The Fourpeaks Story: 1967 to Today.
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The Fourpeaks story
is mostly told here as it seems to fit in with what we say about the Fourpeaks Backcountry Camps and the Stone House Guest Barns.
There's more of the story in the Adirondack Newsletters and in the photos and site notes at the Adirondack Photo Gallery.
And if you're good at making sense from poetry, you find the story in our Adirondack Poems.
"Are you working on those memoirs yet?" (An Email Exchange.
[Scroll down. CLICK on text or image for The Story and Photo pages.]
1967 The Cabin: Jim Melvin's Camp. (How it all started.) [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]A ski weekend at Whiteface with my first wife in '67. I can't remember if the kids were there or not. I wanted a wilderness place, lots of trees and space, to get away to whenever I wanted. I figured out this would be cheap land--not suitable for building development, and I started asking around for land, focusing on the lower priced offerings. Talking with the old couple who ran the Golden Arrow, or whatever it was called in those days, they pointed the way to Wilmington. A few days later Dan Deighan, the land-savvy real estate man from Placid, was driving us up Stonehouse Road in his four-wheeler through a foot of snow. We walked in from the farmhouse site along the woods road through the Back Field. I remember the pine boughs were heavy with snow. When we got there it was love at first sight. I peeked in the window. The way Dan explained it, the 90-acre lot was $14,000, which worked out to be $100 per acre for the land as the building was valued at $5,000. I never thought about not paying full price. She made brown curtains with a deer hunting theme for the windows that Winter and we broke up in the Spring. I moved into the Chelsea Hotel and for a while "camp" was my only real home. I met Jim Melvin, the former owner, and we got friendly. He was born in the lot across the road and his grandad owned the 90 acres. He built the camp at the edge of the field by the old stone fence that separated the cultivated land from the woodlot. I learned he used to "guide" people from Placid during hunting season and used "The Cabin" as a bunk house. Dan said he got disgusted with poachers, decided to sell the place in an angry mood and never changed his mind. Years later he built the Camp Barn for me with his son, who became a building contractor and a chiropractor in Poughkeepsie. I wrote about this in a poem, "Camp." 
1968. The Cabin: More About Jim Melvin's Camp. (How the stuff got there.) [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]The Story. Jim had a deer head over the fireplace when we got it. The deal was we had bought it with all the contents and Jim was surely a man of his word. But he felt so badly about not keeping the trophy, he ended up with it. There's still a humorous plastic plaque with a deer relaxing in front of the fireplace from his stuff. I misplaced the big whisky ad with a big buck on it--framed in slashed bark. Very pretty. Louise had me put in the fancy yellow pine floor over the 50's vinyl asbestos tile which was breaking up a bit I have to admit. The duck is from Times Square, the oak rockers from a camp I used to have on a black river in South Carolina and the little kid's rockers are Quebec. Louise is always adjusting the mantel decorations. The story about The Cabin (Jim's cooking) is continued on the next page. When Jim guided deer in the fifties he'd cook for the sports, of course, and he was good. He did venison three ways. After I bought the place he came over with Alice one day--we had other people,too--and he cooked us a three-way venision meal, all at one sitting. Read about in Camp, a poem I did about the place. The buildings just evolved, season by season. The Shed idea started out as one of those store-bought steel buildings for firewood and a snowmobile. Heavy snow did it in. The first half of the present shed served the same purpose for a while. Then it got doubled in size, the new part being a workshop. The workshop became The Sauna and no bathing suits were allowed, but you could carry a towel. When the kids got bigger, we changed the whole building around making a Kid's Room, a washroom and a fine birch bed from the builder in Keene Valley. There was gas heat, but later Dorwin Brewer built the masonry chimney and we hooked up the pot belly stove from a trip to Savannah (now at The Hideout in Camp Barn). Sleeping for a couple and two kids. The Screen House was a 16x16 platform for a a big L.L. Bean screen tent. We made the mistake of leaving a cupboard with (wow!) honey in it and the bears just ruined the whole thing. George Brenner, the ex-Staten Island fireman caretaker who was the most fun, and a couple of his trooper buddies built the present Screen House one Summer in the 70's. Burt Cross, our security department, would hold forth there for long evenings of story-telling, some of it's on tape. 
