Home Fitness Horrendous Old Adirondack Roads and Buck Boards

Horrendous Old Adirondack Roads and Buck Boards

by Ohio Digital News


Broken bridge and buckboard wagon in the AdirondacksBroken bridge and buckboard wagon in the AdirondacksThe Adirondacks’ earliest highways — and by far its smoothest — were its major waterways. Until well into the 1900s, its roads navigating the land were memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. Early travel writers who otherwise loved the Adirondacks despised its roads.

In 1881 Nessmuk (George Washington Sears), wrote this about the first half of the “Old Road” from Boonville to Arnold’s Hotel and the nearby Fulton Chain of Lakes: “The route was not pleasant. Hills, hollows, sand up to the hubs, boulders, and six miles of corduroy road. Such was the first twelve miles … to Moose River.”

Nessmuk avoided the second — and worse — twelve- mile section all together, opting to carry his famous Rushton solo canoe and supplies himself.

And in 1889 Edwin R. Wallace, in his Descriptive Guide to the Adirondacks, summed up the notorious second twelve miles of the Old Road this way: “Probably the observation once made by Judge Stow of Lewis Co., that ‘this section presented such a forbidding aspect it would make a crow shed tears of blood to fly over it,’ had reference to this abominable highway.”

Then, in 1895, on another terrible excuse for a road, north of Ampersand Mountain, near today’s Middle Saranac Lake, surveyor Verplanck Colvin had little nice to say: “Mud holes alternated with massive rocks and boulders, threatened each instant to wreck the conveyance; which was one of those extraordinary, rough but strong and springy, common buckboards…

“The jolt ande jar of the conveyance, with its swinging, oscillating movement, made it necessary to use both hands to keep firm hold upon the alleged vehicle, which plowed its way through mud and spattered it over occupants and horses, and only paused occasionally when, with a violent shock, the wheels struck an unseen boulder.”

a lumber wagon with the first several rows of lumber snugged uniformly forward against a buck board (Courtesy of the Adirondack History Museum)a lumber wagon with the first several rows of lumber snugged uniformly forward against a buck board (Courtesy of the Adirondack History Museum)Buckboards and Buck Boards

It is claimed that the “extraordinary, rough but strong and springy, common buckboard” vehicle that Colvin mentioned was invented in the Adirondacks, circa 1830. And, more specifically, invented by sixty-five-year old Rev. Cyrus Comstock (1765-1853) who, at the time of his death, lived in the hamlet of Lewis, NY.

His neighbors called the springy wagons “Comstock wagons” since, to them, a “buck board” was not a wagon at all, it was a frame to help secure a tall load of milled lumber.

The standard thirteen-foot boards and planks produced by water-powered sawmills in Lewis and other nearby hamlets were delivered to Lake Champlain ports via “skeleton wagons” — wagons without boxed sides or seats. The wagons’ front and rear axle assemblies were moved twelve feet apart, then a sturdy thirteen-foot long plank was laid on top, right down the center.

The plank had a hole drilled near the front end which accommodated the vertical pivot bolt of the front axle assembly, keeping the plank from moving forward. (The pivot bolt allows the front axle and its wagon wheels to swivel to the left and right.)

The plank also had a wide, vertical “buck board” frame fastened to its front edge and the first several layers of thirteen-foot lumber for delivery were snugged forward against this frame. The load rose from there, eight feet and higher.

Finally, a sturdy chain was cinched around the entire load side-to-side to keep it compressed and centered on the axles’ bolsters. The buck board kept the load from sliding forward and “bucking” the horses while traveling down the steep roads.

The teamster sat on the top front edge of the stacked lumber, enduring a jarring ride. Every bump and jolt of the wheels was telegraphed up to him through the heavy load. But that was only on the way down to Lake Champlain; not so much on the return trip.

Here is an excerpt from Reverend Sewall S. Cutting’s September 1, 1881 letter to the Elizabethtown Post and Gazette, who remembered — from when he was eighteen, fifty years before — the wagon loads of lumber and Father Comstock.

“The greatest luxury of traveling in those days was to sit on the buck board of the lumber-man, when he was returning with his unloaded wagon. The chain with which he had bound his load was now extended from front to rear of his wagon, and dropped far enough below to receive his feet as he sat sideways on the [center] board.

“The spring of the [thirteen foot] board [suspended only by the frame piece over each axle] was delightful as the wagon bounded over the stones and through ruts, and it seemed as if a monarch never had so easy a drive as could be found by the lumberman’s side.”

“This good Father Comstock saw and understood… his old bones felt painfully the jar of the wagons of the time. ‘Why not a buck-board for me?’ was his thought. So stripping the body from his one-horse wagon, and extending the reach [the distance between the axles] to proper length, he laid a strong and springy board from front to rear, and mounted upon it an old-fashioned rush-bottom chair.”

“The example was too good to be lost. The ‘Comstock wagon’ immediately found copyists; and in Lewis, Elizabethtown and Essex, the central towns of the county, was in two or three years in very common use.”

This story is an excerpt from Thatcher Hogan’s book Mapping the Adirondacks: Colvin, Blake, and the First True Survey of the Great Adirondack Wilderness (2024).

Illustrations: Broken bridge and buckboard in the Adirondacks; and a lumber wagon with the first several rows of lumber snugged uniformly forward against a buck board (Courtesy of the Adirondack History Museum). According to the original photograph’s notes, the teamster was “Frank Colby of Wadhams Mills, NY with Beede’s team Dan & Mag,” July 27, 1901.



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