Deep In The Adirondack Woods, A Colvin Survey Benchmark Revealed

As a boy growing up in the Battle Hill section of White Plains, NY, I remember my excitement at reading a brass memorial telling me “George Washington slept here.” White Plains was the site of a battle during the American Revolution.

Now as an adult I have had the thrill of learning that Verplanck Colvin surveyed Twitchell Lake and took measurements on the shore where my log cabin stands in Big Moose, NY.  That realization launched me on a quest to find a benchmark placed by one of Colvin’s surveyors on an important boundary line nearby.

Frank Tweedy Hired by Verplanck Colvin to Survey in the Central Adirondacks

Frank Tweedy was hired by Colvin right out of Union College. His survey assignment for the 1879 season was to lead a ten-man crew down the western boundary of the Totten and Crossfield Tract, from Beaver River to Seventh Lake. Five years before the Revolutionary War (1771), these two New York City shipwrights purchased over a million acres of Adirondack wilderness from Indigenous People, with permission from the King of England. They hoped to profit by dividing their purchase into townships and lots for farming. The early surveys of that Totten and Crossfield Tract were too inaccurate for Colvin to include on the map the State of New York commissioned him to create.

Tweedy established his headquarters in the first shelter built on Twitchell Lake  – a one-room shanty erected by that Lake’s patron guide, Hiram Burke. Tweedy’s aim was to get accurate measurements for his boss and set five benchmarks along that 24-mile boundary line (including two at the start and finish).

Discovery Step One: Near a Stone Cairn

My discovery came in several steps. The first was a cairn of stones marking the corner of Townships 42 and 41 on that Totten and Crossfield boundary line. Township 42 would later contain the private preserves of the wealthy, with names such as Brandreth and Webb, and Township 41’s scenic Big Moose Lake would later attract prominent lumbering and hotel interests.

I was the recipient of recently digitized survey journals for Colvin and Tweedy, putting together their geographical clues for important locations near Twitchell Lake. Five hikes into the Pigeon Lake Wilderness Area failed to reveal my prize. At least a dozen locals helped lay out the distances and angles described for that Corner. Crisscrossing the target area with a metal detector, we came up empty.

Re-reading Tweedy’s field books, it suddenly dawned on me that his left-hand table of Stations every 50 feet along the Totten and Crossfield line corresponded exactly with the terrain he sketched on the right-hand side. The attached sketch indicated a “stream to corner” distance of exactly 304 feet. That realization fine-tuned our search zone, with my survey crew for the sixth hike consisting of my two sons, Luke and Peter, and nephew Bob.

After about an hour hunting for the rock-pile, if it had survived for 142 years–and checking moss-covered rocks with a metal detector–Luke called out, “Dad, come and look at this pile of stones!”

And there it was, Tweedy’s partly hidden cairn minus the center post which had long since rotted and disappeared. My journal entry for October 3, 2020: “Eureka, we found it, on the sixth try! The next challenge is to find Benchmark No. 4.”

And Luke’s new nickname for his Dad? “Cairn-el Sherry!”

Discovery Step Two: “In the Solid Rock”

The second step on my discovery was almost as difficult, though I knew the brass benchmark had to be somewhat close to the cairn. That was the case with benchmark no. 1 at the Great Corner where Tweedy began his re-survey of the Totten and Crossfield line the previous season (1878), to the west of Tupper and Cranberry Lakes.

My favorite Colvin illustration depicts a large stone near that cairn and post where that benchmark was drilled and set in place with molten lead. It was also the case with benchmark no. 3, set in a large stone near the corner where Townships 5 and 8 of the Brown Tract met the Totten and Crossfield line. But at this corner for Townships 42 and 41, I did not see any stones close by.

Here again I relied on the clues I found in the two 1879 journals I had for Tweedy. The information there revealed a lot, but not about the location of my sought-after treasure. My only clue here was that he “put bolt No. 4 in the solid rock” (Volume 247). Tweedy’s journal for that season (Volume 159) added at least three more details:

“Put BM No. 4 in the solid rock & put in post, spruce, ran chain over it & surrounded by stones; put spruce post 5 inches in diam., driven down to solid rock 8 inches below surface of ground, stones around bottom…Corner of T42 & T41 Totten and Crossfield…Camp #9…Stream runs into East Pond 10 rods N of inlet.”

The importance of this Township Corner for the Totten and Crossfield line and the Colvin survey was evident by the fact that Tweedy spent the night with his men near that location in their ninth campsite to “plan for the corner.” That plan involved preparing a five-inch spruce post to be sunk eight inches down to bedrock and surrounded by a supporting cone of stones.

