Road to riches
Perhaps the first niggling thing picking at the back of your head on the drive up to the southern entrance to the High Peaks in Newcomb is that the road is too good.
Oh, it has its share of potholes and frost heaves, to be sure, but the thick slab of faded macadam and self-important yellow lines advising motorists when they are allowed to pass and when they are not, are out of keeping with the swamps, forests and wilderness that give the territory the feel of an Alaskan outpost. For 20 minutes of drive time, Tahawus Road keeps up appearances, long after other byways of its ilk would have gone to gravel or dirt, its yellow paint hanging on.
Then, as the miles go by, industrial specters begin to appear—through the spruce and tamarack there are glimpses of rusted equipment, forgotten heaps of crushed aggregate and still-standing iron artifacts that were no doubt important in their time, but whose use today is anyone’s guess.
Up this road, once upon a time, were towns and industries; sportsmen and women from the cities, and adventurers that included a U.S. president; the Adirondacks’ first bank; investors and inventors who were the Warren Buffetts and Elon Musks of their time; laborers who filled rail cars with the metals that helped win the Second World War. Incredibly, down this road came an entire village on the back of big trucks—houses, apartment buildings, a store and two churches that had to be moved when valuable ore was discovered beneath its foundations.
