By Vincent Schaefer 
Compiled and Edited by Don Rittner

Published 2013

Pages 241-242

ln 1912 my parents took me by trolley car to Warrensburg, and thence by horse and buggy to Tripp Lake. We stayed for several weeks or more as I remember it, in an old farmhouse on the shore of the lake. The farmhouse was the Wilie homestead; the owner, an old-timer with a flowing white beard.

We had a wonderful time. My Dad took me fishing to the outlet (or inlet) of the lake where I caught a nice speckled brook trout. I'll never forget the excitement I felt at this first of many such catches experienced over the seventy-five years since that memorable day.

My father commuted from Schenectady for the weekends. I suspect my mother went there in an attempt to escape from hay fever, from which she suffered, that was induced by ragweed pollen. The ragweed had not yet established itself along the roads of the North Country.

On one of my Dad's weekend trips to Tripp Lake he encountered a near disaster. Going north out of Warrensburg, the dirt road slowly climbed into the mountainous terrain, and a short distance beyond the forks in the road where a side road headed for Wevertown and North Creek, the Chestertown Road headed up a steep hill. On the west side of the hill road was a steep cliff rising above an area called the Devil's Kitchen. Just as his buggy became opposite the edge of the precipice, his horse- for some reason- started backing up and continued to do so until the rear wheels reached the cliff's edge! 

Leaping from the buggy my Dad was able to catch the horse's bridle to lead it back onto the road. This near calamity colored that part of the Adirondacks in our minds for many years.

The scene of this escapade is part of the Charles Lathrop Pack Experimental Forest now owned by the State University College at Syracuse. Someday I should seek to locate the Devil's Kitchen. Local inquiries indicate that this is a foreign place in that part of the Adirondacks.

It is my recollection that we went to Tripp Lake several summers. However, the arrival of more brothers and sisters probably caused such a drain on my Dad's finances that summer trips were impossible. It was during this hiatus that my mother acquired a severe case of tuberculosis and was forced to go to a sanitorium at Ray Brook near Saranac Lake.

After this close brush with death my folks decided that in some manner my mother should get away from Schenectady in the late summer and early fall until the frost killed the ragweed. It was for this reason we journeyed to Bakers Mil and Edwards Hill, where my Uncle Frank went deer hunting. He arranged for us to rent a room in a farmhouse then owned by George Morehouse.

Thus began the saga of our life in the Adirondacks that is still underway. My brothers and sisters all own camps in that region and spend extensive periods there, mostly in summer and fall.

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Pages 242-243

These names- Dogtown, Scoot and Moonshine Hills, were all terms I have heard given to the little settlement now called Edwards Hill. It had a log schoolhouse but little else of an official nature- rather it was a random settlement of mountain shacks, cabins and well-built houses located along the road running southwest of the little hamlet of Bakers Mills, and dead-ending not far from the Second Pond Trailhead. 

The abandonment of the sawmill and gristmill at Bakers Mills, and the rupture of the mill dam, marked the beginning of the decline in the general economy of this region. These events occurred within a decade or two of the advent of the 20th century and were developments from which the local economy has not yet recovered.

When the Schaefer family first lived in a room in Georgie Morehouse's home, and then acquired Camp Cragorehol in the early 1920s, a portion of the economy beyond a bare subsistence related to the guiding of fishermen and hunters from the cities seeking trout, deer and bear, and in moonshining. Several families also had members who worked in the Barton Garnet Mine near the summit of Gore Mountain.

During the era of Prohibition, when moonshine commanded a cash value, I used to go after dark to the open field near Camp Cragorehol and watch the flickering lights and hear the clinking of glass jars as the moonshiners tender their stills, or at least I thought that was what was happening.

Our little settlement was essentially self-contained and independent of the life in places like Schenectady or Glens Falls. The natives, though poor in worldly goods, appeared to be self sufficient, proved sincere and independent. Those that we got to know were the kindest, most hospitable individuals one could know. Their sense of humor was marvelous, their dialect distinctive, harkening back apparently to their English, Irish and Scottish forebears.