In his journal, Tweedy added an interesting fact: “Corner put up by Mr. Snell Aug 2, 1854. Just 23 years ago.” Regular reading for a Colvin surveyor included the earlier survey books for the project they were on, in this case John Richards’ survey of Township 42 (1816) and Squire Snell’s re-survey of the Totten and Crossfield line for the Sacket-Harbor & Saratoga Railroad (1854). Tweedy was obviously tickled that he had restored the very corner Snell had set up exactly 23 years earlier!

A Father-Son Campout

My next visit to the Township 42-41 corner was with my son Peter on May 14-15, 2021. We camped overnight in view of East Pond, prepared for temperatures expected to dip into the mid- to low-thirties. At a mile and half, that meant lugging camping and sleeping gear in addition to what we needed to search for a brass benchmark.

After setting up camp we proceeded to the site, ready for our tasks—me to fire up the metal detector, Peter to dig around the corner cairn. Within minutes Peter called out, “Dad, I’ve hit solid rock, about eight inches down.” That was all I needed to hear. We were “hot” on the trail to our treasure!

I abandoned stones further out and zeroed in on the area right around the cairn. In about an hour’s time, we had dug clear around the cairn, but still no hits on the metal detector. Hunger pangs suggested giving up the search for lunch at the campsite when we decided on one last action: Move the pile of stones out of the way. I ran the search coil across that cleared spot and got a loud “eeeh” on each pass. Peter removed the dirt and there it was, a silvery two-inch benchmark shining in the sun for the first time in 142 years! Peter brushed it off excitedly, shouting “we found it,” and with me adding, “Yes, and Tweedy put it right under the stones!”

What a thrill to find my first Verplanck Colvin benchmark (actually, Peter found it)! Immediately several journal entries popped into my head. On Sundays Tweedy attended to his field book notes and sketches, collected plants (he was on his way to becoming an accomplished botanist), chiseled inscriptions into his benchmarks, and coated them with protective paint.

Upon exposure to the air, the silvery paint pealed right off the brass crown, revealing a very distinct number “4.” Use of a magnifier detected several letters in front of it, as shown by my illustrated yellow highlight of this Tweedy benchmark “No. 4.”

My journal for May 15th : “Eureka, we found it! I did not expect Tweedy to put benchmark no. 4 right under where his post had been set, but that now makes a lot of sense. If Peter and I made our camp out next weekend, we would have been smothered by black-flies, just beginning to hatch and bite.”

Sharing the Discovery with Adirondack History Lovers

My first request for Verplanck Colvin and Frank Tweedy’s field books with the New York State Archives was made in March of 2020. The deteriorating condition of the over-500 volumes has spurred the rush digitization project that makes this collection readily accessible to all. Transcribing the three journals mentioned in this article birthed the idea of an article on Colvin’s Twitchell Lake survey and a series on this remarkable young surveyor he hired in 1876. My search for benchmark no. 4 occupied the summer of 2020, involving at least a dozen Twitchell Lakers on five hikes to East Pond. A growing number of Adirondack history fans became interested in the search for another genuine Verplank Colvin benchmark.

I had to share my discovery, so I extended an invitation for a hike to view the restored Totten and Crossfield corner on Labor Day weekend, 2021. (Anyone who wishes to view this find going forward should contact me to secure permission to park a boat and pass-through private land.) Ed Corrigan and Bruce Steltzer helped me prepare for the hike, clearing the East Pond trail and marking the spur to the Tweedy memorial 500 feet off that trail.

Logistics for the hike were daunting, the first challenge being to ferry all our guests the two-mile boat-trip up Twitchell Lake from the public landing to a private landing on the north end (see the map).

Eighteen people made the trek, pictured in this group-shot taken by Bob Meyer, who awoke early to drive the two hours from Pottersville with his wife Jody to view our treasure. Bruce, who heads up the Twitchell Lake History Project, gave a fine talk on the settling of that end of the lake by clergymen and guides. I extended thanks to Beth Kellogg and Greg and Coleen Nassimos for their granting us permission to make this hike from their camp.

The hike highlight for me had to be the Q & A session we had at the site of Tweedy’s corner benchmark. I asked my guests to envision a 24-mile Line on the Totten and Crossfield compass bearing, extending NE to the Hamlet of Beaver River (5 miles) and up toward its starting point West of Tupper Lake (12 miles), then SW across Big Moose Lake (2 miles) to where the line ends on an island in the middle of Seventh Lake (5 miles). Through thick wilderness!

Then, I invited them to imagine Ebenezer Jessup, accompanied by a handful of Indigenous guides, walking the line we were standing on in 1772, the first survey of that Totten and Crossfield Tract. That first survey was followed by that of Richards and Snell, and of course by Tweedy and his Adirondack crew, carrying an immense load of gear. A spirited discussion followed from the realization that our path that day had first been trod before America was formed.

