Editor's Note: The mouth of the Boquet River is the subject of a manuscript Morris Glenn has donated to BRASS, and funds are being sought for its publication. Morris Glenn's book depicts the natural, navigational, economic, and military history of the river from Willsboro Falls to the mouth at Lake Champlain.
According to Morris, river schooners and canal boats, with an average 100-125 tonnage, at one time plied these waters. Iron bars, anchors, nails, lumber, and other manufactured articles of the region were shipped to Albany, Montreal, or New York City, and–of course–articles and goods from these locations were eagerly awaited by Adirondackers.
In all likelihood, freight was transferred in and out of boats just downstream of the falls at–what was known in the past as–Rock Island. Morris believes Rock Island to be the same as Camp Island and Garden Island, all places named in historical literature and documents and located just downstream of the falls. This was where William Gilliland had a garden plot, and where early settlers lived until they could clear and build above the falls. It is difficult to locate now because, in 1901, the pulp mill in Willsboro built a sluiceway from the mill (over the river) to the island. Ten acres of the island and floodplain were enclosed by an earth dike with a series of weirs. In this way, the mill's hot ash waste could be disposed of safely. Morris Glenn conjectures that, between the ash and a depositional bar build-up at the river's bend, all remains of early docks and shipping apparatus have been covered up.
The Boquet Delta, and the flat marshy floor found in the Boquet Gorge, have been obstacles for navigation between Willsboro Falls and Lake Champlain. Efforts to improve Lake Champlain harbors began in the 1830's. . . Use of State funds to reopen and improve navigation on the Boquet River to the falls was proposed early last century as documented in Winslow Watson's Military and Civil History as follows:
This quotation indicates that the flat bottom canal boats, used for commerce on Lake Champlain, may have bene able to navigate to points on the river. However, almost a century of agriculture, forest cutting, and mining activity took their toll and caused extensive erosion. The river became choked with debris. . .
To improve navigation. . . funds were appropriated by New York State (Chapter 880 of New York Laws, Volume 2, 1869). These funds, $5,000, were approved for a two year effort to clear the Boquet for navigation from the lake to the falls. . .
Years later, Walter McFarland, Major of Engineers, wrote an analysis of the navigation potential of the river dated February 27, 1883. He wrote:
The flat bottom boats used to transport goods between Willsboro Falls and the crib of stone, built on the forward edge of the Boquet Delta, were called lighters . . . To store the river boats, in winter and at night, there was an old lighter dock located at the end of a road leading down from the present Paine family dwellings. It was on the north bank, several hundred yards inside the mouth of the river. It was a rough construct of stone and timbers which can still be seen below the river's surface at low water.
Although there was a lot of history that took place in this area, there are few archeological remains other than those of the dock to help record its details. To better understand the transportation network that once operated here, we should think of the dock as part of a system. Beginning out in the lake, there was once a breakwater, an anchorage or crib dock where a larger lake boat would unload onto the lighter, and upstream was located another dock, and a stone and timber landing at Rock Island. The landing at Rock Island would have had a series of gin poles or such for loading and unloading boats . . .
Rock Island would have been the landing place for many other boats. With a navigable channel to the lake, it is not difficult to believe that there were once a lot of fishing boats and smaller craft tied up or beached here. It was the modern equivalent of a marina. In the days before the railroad, it was a common practice for Canadian apple buyers to locate old canal boats at agricultural sites up and down the lake and have farmers deliver produce directly to the boats. Merchants in Burlington would send over goods on boats for sale. In summary, it was activity on a scale that we today would never image taking place in such a quiet place.
Several of the most extensive and valuable manufacturing works in the country are established on this stream. The Boquet was formerly navigable to the Falls, a distance of three miles, by the largest vessels on the lake. Its channel, now changed and obstructed, only admits, at favorable periods of the year, the lightest craft.
. . . [it] has an average width of about 100 feet and a depth of 1 or 2 feet, with a narrow channel, perhaps 15 feet wide and 2 or 3 feet deep running through it. There is a bar about 800 feet wide at the mouth, over which the depth of water is not more than 1 foot. During spring rises in the lake, river schooners and canal-boats pass in and up to the food of Rock Island, just below Willsborough. The average tonnage of these vessels is about 100 or 125 tons (for vessels drawing less than 4 feet) . . . Under a State appropriation some ten years since, a dike of rock and brush was built . . . for protection of the entrance. Also a single crib was sunk just north of this dike, to be used in transferring freight from flat-bottom scows to craft of greater draught. The freight then handled was raw materials for the product of a forge at Willsborough . . .