Collection includes some guideboats made from legendary boat builder Caleb Judson Chase
By Tim Rowland
Museums are known to have storage rooms full of treasures that never see the light of day, and the Newcomb History Museum was no different. But thanks to a new exhibit hall, a crown jewel of its collection — the Adirondack guideboat that ferried Anna Pruyn around her lake at Great Camp Santanoni — is available for viewing at the Seeley Exhibit Hall across from the town’s Overlook Park.
The new exhibit hall, which opened for the first time over Memorial Day weekend, is displaying two other guideboats along with the Pryne’s Queen Anne, and includes a history of the great boat builder Caleb Judson Chase.
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Like the loon and the packbasket, the guideboat occupies a chair at the table of Adirondack iconography. “It is strictly an Adirondack invention and an Adirondack craft,” said museum director Joan Burke, describing the guideboat’s enduring appeal.
Related reading: Adirondack Experience museum digitizing renowned Adirondack guideboat collection
There are intramural squabbles over which community boatbuilder, exactly, produced the design first: Newcomb, Long Lake or Saranac. “You can argue and argue,” Burke said. But from whichever community it was born, the guideboat is Adirondack through and through.
The guideboat’s journey in Newcomb
Newcomb’s first family of guideboats revolved around Chase, who was born in Ticonderoga in 1830 and moved to Newcomb as a teen. A saw mill operator, guide and craftsman, he built his first boat at age 21, and would go on to build another 200 or so.
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His son-in-law, William Madison Alden, built the oldest boat, No. 14, in the Newcomb exhibit, one of 20 he made prior to his untimely death. After serving an esteemed sportsman clientele, No. 14 wound up at a Raquette Lake hotel, where any old vacationer could knock around in it, not worrying a whole lot about its condition.
The Newcomb museum acquired the boat after spotting it for sale on eBay. On learning of Newcomb’s interest, the seller held a “family meeting,” Burke said, and lowered the price so a sum the museum could afford.
The third guideboat, named the Trout, on loan from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, was built by Chase and his son Edmund.
Guideboats began showing up on Adirondack lakes in the mid-19th century, built specifically to tackle a rigorous and conflicting set of demands: big enough and stable enough to accommodate city sportsmen and the baggage it took to keep them comfortable in the wilderness, yet light, fast and agile enough to be portaged between lakes by a single guide (the client was not expected to stoop to such primitive labors) and pursue fish and game.
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While similar at a casual glance, each boatbuilder tended to have a signature, artistic touch that distinguishes one from another. “If you look closely, you can see something unique about each one,” Burke said.
Queen Anne: A special gift
Robert Pryne, the wealthy Albany banker who founded Great Camp Santanoni, commissioned Chase to build the Queen Anne, a gift for his wife on the opening of the preserve in 1893.
While Robert was more the sort to sit back and gaze at his 13,000-acre estate and show off the prize-winning livestock at the camp’s farm, Anna developed a close affection for the outdoors, Burke said.
Anna could not swim, but she loved to fish for trout, as a helper paddled her and her grandchildren around the lake. A descendant of Robert and Anna sold the boat to a Newcomb resident in 2018 who donated it to the museum.
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Related reading: Newcomb’s history, told through its schools
New museum space
Newcomb’s new exhibit hall itself has a noteworthy history. It began life as an insular camp on a widened stretch of the Hudson River near the mining hamlet of Tahawus, but was dismantled and moved to shore in the late 1950s to serve as a church — a steeple being tacked on to the old camp to complete the transition.
But it wasn’t done moving.
Geologists for National Lead discovered a rich vein of titanium ore beneath the Tahawus community, so rich in fact that it was worth jacking up the entire town in 1963 and moving it 12 miles down the road to Newcomb.
The church was one of 77 buildings to be trucked to its present location on Newcomb’s east side. The town acquired the property after church attendance declined.
Seeley Exhibit Hall is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
Great article. I have been going to Newcomb since I was 8 years old (now 63) . Always camp at Harris lake . Love it . Just wish I had bought some property way back when so I could retire there.
Awesome article. I have been traveling through Newcomb my whole life and staying in Long Lake and went to AWC as a child. The VERNER family ran the camp at the end of Long Lake and we would run canoes through the Raquette River! Those memories will stay with me forever!
An Adirondack guide boat very much resembles the St. Lawrence skiff, which was produced by a number of boatbuilders in Alexandria Bay, Clayton and other river towns. I’ve rowed skiffs and, in reasonably calm water, they glide like rockets. You can probably see one or more skiffs, and possibly an Adirondack guide boat, at the 1000 Islands Antique Boat Museum in Clayton. Plan to spend some time there — it’s fascinating.