One of the best memories I carry from my vacations at our camp on Twitchell Lake in Herkimer County in the Adirondacks is the white pine that marks the western border of our lake-shore property. It’s massive base peaks with twin tops that tower above all the other trees on our shoreline. Peering up into its heights ignited my boyhood imagination, picturing myself atop the Crow’s Nest of some fast clipper ship, scouting for pirates.
There have been several hurricanes and microbursts that have wreaked havoc with the four plus miles of our lake’s shoreline, but my white pine stands firm still, its roots anchored deep in the ancient glacial fill. Even to this day, my brother Tom and I muse about an observation tower roped between those twin tops where we are poised, binoculars in hand, eye-to-eye with the bald eagles that visit the lake, and the loons that daily jet by. This giant stands well over 150 feet tall. [Read more…] about The Great North Woods Before Logging: Twitchell Lake’s Virgin Timber
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 
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This is part three of this series A Twitchell Lake Love Story – part two can be 
The first part of this series, A Twitchell Lake Love Story, can be 
I am a fourth generation Sherry owning a camp on Twitchell Lake in Big Moose, NY, in the Adirondacks. with my wife Ingelise. We share ownership of “Little Beaver” with my three brothers and their wives. Four diaries from our second generation have helped to solve the mystery of how the family first came to Twitchell Lake. It turns out it all started with a love story! 
Many of the lakes in John Brown’s Tract had guides who took their sporting parties to their own fishing or hunting camps north and south of the Beaver River. This is how lakes like Hitchcock, Beach, and Salmon got their names. 
On July 8, 1874, The Lowville Journal and Republican ran an article about a party of six men who trekked to Twitchell Lake in Big Moose, NY, for a nine-day stay. They came by horse and buggy up the Number Four Road through Watson Township from some town to the west. 
“Melancholy Occurrence” was a fairly common expression for a tragic event in the middle of the 19th century. A search of historic newspapers revealed the phrase was used some 250 times from 1820 to 1870. Several of these were murder cases, such as the son of the Spanish Consul being stabbed through the heart with a cane sword by an angry neighbor. But most were unexpected events such as a fatal strike by lightening, a young fire victim, or a drowning.