Occasionally there was a descendant of French Canada in the area, though I never knew of any living in Edwards Hill. They were storytellers par excellence and a never-ending source of simple wisdom.

Before the Schaefers arrived at Edwards Hill the road continued upward and eventually reached First Pond, a picturesque body of water at the base of Height of Land Mountain. It then continued southeastward downhill to Ross' Mill Pond, where there was a sawmill at the pond's outlet. The road continued northward to where it joined the North Creek-Sodom Road, now called Peaceful Valley.

In late years the road to First Pond was abandoned and the pond purchased by a group of fishermen from the Capitol District area and renamed Chatiemac, an Indian word which my friend, Dr. Arthur C. Parker, who named it, said could be translated as "beautiful

place."

Quite a few farms and cabins were built along this old road, most of which have disappeared, although wild apple trees, clumps of lilac and golden glow and an occasional cellar hole are all that remain.

The drainage of First Pond merges with another stream marked by large beaver dams and meadows that heads on the slope of Black Mountain. Just below the First Pond Outlet is the Pug Hole, a favorite bullhead fishing place. Along side of this tiny pond is a trail that branches to go to Second Pond, although the main trail goes around the westerly portion of the main summit of Gore Mountain. It was this trail that was followed by the Hitch-cocks and others of Edwards Hill who worked at the Barton Garnet Mines.

Part way down the Chatiemac Road is a small mountain southeast of this road, called Edwards Hill. This oak-covered summit was purchased by Lois and I some years ago, since I have always wanted to own a mountain -- even a little one. It has substantial cliffs on part of its summit, with a fine view of the settlement of Edwards Hill to the northwest, along with the northerly slope of Eleventh Mountain. The origin of the Edwards name is obscure and remains a puzzle.

All of the Edwards Hill area consisted mostly of cleared fields, orchards and pastures. There were some wooded areas, including here and there a sugar bush, but the general appearance was one of old clearings. The small streams and beaver dams had good fishing for speckled trout and wound through hay fields, pastures and occasional marshes. Now the same areas are entirely transformed as volunteer trees have invaded the fields to such an extent that only the occasional stone walls and frequent large clumps of boulders attest to the fact that fifty years ago the fields were open fields and pastures. Trees grow so rapidly that in that length of time they often have diameters of 15 to 20 inches, and the canopy is so dense that park-like vistas are now developing in areas that have not been lumbered for the second or third time.

Pages 301 to 303

My connection with the Adirondacks started seventy-five years ago. At the age of six my dad took us into the mountains between Warrensburg and Chestertown, where we stayed at the Wilsey's farmhouse on the shore of Tripp Lake. We went to Warrensburg by trolley car from Schenectady, and finished the trip by horse and buggy. It was on the small, cold stream entering the lake where I caught my first brook trout- an experience still vivid in my mind. 

Old Mr. Wilsey was an impressive man with a full white beard and a hard manner. Dad took us by rowboat to various parts of the lake. I remember the dense masses of pond lilies, the dragonflies and the general beauty of the surroundings.

We apparently stayed at Wilsey's for some time as my father commuted on weekends. On one of his weekly trips he had a fractious horse that decided to disobey orders at a particularly dangerous part of the road, and wound up alongside a precipice that marked what was called "the Devils Kitchen." The horse, for some reason, began to back up until the rear wheels were just about to go over the cliff! In some manner, Dad was able to get control of the horse that then went forward and, without further event, took him to his destination.

That summer in 1910 at Tripp Lake represented the first of many excursions into the Adirondacks which I have taken, lasting from a single day to many weeks, during all seasons of the year. Each visit added to the fund of my knowledge about these fascinating wild mountains. Rarely do I go there without learning something new about them.

I have discovered that unlike most mountains in the extensive parts of the world where I have traveled, they are friendly mountains. One doesn't need to mount an expedition to penetrate them, but in less than two hours from my home in Schenectady, I can walk into and be surrounded by trackless wilderness.

