Unwinding a maple syrup mystery
Jun. 23—PLATTSBURGH — Senior Scholar queues its second year of summer programming in July and August.
"One of our regular speakers suggested the idea last summer since people had time on their hands because of the pandemic," Rich Frost, one of the series organizers, said.
"We did a series of weekly talks. This year, we simply decided to do it again. We have a diverse range of topics (see box) hoping that there will be talks that appeal to almost everybody. We wanted to keep the cost as low as possible, so there wouldn't be any financial obstacles. Once again, we are doing it on Zoom."
Senior Scholars is better known for its eight-year run of small, group seminars during the winter months.
"We are hoping that we'll be able to return to an in-person format next winter after doing it via Zoom this past year," Frost said.
"This is a collaborative effort by the Office for the Aging, Senior Citizens Council and Chapel Hill Foundation.
SNEAK PEEK
On Thursday, July 22 Matt Thomas, historian, will present "Horseshoe Forestry and the Adirondacks' Biggest Maple Sugar Industry."
Thomas is an independent researcher with a wide range of interests in all things maple.
With an academic background in American Indian studies, anthropology, archaeology, and geography, including a Doctorate from the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, he has been researching and writing about the history of maple syrup and sugar for the past twenty years.
Thomas is the author of "A Sugar Bush Like None Other: Adirondack Maple Syrup and the Horseshoe Forestry Company" published by the Maple History Press.
"My Adirondack connection is research that I had done for a book that came out last year, and which is what I'm going to speak about next month which is about an amazing maple sugar, maple syrup operation from the turn of the last century that was in the Tupper Lake area, actually in an area around Horseshoe Lake," Thomas said.
"It was a maple syrup operation of a scale never ever seen before and never seen for a long time after that. That's how I got interested in the Adirondack history side of it was specifically focused on this large maple sugar operation for the Horseshoe Forestry Company."
BIIGGER STORY
Initially Thomas was going to write an article on the history of it, but he realized there was a much bigger story to the company and Abbot August Low Sr.
"He is a very wealthy man from New York City, who bought 45,000 acres of land in the 1890s in the area around Horseshoe Lake," Thomas said.
Low established a completely amazing industrial landscape with his own railroad network, his own electrification, multiple sawmills, a village for his workers, and his own private Great Camp.
"At the core of all of it was this maple syrup operation where he tapped up to 50,000 trees and had four different gigantic sugar plants," Thomas said.
"You couldn't even call them sugar houses. They were maple sugar plants. They were factories. That was the whole thing I got interested in, but there was a whole bigger story about this man. He had a great legacy and other things about him, and the whole landscape that he created and then how it ended and then what became of that landscape afterwards up to today."
Thomas first read about Low's enterprise in a 1990s coffee table book, "Sweet Maple," which had a Vermont emphasis.
"There was a chapter in there on about mostly focused on a couple of interesting characters in the history of maple syrup production and one was this guy, Abbot August Low," he said.
"So, I was always interested in that story. Over the years, I would kind of squirrel away information that I would read about it. For the most part, it wasn't something that anybody had done much more research on."
While Thomas researched the origins of plastic tubing in maple syrup production, he ran up on Low again.
"One of the things about this operation that Abbot August Low had was that he had a series of metal tap lines running through the woods to move maple sap downhill from the trees to his railroad where he had big tanks and he would bring it on rail cars to these maple syrup plants," he said.
His Horseshoe Forestry Company research led to the book concept.
"I thought, hmm, boy, I'm always looking for new topics to dig into and research and write about, and I realized this was prime for a more in-depth investigation, which is how I kind of got hooked on it to write the book," Thomas said.
The book process was a fairly quick turnaround.
"I got into intensively working on it three years of serious in-depth research and fieldwork," he said.
BOOTS ON THE GROUND
"One of the interesting components is getting out on the ground around Horseshoe Lake area and trying to find, relocate where these activities happened."
Where was the railroad network? Where were the plants?
"One of the fun things about the book, my background is archaeology and history, so I'm an archaeologist, is to go out on the ground and try to relocate those things," he said.
There was misinformation written and embedded in local lore about the Horseshoe Forestry Company.
"This is where such and such plant was or this is where this activity occurred," Thomas said.
"There were a lot of misconceptions and inaccuracies shared over the years. One of the things that I'm most proud about in the book is that I think I have been able to correct many of those inaccuracies both with the historical research and especially with the research on the ground and finding where these places actually happened and seeing what's left on the ground if you know where to look and how to see it."
"A Sugar Bush Like None Other" is very will illustrated with historical maps and current maps from his field investigations.
"One of the interesting things about him (Low), he was very wealthy and he spared no expense on things," Thomas said.
"He had his own embossed glass jars and bottles made to package his syrup and sugar in. They did say Horseshoe Forestry Company on them. It lists the different sugaring camps. He didn't really have a specific brand like that, but there is some interesting packaging and things like that."
Email Robin Caudell:
Twitter:@RobinCaudell
SENIOR SCHOLAR SUMMER 2021
Senior Scholar plans a series of Thursday morning talks, each beginning at 10 a.m., starting July 8.
The program is being offered over a Zoom platform, meaning you can participate even if you're out of town for one or more of the sessions.
SCHEDULE:
"Archaeology— Stories From the Field—Discoveries and Danger"
"Remembering the Holocaust"
"Horseshoe Forestry and the Adirondacks' Biggest Maple Sugar Industry"
"The Thanksgiving Address and Creation Story of the Haudenosaunee"
"Folklore and the Archive: On the Trail of a Sixteenth-Century Murder in Ireland"
"Climate Change—Implications for the Adirondacks"
"The US Navy versus the Goonies: Regimes of Mobility on Midway Atoll— Birds, planes, and military solutions"
FEE: The charge for the full series of eight talks will be $10. Please send payment to:
Senior Citizen Council of Clinton County
5139 N. Catherine Street
Plattsburgh, NY 12901
Please include your e-mail address and a telephone number.
INFO: Questions? Call 518-563-6180 Or e-mail: rachel@seniorcouncil.net