1970. Putting the Pieces Together: Real Estate Purchases '67 to '70. [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]1967. No sooner had I closed the deal with Jim Melvin's on his 90 acres, Dan let me know the adjoining 75-acre Prime lot was up for sale as well. And next year the big 300-acre Hurley lot across the road at $65 per. Then the 120-acre Smith woodlot and sugarbush right by camp. Dan researched the ownership of the 18-acre frontage lot (the Boughton field) and found the old man's son in Georgia. The last piece was the seven acre Beauregard camp (the old Perkins Farm) that had been cut out of the Smith lot years ago before Smith bought it. The people had a mobile home on it--an eyesore. The guy held out and we ended up paying $10,000 for. But what a relief! By 1970, with Dan's help, I had put together six parcels of land--a 700-acre private getaway. In those days we called it just "camp." When we decided to start a vacation rental business, first tentatively in 1988 with just a few rentals from a one-time New York Times ad, and then later in 1997 with a one-page website, we had to find a name. "Fourpeaks" first came to mind--and it stuck. 
1971. "A New Camp." A place for our first guests. [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]Louise first visited camp on January 11, 1971. The combination locks still have the numbers from that date. Afterwards she had a hand in everything, transforming the place, over the years, into her idea of an Adirondack Camp. Joni's "deer" curtains came down along with Jim Melvin's deerfoot gun cradles and his six-man bunkroom. The kitchen sink got moved to the window with the southern exposure. I agreed to let her paint the ceiling. Finally the place got yellow pine flooring over the cracked asbestos tiles.The poem "Camp." talks about those times. We shopped Quebec furniture in Quebec, Montreal and places in between. The nicest cupboard is still there at "The Cabin." Trips to the Bowery in NYC we stocked up on the right kind of pots and pans for a camp--lots of heft. And we started having visitors--friends and VIP customers from our printing business in New York--they were often the same people. We needed room for them. Charlie Cornick built it that Summer--on the big rock that looks like a whale's back on the other side of the brook. I remember deciding on the location of the foundation posts with my 10-year-old son Billy. We looked out at the little black spruce seedlings I had just transplanted from the Straight farm (Farmhouse Field). It had a real maple floor and a "cathedral" ceiling. The idea for the shelf all around the room came from Tirolerland--Frank and Betty's place that burned after the '80 Olympics. The Strimbans stayed there summers--with their dogs. We still have the sketch he made. Mitch and Rasma came often in all seasons, leaving many photo memories. Jim Melvin came by one day admiring our "New Camp." He had a building heart, same as me. The name stuck. 
1972 Wolf's Nest: A Nature Retreat. An out of the way place to build. [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]From the very beginning, each bit of land was a unique place, a precious discovery. A weathered oak marked one of these--sun-drenched, broad, low-branching, unecocomic in forestry terms--a wolf tree. The tree stood by a flat rock outcropping on the Wainwright property line--where the old Halsey Straight woods road crossed the lateral skid trail that went to Brown's Notch. The views were similar to those from The Lookout farther west on Basset but more dramatic as the angle of the Whiteface view was more frontal. The proximity to The Cabin made it an easy, often repeated walk for years. A walking meditation. In '71 we put some cedar benches along the way and the urge to build another camp just grew and grew. Billy could use it for his Buddhist retreats or visits with the kids' college friends. Too hard to get to to hire a builder? A Department of Agriculture Construction Bulletin made it look easy. Merritt and Martin got the bucket cement mixer hitched to the tractor and started the foundation one day late in Spring. Each trip was well planned. Climbing over the sheer rock portion of the trail, the big tractor wheels would slip and slide. Chains helped. Foundation forms were needed on the slanting rock. The floor and wall framing went on into the Summer weekends. Awning style picture windows were the latest thing at the building supply store. The roof system came right out of the Agriculture Department Bulletin--a tripled 2x8 center beam with a real low pitch a novice could manage. A real slate sink from a local auction sale and one of several 7th avenue cooking stoves made an attractive kitchen. There wasn't time for Dorwin and a masonry chimney and our building energies wre exhauster besides. A metal fireplace unit from the catalog fit right in, cozy warm. Billy never made it up, but one of his Zen friends came for a week in the late Fall. A good start for the place. 
