Function of the Junction

Function of the Junction. Crossroads of the Adirondacks Trail. In the early 1900s this spot was one of the busiest in the Adirondacks., Two railroads - the Northern Adirondack Railroad built by John Hurd in 1890 and the Adirondack and St. Lawrence Railroad constructed by Dr. William Seward Webb in 1892 - crossed in Tupper Lake's Junction in 1899. , They were the key factors in the rapid development of the village as an industrial site. The railroads brought people to work in the woods and on the railroads. Most importantly, they made faster shipping of lumber to market possible., The community next to to the rail yards became known as Downtown, the Junction and Faust, after the area acquired its own post office in 1898. these names persist but are now lesser known with the termination of postal and railroad services. , Train Hub , It may be hard to imagine by looking around here now, but until the 1950s this site was a busy place bustling with people and more than a dozen trains rolling through daily from Utica, Montreal and Ottawa. , With no highways, buses or planes to transport people and goods, all traffic in and out of Tupper Lake moved by rail. This place was covered with over 20 sets of tracks - all in service - moving railcars in and out ot the train yard day and night. , Who Built the Railroads? , Railroads were essential to getting hardwood logs out of the woods to market in the early 20th century. Railroads were expensive to build and operate; labor was scarce in this remote region. , Lumber operators turned to foreign labor brokers in New York City. Many Italians answered the call to build the railroads that criscrossed the woods in and around Tupper Lake. The first Italians were recruited by John Hurd to build parts of his railroad from Santa Clara to Tupper Lake. , [obverse] , Last Stop Tupper Lake , The date was Sept. 25, 1965. In Syracuse about 900 passengers boarded 20 railcars and headed north into the Adirondack Mountains for one last romantic trip through the forest. Members of the Central New York Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society sponsored the trip. This journey marked the end of an era - 75 years of passenger railroad service to the Franklin County village of Tupper Lake. , Five months earlier, in the early morning hours on April 24, 1965, the last New York Central Adirondack Division passenger train had rolled through the Junction on its way to Lake Placid. The Tupper Lake Free Press declared, "The end of an era came quietly."