What Makes Discoveries Like This One Important?

To me, surveyors like Jessup, Richards, Snell, Colvin, and Tweedy are legendary. How would I have handled a crew of Adirondack roughnecks right after getting my college degree? That is what they were, hardened men able to hand-cut trees (axemen), stretch a steel tape through the woods (linemen), and hold up a stadia pole for the surveyor’s repeated measurements (rodsmen). It was a total group of ten to twelve bearing a heavy cache of food, tents, and survey equipment, with resupply from the Burke Shanty about once per week. This was their ninth camp-out together! How did Tweedy do it?

Access to an autobiography Tweedy hand-typed later in life offers several clues to his leadership ability. The life of Frank Tweedy and the Field Books I studied attested to his no-nonsense personality, one that enabled him to get an extraordinarily difficult job done for an exceptionally demanding boss.

Colvin sang Tweedy’s praises in all his official reports. Tweedy vacationed as a boy in the Adirondacks, and he related well to its people and ways. His plant collecting probably invited some ribbing from his men, but his dry sense of humor would have won them over. Interestingly, he drew inspiration from Lewis & Clark’s western journals which he poured over at a young age. And if this was not enough, I think the following camp exchange quoted verbatim from The Goode Diary: A Personal Journal of the Northern Trans-Continental Survey – Tweedy’s first Western assignment in 1883 -reveals a secret weapon which reinforced his quiet but steady leadership:

[Chief to Tweedy] Turning to me my chief said, “Have I not heard that you at one time won a medal as a cooker of hot cakes?”
[Tweedy] “Flapjacks,” I corrected, “in the Adirondack Mountains.” I was proud that my reputation had carried so far.
[Chief] “And if you will kindly explain what are the component parts of this flapjack and its preparation?” the chief asked.
[Tweedy] Then I began, “The component parts of a flapjack are flour, baking powder, and salt in due proportion, and the size of the flapjack will have the diameter of the container, the fry pan, bacon grease is the lubricant, when one side is browned—”
[Jones, a crew member] Then Jones interrupted with, “it is turned over with a cake turner.”
[Tweedy] “It is not” I said firmly, “a little sideway shake of the fry pan handle loosens the flap jack. An adroit movement of the fry pan handle and the flap jack rises to a height of several feet, turns over and drops back into the fry pan.”

A stack of hot flap jacks cooked over a campfire and topped with melted butter and maple syrup – his Adirondack crew would have followed him anywhere!

The Twitchell History Project marches ahead toward a book that will tell the story of the area’s guides, hotels, camps and families. With discoveries like this one, Twitchell’s history now includes pioneer surveyors like Verplanck Colvin and Frank Tweedy, whose legendary achievements finally put the lake on an accurate map.

Benchmark no. 4 is only one of three installed along the 24-mile boundary Line running past the lake just to the north. It is an important memorial. Importantly, it was a crew of Indigenous People who first guided a European surveyor down that line before our nation was formed. It is quite likely that the naming of Twitchell Lake is related to one of those earlier surveys.

Frank Tweedy went on to become a founding member of the US Geological Survey, his name printed on many of the Rocky Mountain quadrangles. I had the privilege of co-authoring a biography on Frank Tweedy with botanist Hollis Marriott, now published in Wikipedia.

Illustrations, from above: picture of Frank Tweedy, courtesy of Special Collections, Schaffer Library, Union College, 1875; Luke Sherry at Tweedy cairn marking T&C Corner of Townships 42-41, taken by Noel Sherry; sketch of Stations 384-390 , where the Township 42-42 Corner is marked in Tweedy’s Fieldbook; Peter Sherry by newly uncovered Benchmark No. 4 under the Corner cairn, taken by Noel Sherry; enlargement of BM No. 4 with highlighted detail of what was inscribed by Tweedy in 1879; map of Twitchell Lake showing East Pond hike marked in yellow, Noel Sherry; portrait of Hiking Group taken at the Tweedy Corner courtesy Bob Meyer Photos –pictured from L to R are: Chris Lyon, John Deasy, Sue Lyon, Cheryl Lyon, Mike DeWispelaere, Ingelise Sherry, Paul Head, Chris Hall, Beth Pashley, Jody Meyer, Ron Rakowski, Noel Sherry, Ed Corrigan, Laura & Terry McSweeney, Bob Meyer, Bruce Steltzer, Elaine Thornberry, and Ernest Williams; Noel Sherry ferrying Twitchell guests to East Pond trailhead on his dock, taken by Ingelise Sherry; title block of 1772 Map of Totten & Crossfield Purchase as surveyed by Ebenezer Jessup; and heading and credits of the USGS Rocky Mountain Colorado-Ft. Collins Quadrangle.