimately, the town was completely abandoned and renamed “the deserted village.”

In 1876, the town got a second chance. A hunting and fishing club breathed life back into the area, renaming it Tahawus and replacing many of the buildings with new cottages and new people. Several years later in the heat of WWII, Tahawus was mined for titanium. But in 1962, the miner inhabitants were relocated and the village was filled with ghosts once again.
Tahawus now stands as a reflection of the industrial era, where land was valued strictly for what could be extracted from it. It was believed that the park’s resources were inexhaustible but they weren’t. Mining left a large scar on the landscape of the Adirondacks. It brought short-term success with long-term effects. As David Henderson wrote in 1845 “if land in that wilderness is to have any value at all it will only be in consequence of the success of our operation.” The operation of mining took down less than a tenth of the park acreage. Ultimately, it was the finite supply of charcoal that drove the miners west. But the scars remain. Succumbing to the weathering of the Adirondack climate, the ghost town of Tahawus stands, in its ruins, as a reminder of a very different era.

Sources:

http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/ny/tahawusoradirondak.html 

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2014/10/tahawus-an-adirondack-ghost-town-for-halloween.html

https://urbanpostmortem.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/the-ruins-of-tahawus/

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tahawus