Hidden within the southern trails of Split Rock Mountain Wild Forest lies remains of a 19th-century quarry and tramway that ran only once—ending in tragedy
By Tim Rowland
It seems likely that most people who pull into the Lewis Clearing trailhead at the Split Rock Mountain Wild Forest between Essex and Westport are headed up to the namesake Split Rock Mountain. It’s there you will find some crackling good climbs and crowd-pleasing visuals from the stony ridges overlooking Lake Champlain.
But if you are bored to tears with stunning Adirondack views, there are a couple of target-rich trails to the south as well, with destinations that include deep bays and harbors and some lesser overlooks and lakeside campsites. For a full travelogue of the Split Rock Mountain Wild Forest trails, the best essay remains David Thomas-Train’s 2016 piece in the Adirondack Almanack.
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The capstone to the southern Split Rock trails is a fascinating piece of industrial architecture that’s a little worse for wear due to recent storms, but both in terms of scope and the story behind it — well, safe to say, there is nothing like it in the park.
Related reading: A bushwhack up the ‘other’ Split Rock Mountain
Navigating the trails
The trail from the parking lot heads due east and splits at a third of a mile; bearing left on the North Rim Trail takes you to Split Rock Mountain and environs, while continuing right on the Lewis Clearing Bay Trail accesses the lesser hiked southern routes. The LCBT winds up at the lakeshore, but a spur reaches an overlook of Snake Den Harbor that may or may not be worth your while depending on how easily you are amused.
At 1 mile, we split off Lewis Clearing and took a right on Barn Rock Trail, which continued a trend of easy to moderate climbing until it reached its high point 1.2 miles into the hike.
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The trail is pleasant to begin with and becomes more so — a woods road through pine and eventually hemlock forests. There are some wet spots to be sure, but hey, it’s spring.
For the next mile the trail heads due south, descending as it approaches the lake. This descent becomes more severe as it enters a rocky ravine and negotiates a cleft that soon becomes a stream.
Signs of the past
At 2.1 miles in, you will notice a stocky stone bridge over this watercourse on the right. engineered way out of proportion to need, and the first indication that you are entering the turf of an old quarry where massive slabs of rock were a dime a dozen.
This is the beginning of the red-badged Calamity Trail, but we continued on the yellow-badged Barn Rock Trail, where we started to encounter some serious remains of a 2022 microburst that devastated sections of the forest.
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Much of the blowdown has been cleared, but it’s still pretty intense on the southern spur down to the shore. You may give up as we did after a bit, but this is still an area worth exploring, partially to see the furious forces of nature and partially to prowl around a bevy of old foundations, one of which — on the opposite side of the stream from the trail — featured an interesting interior fireplace upon which past hikers had built a shrine out of antique shards of glass.
Rather than pick our way to the shore, we returned to the Calamity Trail and climbed up out of the gorge among chunks of quarried stone to the site of an engineering marvel that as things turned out was not so marvelous. Here a stone channel, about 12 feet wide, descends steeply to the lake. It’s largely grown in and covered by the recent blowdown, but it’s easy to picture how this conveyance was to work.
The Calamity Trail’s dark history
In the late 1800s, the Champlain Granite Company designed a cable railway that was to ease massive blocks of stone down 500 (some sources say 900) feet to the lakeshore for shipping. The loaded car was controlled by a steel cable wound around a large, steam-powered drum; the weight of the loaded cars going down cleverly pulled the empty cars back up. It worked much like a typical tramway in reverse — instead of loaded cars being pulled up, they were braked as they went down.
The contraption was unveiled in front of a crowd of onlookers on a cold day in mid January 1891.
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The first car was loaded up and inched on down. When the car got up a little speed, the steam engine should have, and did, brake the drum, which should have, but didn’t, slow the release of the cable. No one had noticed that ice had formed on the drum and the cable unspooled over the slick metal all at once.
Mesmerized by the sight of nine tons of rock plummeting to the chasm floor, perhaps, the crowd at the top failed to notice the equal and opposite reaction of the empty cars rocketing up in their direction. The first car jumped the track and cut the crowd to pieces, killing two young men and two teenage boys.
The devastation felt by the community was clear, as the tram never ran again and the quarry closed for good shortly thereafter. Climbing higher on the trail, more of the quarry operation is evident, including a gash in the side of the ridge where drill marks can still be seen in the gray stone.
At roughly four miles (depending on your meanderings) you’ll want to take a right off of Calamity Trail onto Crossover Trail. There’s no sign, although the trail itself is obvious if you know where to look. A red piece of survey tape marks the spot at least for now.
A trek worth taking
The trail passes a pretty pond/marsh before turning left on Gary’s Elbow trail; at ~5 miles; this brings you back to the Lewis Clearing trail trail, where another left quickly brings you back to the parking lot.
Despite its lakeside topography, there are still plenty of ups and downs, as we recorded almost 700 feet of climbing in a little over three hours. Nothing was terribly steep though, except when we went off-trail and wound up — oh never mind, one calamity a day is enough.
Top photo: Blowdown at the south end of the Wild Forest. Photo by Tim Rowland
Truly a calamity!! In addition to the sad deaths, I wonder how many were injured? Sometimes, the best-laid plans come undone, and all the efforts and investments come to naught. Thanks for the very interesting history lesson!