It was nearly ten years later before I received the vivid memories about the mountains that still exist in my mind. Meanwhile, my mother suffered each summer from severe attacks of hay fever induced by ragweed pollen. This allergic condition worsened in subsequent years into asthma and then tuberculosis. This latter disease required her to spend an extended period at a sanitorium near Saranac Lake, at Ray Brook.

In 1924, her brother, Frank, suggested that she might avoid her summer troubles by spending the several months when the ragweed pollen was airborne at a place where he went deer hunting, which was free of ragweed. Accordingly, in August 1924 Uncle Frank transported us in his Ford to a mountainside west of Bakers Mills, where he had arranged for us to rent a room in a mountain farmhouse owned by Georgie Morehouse. There she stayed until frost had killed the ragweed plant. It is unclear to me how we managed school attendance. I think my sister and two brothers attended the local one-room log school house, while I was at home with my father.

In 1924, a small mountain house nearby became available for a very modest price and Father bought it. This began our love affair with our mountain camp, subsequently called Camp Cragorehol. Shortly after acquiring the property my father announced at breakfast that he had thought up a name for the camp: CRAGOREHOL. It derived from portions of the names of the four mountains surrounding the camp: CRA for Crane, GOR for Gore, E for Eleventh, and HOL for Height of Land. It was such a perfect name that no one has ever thought of changing it. When father died in 1959 at the age of 91, he willed the camp to mother. When she died in 1961 at the age of 87, she conveyed the property to my sister Gertrude and her husband. They in turn have recently (1987) conveyed it jointly to her six children. Located at an elevation of 1800 feet at the northern base of Eleventh Mountain, it has a fine view of Crane Mountain to the southeast, though the trees have grown since we first went there into a veritable forest that is so high as to nearly block the view of the mountains.

A small stream runs past the camp and runs into a larger one having brook trout, which skirts the edge of the mountain and bounds the cabin property where my brother Paul and I acquired a log cabin and ten acres of land about 1928. Johnnie Morehouse dug us a well near the cabin not long after we bought it. This has supplied Cragorehol with cold, pure water up to the present time.

Ever since Dad acquired Cragorehol it has served as the gathering point for the Schaefer and Fogarty "clan." On a weekend during much of the summer, family and friends gather for a few hours of pleasant talk, while the children of the large Fogarty (Gertrude and Ed) family spend a week or two enjoying the mountains, its clouds, breezes, storms, sunshine and nighttime skies. Thus its hospitality was legendary when my mother and father were hosts, and so it continues now, and will exist into the generations ahead.

Cragorehol is located close to the edge of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness, a region of mountains, lakes and streams, much of it without trails.

Eleventh Mountain, that slopes up from near the Camp, is one of the most primitive areas in the Adirondacks. With an elevation above camp of nearly 2,000 feet, its summit area covers many square miles. This has never been lumbered. It has eight rounded peaks interspersed by dense balsam and spruce thickets, and with swampy regions in between. Its western slopes drain into Diamond Brook, a wild, almost un-fishable spring-fed stream which empties into the East Branch of the Sacandaga River. The lower slopes of the mountain, on its western side, harbors virgin deciduous trees- birch, elm, ash and maple, along with lesser trees. It is a favorite hunting ground for deer and black bear, and brother Paul has led a hunting party there each year for more than fifty years.

Pages 246-247

Not long after we began spending the summer at the Edwards Hill settlement, we made the acquaintance of the Deiseroths. Mr. Deiseroth had been the owner of a very successful bakery in Albany, and upon retirement had chosen to build a fairly large city-type house about half way up the hill. He was a big man, gruff but kindly, with a Germanic tendency toward order, self-sufficiency and planning. His wife was a very small woman and the type who always had a full cookie jar and a whimsical tolerance of her husband's lifestyle.

One day George invited me to go with him on an elderberry picking expedition. He made elderberry wine and had found several areas where they grew in profusion.

