Black River

In 1938 we look back in time not just a dozen years—the Black River Canal officially closed in 1925—but more like eighty years to its heyday as a north/south feeder for the Erie Canal. At that earlier time it had been proposed that lower-cost transportation would aid in economic development of communities in Lewis, Herkimer, and St. Lawrence counties. Construction was completed by 1855: 35 miles of canal, and another 40 miles of navigable waters along the Black River to the village of Carthage. But maintenance costs and competition from railroads made the canal unprofitable and in 1900 it was abandoned north of Boonville, NY.

The mural's figures are barely historical; rather, they're mythic in the style of other Works Progress Administration artists like Thomas Hart Benton. Along with her twin sister Suzanne, Lucerne McCullough created this study for the Boonville post office capturing an idealized moment of Western New York culture. By comparing the painting (click here for a larger version) and the final mural we notice that the mother and daughter now have their bonnets removed, the better to see their faces, and the baskets of agricultural bounty have grown—perhaps a comment upon scarcity during the Great Depression. It took careful work to create a vision of the Black River Canal as timeless.

During the 19^th century it was estimated that the Black River generated some 135,000 horsepower along its course during the dry season. Just within the city limits of Watertown, NY the river dropped 110 feet, meaning that manufacturing concerns generally drove planning decisions. The suspension bridge pictured here, overlooking the picturesque Black River Falls, probably was intended for functional purposes.

From the Gazetteer: "Between Carthage, on the east line of [Jefferson County], and the lake, [Black River] falls four hundred and eighty feet, and, as may be imagined, is almost a continuous series of rapids, with several cascades varying from two to fifteen feet in perpendicular descent. The waters of this river are of a peculiarly dark and forbidding appearance, resembling, in deep places, the lye of wood-ashes, caused probably by the leachings of the cedar and hemlock swamps and peaty bogs which it drains towards its head-waters, and by oxides....Along the streams that flow from this formation the water has worn deep and often highly picturesque ravines, sometimes miles in length, and almost through the soft and yielding strata. The rounded outline of the slate hills, the abrupt terraces of the limestone, and the sharp, wall like margins of the sandstone, afford characteristic features to the country underlaid by these several formations....Watertown, the county seat, pleasantly situated upon the south bank of Black River, was incorporated April 5, 1816. Pop. 5873. It contains an academy, 3 newspaper offices, 5 banks, and 9 churches. Black River here flows, for the space of a mile, in a succession of rapids over the limestone terraces, affording an abundance of water power, which is largely improved, making the village one of the most important manufacturing places in the State (Durant & Peirce 9; French 351, 362). Major tributaries: Moose River, Beaver River. Major lakes: Big Moose Lake, Stillwater Reservoir, Fulton Chain of Lakes. Highest point: Little Moose Mountain (3,634 ft). Area: 1,920 square miles in New York state.

Rev. A.T. Worden, "A Black River Thaw" (1860)

The location of this ballad is contested: the poem also has been titled "The Chateaugay Thaw" and set even further north, up near the Canadian border in Franklin County. Instead of the old Boonville road, it's the old Malone road. But for modern readers it really doesn't matter, since the dangers of winter travel in both versions are the same. The date of composition suggests we're looking back in time just a little, prior to the construction of railroads.

A story is told of a traveler bold
In the days of the Hartford coach.
In a big blanket rolled, for the weather was cold
Here he went just as snug as a roach.
But the snow gathers deep as northward they creep,
And the snow rising higher he saw.
And the driver he cried to the man by his side,
“We shall soon get a Black River thaw.”

Then the man in the coach, lying snug as a roach
Gently smiled like an infant at sleep:
But the horses’ slow gait never told him his fate
In the snowdrifts so wide and so deep.
At last came a shout and they tumbled him out,
And a sleigh was his fate then, he saw;
But a man with a sigh pointed up to the sky,
Saying, “Here comes a Black River Thaw.”

“Let it come,” said our man, “just as quick as it can,
For I never was fond of the snow;
Let melt from the hills, let it run down the rills,
Then back to our coach we may go.”
But the wind raised its song, and the snow sailed along,
And the cold it was piercing and raw,
And the man in the rug, from his coverings snug,
Wished and prayed for the Black River thaw.

When the sleigh with its load reached the old Boonville road
Where the drifts reared themselves mountain high,
Glendale on the right buried deep out of sight,
Left a white desert plain ‘neith the sky.
Not a fence or a tree could the traveler see,
As he cowered close down in the straw,
And the driver he sighed as the prospect he eyed,
“By George! Here's a Black River thaw.”

While he spoke, lo! The team disappeared with a scream,
And the drift quickly closed overhead:
While they wildly looked back, lo! The snow hides the track
And is drifting high over the sled.
Then the traveler bold, though decrepit and old,
Hurled that driver down in the straw,
Crying out, “Driver, speak, ere my vengeance I wreak,
What d’ye mean by a Black River thaw?"

Then the old gossips say, he arose in the sleigh
And extended his, hand o’er the scene,
And he laughed and he shrieked, and the sleigh groaned and creaked,
And he said, “I will tell what I mean:
When the north wind doth blow and there’s five feet of snow,
And the ice devils nibble and gnaw,
When the snow fills your eyes and the drifts quickly rise
This is known as a Black River thaw.”

Then the trav’ler arose, and he smote him with blows,
And they sank in a deadly embrace:
And none knew the spot till the June sun was hot,
And a hunter, by chance, found the place.
Here they made them a grave where the storms madly rave
And this epitaph lately I saw:
"Two men lie beneath, and they came by their death
Frozen stiff in a Black River thaw.”

Daniel C. Jenne, et al., "Lakes and reservoirs, head waters, Moose and Black Rivers: showing present and proposed feeders to Black River Canal" (1862). Like many other American maps of the mid-19th century, this one is a hybrid of various components. It uses information from cartographic surveys a decade earlier and foregrounds rivers, lakes, and human-created reservoirs. It shows roads, railroads, and canals—proposed development of which probably led to the map's creation. And it also includes two engraved illustrations, in this instance probably something like "clip art" not drawn expressly for the Black River area. In other circumstances the illustrations could serve as inviting advertisements for factories and land purchases, or personal branding for the wealthy through views of their mansions. The results were a multimedia experience we might not recognize as such under their appearance as old maps. Click here to view a larger image.

Works Consulted

—Durant, Samuel W., and Henry B. Peirce. History of Jefferson County, New York : With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers. L. H. Everts, 1878. Web version available at Internet Archive.

—French, J. H. Gazeteer of the State of New York. Ira J. Friedman, 1860.

—Spafford, Horatio Gates. A Gazetteer of the State of New York. H.C. Southwick, 1813.