1973 The Old Barn: Building of Many Uses. (A workshop with electricity and water.) [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]It was a surprise in '73 when Dan let me know the Stone House was up for sale. The barn had electricity and running water. Dorwin Brewer built the chimney and we put in a stove to heat the place. Merritt and I took out the racks and rails from the cow shed and poured concrete to fill in the slop troughs. It wasn't very even, but it was enough floor for us. The horse barn had no floor at all so we built one up out of rough pine from Shirley Wallace. It didn't matter that it was almost a foot higher than the old concrete floor. The hay loft got built in for a second story a bit at a time as we needed space for storage and this resulted in quite a number of different ceiling heights. We built the Gypsy Camp there over the Winter of '73. We put in a radial saw, a table saw, joiner, planer and a wood lathe. I remembered these tools from High School days and it was a pleasure to be able to have a complete working woodshop again. Whatever things we needed at camp got built at the Old Barn. Shelves, cabinets and doors--mouse bait boxes, too. In '88 we set up an "office" for our printing sales in the Cow Barn. Germaine Gonyea worked for us. Later she got a job managing the Aubuchon store in AuSable. The place got a septic tank and a new water line. When we moved to the New Barn the old office was gradually transformed into a place for guests--we weren't sure who. Our kids liked it and it became a hangout. In '93 we put the bathrooms in. Cousins from Connecticutt stayed there. Maybe we could rent it. In '96 we got serious about finishing it up. Louise did the decorating. It rented first in June. Our first Fourpeaks Barn. Built a hundred years ago, with stalls for six cows, room for horses and equipment, a hayloft with bale hooks on a trolley and a milk shed with cooler, the "Old Barn" proved to be the most adaptable structure on the Stone House Farm. 
1973 The 1829 Stone House: The Devlin Place. (Buying and Restoring The 1829 Stone House.) [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]The land purchases that rounded out the Fourpeaks property, roughly 700 acres bordered by Wainright, Basset, Ebenezer and Rattlesnake Knob, were completed in '72. But we still dabbled with the idea of acquiring more adjacent property and I would hear from Dan Deighan, the land broker, from time to time. So it was no surprise when there was a call from him at the office one day in March '73. But this was not another woodlot or side of a mountain that could be bought at a price. Gene and Theresa had closed the Nursing Home business at the Stone House years ago, and now they wanted to sell it and move out. Weekenders who treasured our quiet camp visits, Louise and I had no need for the place. But the idea that the property could be bought and developed (ugh!), spoiling our pretty camp entrance-way was reason enough to buy. The first year we had it was the year of the printing paper crunch. And so the Storage Building got built in a big hurry. But that's another story--the dirt moving that cleaned up the side of the lot, the big granite wall and a new approach to the house--deemphasizing the relation to the highway in favor of Stonehouse Road. The first stage of renovations to house itself removed the Nursing Home features--the steel fire exit from the second floor, the dumbwaiter connecting the basement with the first and second floor and the trapdoor in the stairwell Finding the antique railing preserved and complete in the attic was a wonderful surprise! And we removed the modern bathroom fixtures from the first floor, replacing them with a found pedestal sink and tub. No counter either! Outside the covered entrance in front was torn down and Pat Alexander of the Lake Placid Granite Company--who owned the neighboring property at the time--cut new front steps. The beauty parlor, a recent addition on the side was taken down, and we planned a garden there. (See 1930 photo top of page.) Life in the Chelsea Hotel and years of brownstone living on 20th Street left us with a warm feeling for old houses. The Stone House deserved to be better preserved and in '77 we found a pair of talented builders to do it-- Popeye Coolidge and Ed Bedard of AuSable Forks. The circa 1930 cellulose wallboard was removed from the walls in the entire house, exposing plaster surfaces that were carefully repaired. The wood molding was in excellent condition and the few missing pieces were custom made to match. Fireplaces on the the southerly chimney were uncovered, the flue relined and a second one was built to match the northerly one (removed in the '30's). We had earlier installed a forest of cedar poles to support the floors which the missing chimney had supported. Two fireplace mantles were copied from the last remaining one in the front study. 
1974 New Barn: The Storage Building. (How the stone wall got built and why.) [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]When the paper crunch came in '73 we were going through a couple of carloads a month at our book printing plant in NYC. Deliveries were undependable but the paper mill was only 35 miles from camp at Ticonderoga. By the end of the year the Old Barn shed and the first floor of a brand new Storage Building was loaded full of paper stock we had bought up for a backup supply. Building construction in the Northcountry is a fine art. Muddy Spring weather and severe Winter cold makes a short season for optimal conditions. We had to think fast when Charlie Cornick found he had hundreds of yards of fill left over from the New Barn site. Charlie dumped it over the useless rubble that had collected along the old road from years of Spring floods and old foundations. Next Spring he built a granite wall around it all. We planted Sugar Maples picked right out of the woods. In '88 we somehow we got the idea to set up to print books right here in Jay. The Storage Building was completely done over with a big power supply, hi-tech insulation, sheetrock thoughout, storage heat and air conditioning. The print shop and bindery were on the first floor--camera and offices above. That lasted a year and a half. We couldn't get the printing help and APA closed us down for zoning violations. An uncomfortable reminder of a bad business decision--until Fourpeaks bookings began to grow '96. Now with relatively minor remodeling and a lot of creative decorating, it's our "New Barn." (CLICK HERE to hear the whole story.) On somewhat higher ground in back of the lot, looking as much like a barn as possible, New Barn commands a good view of the river, fields, the old Stone Houses and the Jay Mountain Wilderness in the distance. The earthen ramp to the second story at the far end and the truck height loading ramp in front--prominent structures from its working days as a paper warehouse and a printing plant--give it a rugged workshop character, good bones for a barn. 