He hitched his horse and buggy and we headed downhill to the Mills. Reaching that hamlet, we headed south along the dirt road toward Fox Lair, Griffin and Wells. Reaching the village schoolhouse, we headed down a less traveled lane and were soon in the midst of abandoned fields that had a scattering of elderberry bushes loaded with large racemes of juicy black berries.

We continued down the road, crossed a stream, parked the buggy and horse in the shade, and followed the stream as it wound through a boggy meadow. Although the trout season had ended, I was curious as to whether there were any fish in the stream, since it was a new one to me. 

Approaching a large pool fed by a small spring-fed rivulet, I cautiously peered into it and almost fell in with excitement at what I saw! There were a half dozen of the largest fish I had ever seen! They were brook trout and were about 20 inches long. As they swam back and forth near the surface of the deep pool I could see every feature of these giant fish. They had apparently moved up the stream from the mill pond to spawn. I was sorely tempted to come back later in the day, but resisted the impulse. However I decided to put this stream at the top of my list for the coming year.

This stream was the North Creek, a creek that originated as a number of tributaries feeding into the mill pond at Bakers Mills. This pond was also probably the ordinary habitat of the huge trout I saw in the pool when I was picking elderberries with my friend George Deiseroth. One of these tributaries of North Creek originated in a swamp on the flattish summit of Eleventh Mountain. In the spring, it appears as a beautiful waterfall that plunges in a series of leaps down the mountainside. Another stream that we call Mossy Glen is fed by a number of springs on the northerly slope of that mountain, and includes two that flow past Camp Cragorehol. A third tributary, Balsam Brook, starts as a huge

"boiling" spring not far from the Big Rock, which was called Cold Spring, and which presently feeds into a large beaver pond that has been formed near the base of Edwards

After glimpsing the big trout and gathering a number of large clumps of elderberries from bushes growing on the edge of the big pool and at other places, Mr. Deiseroth and I walked back to our buggy and returned to his home, having gathered several bushels of juicy berries. There I feasted on some of his wife's cookies and then walked up the hill to our camp.

Over the years since that first expedition I have fished the big pool many times. While I have never caught a trout as large as the ones I originally saw, I never failed to catch several good-sized brookies at this location. I frequently would fish down Balsam Creek, starting in the flats below the Cold Spring, following it down to the boggy meadow that marked the old bed of the Bakers Mills Pond, whose dam failed a year or two after my elderberry trip with Mr. Deiseroth. I would then swing over to reach the other feeder stream that had the big pool, and fish that creek up to the road.

After cleaning the fish and placing them in a bed of ferns, I'd head back to camp, climbing over the spur of Eleventh Mountain. I went that way since I had discovered a berry patch that invariably grew the largest blackberries in the region. They were at least an inch and a half long. The first time I found these berries I had nothing to carry them in so I fabricated a "pail" out of a roll of birch bark, using spruce twigs to fasten the bottom to the circular sides, which also were held together in a similar manner. After more than sixty years, my birch bark pail is still to be seen on the ledge of the fireplace at Camp Cragorehol!

Many visitors are not aware that the village of North Creek, near the popular ski slopes of Gore Mountain is named after the stream that flows northward to enter the Hudson at that village. This stream has always been an excellent source of trout by those who know how to fish a stream that flows through boggy meadows and alder beds. Only one ponded area, called Ross Pond or Windover Lake, presently interrupts its northward flow. Eight streams feed into the main channel along its course, each of which contains trout. As the years pass, the course of North Creek becomes increasingly difficult to fish as balsam, alder and other bushy growth engulf its course.

The cold springs which feed into it assure a high oxygen content of the water and the lack of pollution assures the continuing existence of a wild strain of brook trout in North Creek for years to come.

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Page 255

When my father purchased the mountain farmhouse from Charlie Reese in 1924, his nearest neighbors were John and Georgie Morehouse- brothers- and Charlie Smith and his family of wife and several boys, who were living in the log cabin that had been Johnnie's.

