Crane Mountain Paint Mine features high bluffs and history

Remnants of the Glen Mining Co. paint plant dot the scenic hike between Huckleberry and Crane mountains

By Tim Rowland

By any measure, 1896 was a very bad year for the Glen Mining Co., which had been tucked into the crook between Huckleberry and Crane mountains south of Johnsburg. In January, its operational works burned, and two months later, work details had just started picking up the pieces when an avalanche broadsided its company housing in the dead of night.

David Haley, the Boston chemist who had founded the company, escaped the calamity unscathed along with his wife and a young helper. But the mine had two strikers against it, and when the town refused to build a road through the notch to assist with transport, the jig was pretty much up for the plant whose industrial life spanned all of four years.

Even forgetting whoever or whatever seemed to want them gone, this impossibly remote location was a difficult spot to build a plant, according to Dave Greene who grew up nearby and has since become fascinated by the history of what he calls “the unknown side of Crane.” 

On a surprisingly hot May day, Greene led a cadre of Adirondack history-trekkers up into that high valley where the mine once stood, and then higher up the flank of Crane to the source of the waterworks that powered the operation. 

Rounding out our group were Greg Schaefer and John Sasso, two of the most knowledgeable historian-conservationists the Adirondacks has to offer. My main purpose was to serve as a diversion for the black flies while everyone else found and geo-tagged the artifacts and features we were to find that day, with the idea of creating a story map to preserve and interpret the history of the area.

The hike began at a red pipe gate about four miles south of Johnsburg on the, fittingly enough, South Johnsburg Road. Marked with discreet Open Space Institute placards, OSI acquired the 1,285-acre tract in 2017. It has since sold the property to the state, allowing the public to enjoy a relatively straightforward route to the old mine.

There is no marked trail, save for wide and scenic old road into the mine — later appropriated by snowmobiles, ATVs and logging trucks — which climbs up the valley, accompanied by the breath-catchingly beautiful Crystal Brook. 

The degree of difficulty increases at 1.8 miles where trail and brook intersect; an old log bridge had washed out some years prior. We worried about how bad weather the past week could comprise the hike. But Greg assured us it had only rained twice — once for four days and once for three days. The stream was up a bit, and while we all made the rock hop, it does get your attention.

At 2.3 miles we arrived at the old boundary of state land, and the route became more frequently blocked by blowdown, although nothing that was any more than a minor annoyance. As the cliffs of Huckleberry Mountain closed in on our right, the road became more of a path where, at 2.7 miles, it reached something of a Dead Sea of beaver ponds, cradled between two high bluffs with no major streams flowing in or out. 

At the far end of the pond and just shy of three miles, we reached the site of the plant. Little more than a couple courses of stone remain of the main works. A water-powered “hurdy gurdy” engine ground the ore into a powder. It was then carted over to the drying shed. Its footprint is faint but discoverable just north of the main works. The golden soil was extracted a few feet to the south in the obviously man-made pit.

The most intact ruin is the chimney of the company house, a little further up the valley on the left — right under the cliff that buried it all those years ago. “Anyone can walk in here and find these,” Greene said, in such a way as to imply the three miles and 400 feet of elevation gain we had attained to that point did not a real-for-sure expedition make.

We turned south and headed steeply up into a spruce forest, following an apparent old mule path that once served the plant and had been later appropriated as a route for a phone line for fire observers. A few poles and bits of wire still survive. 

Even 130 years later, we were able to see pilings and ditches from the paint company’s waterworks. After a half mile of climbing we reached the crown jewel of this infrastructure, a 110-foot stone dam that guaranteed a consistent and forceful flow of water to run the 50-horsepower hurdy gurdy.

Here, the nature of the hike changed. We left behind the old industry and entered the realm of fruit. Berrying was a favored occupation in the last century. The ground here is similar to the blueberry-rich Altona Flat Rock — great open slabs of rock sheathed in lichen and moss and little spruce trying to gain purchase.

Since blueberries are regenerated by wildfire, berry pickers were known arsonists. In his daily log, Greene said, one fire observer railed against the “miscreants” who cut the phone line to the tower and then set the mountain ablaze.

We walked through this delightful environment to the shores of Crane Pond, a lake high on the big mountain’s flank. After eating lunch, we spotted a canoe on our side of the lake, and considering that we needed to be on the opposite side of the lake, well — why not?

On the way back down to the valley, we followed an old wagon road, fairly obvious at lower elevations, but that breaches a rock ledge and vanishes. Greene, who has trod about every inch of this ground, said he still hopes to find more traces of it higher up.

As we walked back out, more spring leaves had popped in the warmth of the day, and we enjoyed wildflowers, cherry blossoms and the other newly minted greens of spring. 

While the upper waterworks present a challenge, the ruins of the plant itself are relatively easy for hikers to find, at least until the summer forest floor grows in. And you don’t have to be a history lover to appreciate the beauty and absolute solitude of the valley. As Greene said, “This is about as secluded as you can get.”

Photo at top: Hikers cross an open flat rock on the route to Crane Pond. Photo by Tim Rowland