1973 Sugar Camp: Maple Sugaring (A camp building with used parts and found objects.) [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]The Story. Maple Sugaring. I first met Dick Smith several years after I bought the Perkins lot from his Dad, Phil. I was interested in the falling down sugar house I found with a tin roof that was loose and slanted walls. Porcupines had it for a home. The rusty steam stack hung at a crazy angle over the wreck of the building. An old rusty pan was left there. He told me how they sugared with horses to draw the sap. That old sugar shack was there as far back as anybody knew. The sugarbush ran all the way up the brook a half mile or more. He showed me on the old maples where they used to tap. Many of them were being shaded out from the sun by surrounding pines--bad for early sugaring. I'd have to cut the pines out. We struck a fifty-fifty deal. I'd put up a new rig and supply the wood--he'd work it (while I was a work in NYC). Bobby Wallace built it with me in '73. The foundation was concrete blocks. We stepped down the porches to make it easier. His Dad, Shirley cut the pine. Four-by-eight floor joists, four-by-four studs and two-by-ten flooring. It was only twelve feet wide! Building a camp it's important to use up any materials you have around and not be fancy about it. I got the idea from Jim Melvin's building at "The Cabin." There he used old doors and the windows were just storm sash he found around. At Sugar Camp I got to use the old windows I saved from my first printing loft on 17th Street. They used to open awning style from the office out into the shop. And the door hardware came from a trip to Europe, collecting things for "camp" wherever we went. The door is out of the schoolhouse in Jay when the Fire Department got it from the town . (Another one of those old doors is at the Stone House by the garden.) The rig came from Rutland. It was just eight feet. Dick strung out the tubing that Winter. The sap flowed in January and Dick boiled it carefully. Only a small quantity was clear--he put them up in fancy little bottles I bought. Most of it was amber in cans of various sizes. The darker it is, the better tasting--we learned. We did this only two seasons--Dick left the area and took up trucking. A fellow in Keene bought the rig from me. The tubing is still up in the Camp Barn. We've been enjoying the syrup all these years and still have a supply in the Stone House cellar. With the rig out of the way we closed in the porch, put in some beds and started to use it--"Sugar Camp." 
1975 "Ridge Camp: Bigger and Prettier. (Wild orchids and columbine on a ridge with views.) [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]Back from a trip to France in '73 we admired the design of the Gypsy wagons so much I just had to build one. I told Merritt about the idea and his Dad Frank gave me the frame and wheels off an old Chevy truck he had fixed up for a woods wagon. Scaled down to just six by ten it was a perfect fit. It had a bed and kitchen with a little potbelly stove. Merritt and I built it over the Winter and we decorated it with paisley cloth from India--a nice touch. It took a whole day to drag it with the tractor all the way to the Ridge. We stayed in it one Spring weekend hiking around the ledges with pretty flowers (native orchids and columbine) picnicking and enjoying the views. We remember the frog chorus from the pond on those Spring nights. I started sketching plans for the new camp right away, using the open plan and loft ideas first tried at Sugar Camp--only bigger and prettier. Mark Shaw and his wife came up for a weekend with us and we showed them the site. My serious concern was just how close to the height of land to build it. We ended up a hundred feet down from the exact ridge line (marked with barbed wire fence years ago). I'm not sure what those people (clients of mine from the city) thought of those camp building involvements. By Summer Bill Lincoln had dug out the shallow well and a root cellar. Shirley Wallace cut all the boards and dimension lumber full size from local pine. Bobby Wallace built it and the idea for second story balcony came about when the four by eight beams cut out even longer that I asked for. It got done by Fall and Bobby and his wife joined us there for a Thanksgiving dinner. The dinnerware was Tennessee pottery from that year's Smoky Mountains visit and the silverware was the five and dime open pattern stainless we had bought over the years for our Chelsea Hotel home (both still there). (CLICK HERE to hear what happened to the Gypsy trailer after Ridge Camp was built.) 