Charlie was a moonshiner. He had a crude still which he operated openly, and which was located in the one and only room of the cabin. Charlie was a drinking man. So far as I knew he personally used most that came out of the condenser and had a tendency to catch the dribbling liquid during a run and consume it without delay. As a result, he was frequently somewhat "worse for wear," as the saying goes.

His youngsters were like wild creatures, extremely shy with "outsiders" as they wandered around the region. One day I encountered two of them carrying a heavy rifle between them. When asked what they were up to, they indicated they hoped to shoot a bear!

When we learned that the Smiths were moving away from their cabin home, my brother Paul and I decided to learn whether or not we could purchase the cabin and the ten acres of fields around it. We managed to buy the property and immediately startea to put the cabin in order. It had been abused and we found it necessary to use a hoe to clear the floor before we could scrub it. However, before long we had it the way we wanted it. A photograph I took at the time shows that the cabin was central to a very large open field with only a couple trees on the west side of the cabin. Huge boulders were scattered in profusion across the ten acres, with only patches of green in between. To harvest such grass took much labor with a hand scythe, a tool the mountain men were expert at using.

At that time an active campaign was underway in the New York State Conservation Department encouraging owners of open land to reforest them with evergreen trees, which they were growing in a large tree nursery near Saratoga. Paul and I decided to obtain 10,000 trees that we would plant on our ten acres. We decided on planting Norway Spruce, Scotch, and Red Pines in equal numbers.

When we got them in the spring, we realized that we had a big job on our hands! After a lot of intensive work with a mattock we finally got a thousand trees planted. Although we could hardly afford it, we asked Johnnie Morehouse if he would continue planting during the coming week.

He seemed reluctant to take on the job on a matter of principle. He mentioned how his forebears had spent years clearing away the forest, and now we were planning to undo their labors. 

When Johnnie saw the tiny trees gathered in bundles of a hundred he said, "Those trees aren't even born yet!" However, within the next couple of weeks all of the trees were planted and a forest was born! Today, after nearly sixty years, the Spruce and Red Pines comprise a beautiful woods, free of undergrowth, with clear boles that reach toward the sky. The Scotch Pine never amounted to much, with scraggly and crooked trunks.

As the forest emerged from that open field, we eventually realized that we had produced an effect that was not anticipated. Our view of the mountains disappeared, and our cabin- after fifty years- is now completely surrounded by a dense forest!

During the past two years about a hundred of the magnificent Norway Spruce have been cut in the spring, the bark stripped and the resulting logs transported to a cabin site on Coulter Road where our friends, Dan and Noel Johnson, have built a beautiful log cab-in. They have also used some of our Red Pine to serve as rafters for the slate roof, which is an "earmark" of all of the buildings that my brother Paul has designed, built, or supervised over the past sixty years. The Johnson cabin is one of his finest!

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Page 298-299

A few years after my dad bought Camp Cragorehol and we had established our presence at the Edwards Hill settlement, we became aware of Johnnie's log cabin This was a small cabin made of square hewn logs, then occupied by Charlie Smith and family. It was located to warde venta Mountain from Cragorehol, on the edge of a ten-acre lot, and adjacent to the tote road leading in to the Second Pond Flow.

to chat time Johnnie and his neighbors spent a week or so haying at the Second Pond Flow. This was in our view, a near imposible chore. Same of whic as wide enough for s hay vagon, but peppered with boulders of all sizes, some of which made the trail nearly impassable. The sound of the wagon jouncing over the boulders and hollows on the trai could be heard for a mile or more, as it went in empty and came back with a big load of coarse swamp grass. Upon return, the hay was stored in a barn located on the fifty-acte lo, which was at the edge of state land.

While this activity seemed to be superhuman, I had the distinct impression that all of the mountaineer participants treated it as an annual picnic and, despite the hard work, enjoyed the job and looked forward to it each summer.

It was my impression that Charlie Smith wasn't involved in this activity, in fact he seemed to spend most of his time with his moonshine still, which was located in the cabin.

It was said that he drunk the output of his still as it came out of the condenser. Whether true or not, he seemed to be in a constant state of drunkenness. His several boys were like wild animals in their shyness and independence. When still less than six years old, they were once accosted on their way to hunt deer. The rifle was so heavy that it took two of them to carry it!

When we learned that the current owner of the cabin had put it up for sale, my brother Paul and I resolved to buy it. Scraping together our meager resources, we managed to raise the purchase price and soon had title to it.

After the Smiths left, along with their still, we had the job of cleanup. We found it necessary to use a hoe to scrape out the organic residue that had accumulated on the cabin floor! Once cleaned and aired, we found it livable. One of our first objectives was to have a fireplace made of fieldstone. This was done by Georgie Morehouse and, after more than 60 years, it is still functional. The second project was the construction of a stone-walled, dug well. This was done for us by Johnnie Morehouse who once lived in the cabin.

it was an ambitious undertaking. He didn't bother to do any dowsing, but agreed to dig it where it would be handy to our log cabin and Cragorehol. It was located adjacent to the second Pond Trail, between it and the cabin. After digging down about twelve fet, tackle. Thecountend a big boulder in the center of the hole, too big to lift out wich his tackle. There was nothing to do but get some dynamite to break it up. Johnnie was equal ti the task and, while I didn't ask at the time, I presume he knew how to handle and use thus explosive from his lumberjack days, when he was the timber boss.

i cret arch the charge, and "shot" it. With a loud explosion the rock disintegrated, a large chunk arching out and hitting the side of a favorite balsam tree we had planted near the door of the cabin. The impact tore a considerable chunk of bark from the tree. Since Johnnie knew that we favored the tree, he went over into the pasture nearby, got a big coce Hop recently deposited, prepared a poultice covering the wound on the tree, and bound it up with strips of cloth.

Within a year a healthy cambium started spreading across the damaged portion of the tree, and within a few years had healed, leaving a blaze-like scar. The tree grew for many years but eventually became so big we had to remove it.

When we first purchased the cabin property, it was a treeless expanse of ten acres that had been used as a hay field. As with many fields in the area, it was strewn with a large number of glacial boulders, so that most of the harvesting was accomplished by hand scythe.

A few years after acquiring the property, we decided to reforest the land with Norway Spruce, and Red and Scotch Pine. The New York State Conservation Department at the time was actively promoting a campaign to reforest private lands. My brother and I had visions of developing a productive forest and fell for the program. We bought a total of 10,000 trees, that were planted at the rate of 1,000 per acre. We asked Johnnie Morehouse to plant most of them. This was accomplished by sinking a mattock to its full depth, giving it a twist to extract it from the soil and, at the same time, pulling the earth away from the hole. A follower then inserted the seedling in the hole and then, with a heavy boot, kicking the lifted soil so as to fill in the hole with dirt. The seedlings were about three years old.

When Johnnie first saw them he exclaimed with wonder in his voice, "Them trees are not even borned yet!" He could not understand why anyone would want to see the land revert back to forest. For many years his ancestors had fought to clear the land and to root out the trees. Here was a force tending to undo the patient work of generations of mountain folk!

We have since learned to rue the day when we planted our forest. In fifty years our action did indeed produce an evergreen forest which eliminated the magnificent view of Eleventh Mountain we once enjoyed, and which threatens the view of Crane Mountain as seen from Cragorehol. The cabin is now surrounded by forest and I am afraid its view is gone forever.

It is true of course that volunteer trees would eventually do the same thing that our planted forest had done. None of our present generation would have the time or patience to harvest the hay which once kept the forest out of the fields.

Within the past year we have harvested some of the very large spruce trees that grew up in the past sixty years. A hundred or more were cut to build a very large log cabin on a hillside west of the Thurman-Johnsburg Road. Butt logs fifteen or more inches in diame-ter, and more than thirty feet long, were cut in the spring, the bark peeled, and then transported to the cabin site. Roof timbers of red pine from another part of our plantation were cut and used to serve as roof rafters for the same cabin. Thus we have eventually achieved some of the fruits of our earlier dreams.