1999 Gypsy Camp: At Melvin's Farm. (How it started out as just a well cover.) [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]Back from a trip to France in '73 we admired the design of the Gypsy wagons so much I just had to build one. I told Merritt about the idea and his Dad Frank gave me the frame and wheels off an old Chevy truck he had fixed up for a woods wagon. Merritt and I built it over the Winter. Scaled down to just six by ten it was a perfect fit. We bolted floor planks to the truck frame and built the walls right on it. Two storm windows rigged awning style gave lots of light plus another little window at the kitchen end. The roof/ceiling was round like a gypsy wagon should be, with a skin of plastic corrugated roofing. A 24-inch foldout cot served for a bed (now doing duty at The Cabin Screen House). It had a sink, a camp stove for cooking, two gas lights and a funny little potbelly stove. I decorated it with paisley cloth from India--a nice touch. In the Spring of '74 we brought the Gypsy trailer up to the Cow Pond at the end of the woods road on the Hurley lot. It was a line camp, sort of. A place to hang out, another Tiny House, a base to explore that beautiful corner of the property by Rattlesnake Knob. It was so pretty there I got to work sketching and building Ridge Camp, right there by the Cow Pond. Got it all done by Thanksgiving. (CLICK HERE to hear the story about Ridge Camp.) When Ridge was done we brought Gypsy back down and set it up at the end of a woods road (now the downhill leg of Cedar Trail) that leads out from Melvin Farm (AKA Boughton Field and Gypsy Camp field) into Cedar Swamp. I thought it would be nice to have a camp right at the edge of that forest of beautiful trees. We set a privy nearby. Problems came up with that location. There was no opening for light and it was very wet and rocky. No way to get the bush hog in with mud holes and rocks around the camp. The place just grew up and Gypsy stayed there for years and years. 
2001-2003 Thoreau House (How I began building it as a place to live.) [CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]September 2001 I had my personal 9/11. My wife of 30 years let me know she wanted a separation, divorce, or whatever. We were living at the Stone House in Jay and I was in bed in the teeny bedroom we made at the northwest corner with a good view of mountains. She asked me to sleep on the couch in the Library. I didn't. I was re-reading "Economy" in Thoreau's Walden Pond, and just kept on reading after I told her SHE could move to the library, I was staying right here. The reality of the situation became clearer over the next few weeks. This was no kiss and make up situation. Months of marital counseling hardened the view that she (as she said) needed to be on her own. I won't go into the motivating factors (money, repression), which only became clearer much later on, and no amount of pleading could change her mind. Thoreau's Cabin stuck with me. The simplicity of it, the closeness to nature. Reacting to the personal distress, I sketched and planned a new home for myself on the property above, but with modern amenities for full time living. By October the foundation was down right over the 150-year old hand-dug well at the Hamillton Farm on Stonehouse Road. We had the side walls up and roofed in November, and got the building wrapped by January. It took till the next Summer to finish the interior, electrical and plumbing, and the cedar shakes weren't on till the Summer after that. 
2001 to Today. Camp Barn (How I ended up living in a barn.)
[CLICK on image at left for photos and more.]I never got to live at Thoreau House. By December 2001, while Thoreau was building, the reality of my new situation became apparent. I would have to move, but Thoreau was just a dream. I needed space for my work, vehicles and personal gear. And I wasn't getting an apartment in Plattsburgh, like the lady suggested. The tractors and other equipement, foresty and maintenance gear were already up at Camp Barn, a fine location central to the property. I finished first stage remodeling for a place to live there in time to move in Janrary 2. There was just one room, "The Hideout," with two narrow windows, in what used to be the Auto Shop, and a small kitchen carved out of the corner of it. But it was home away from marital craziness. Peace and quiet in a natural place under the pines. (Until she hired herself a "killer" divorce attorney. But that's another story.) By Spring I was planning and building The Office and a bathroom under the storage gallery in the South Shed. Eric built the deck overlooking the pine grove with a door from the Carpentry Shop, now a fancy Guest Room with parlor stove. That's where my 1970's antique office furniture ended up. The only personal stuff I was able to salvage from her divorce. 2005, when it seemed like she might be a live-in GF, I built Becky's Room for Becky over the Guest Room with big windows and a great view. No deal. But Murray and Iza stay there when they visit. The other room upstairs is my clothing collection. Much reduced from the Stone House days, but still formidable. (NOTE: Like the other camp pages, the photos are old, and people say, "Your places look a lot prettier than pictured." Come visit and see my latest efforts in really authentic Adirondack decorating!) "Are you working on those memoirs yet?" (An Email Exchange.)
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