Tug Hill Country: Tales from the Big Woods

Lakemont, New York: North Country Books, 1971. 4th English Printing. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. 9x6x1. 1974 4th printing. Very good in good jacket. Ink gift note on dedication page, minor sticker remnant on front endpaper, two clear tape repairs on jacket reverse, jacket spine faded. 1971 Hard Cover. 227 pp. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs. The tug hill plateau is a land of many moods. In the summer it can be a scene of pastoral beauty and tranquility. Autumn changes Nature's scheme to a multi-hued outburst of color. Winter transforms it into a foreboding, white-clad monster; only to have it rejuvenated with a dazzling coat of green come Spring. This potpourri of hardwood ridges, stands of evergreen rock-strewn pasture land, sliced ever so often b y the gorge of a roaring stream, has a mind of its own - as do the people who call it home. These rugged individualists return to amuse and amaze in this interesting collection of Tug Hill history. Includes: Colonel Meacham's Big Cheese; A Professor of Woodsology; Smartville; The Smart Steam Wagon; Tug Hill Sends Her Sons to War; The Strong Man of Montague; Greenborough, a Lost Community; On Tug Hill Lumbering; The Spruce-Gummers of Tug Hill; Dinner by the Pound; The Mismatched Michigander; Resurrection, and Not Many There; High Jinks on the State Meadows; The Hungry Nine; Jay Barnes; The Death of a Killer; Bush's Bear; The Greenfield Murder Case; Pranks... and Pranksters; Jokes... and Jokesters; Faud Yantis, the Devil's Own; Tales Tall, Wild and Handsome; The Pestiferous Bull-Fly; The Man Called Hardwood; The Mad Fiddler; The Snow Ridge Story; Aftermath. "The Tug Hill Plateau is an upland region in upstate New York in the USA. The Tug Hill Plateau is west of the Adirondack Mountains and is separated from the Adirondacks by the Black River Valley. Although the region is and has traditionally been known as the Tug Hill Plateau since it is flat on top, it is actually not a plateau. Technically, the Tug Hill could more accurately be called a "cuesta" since it is actually composed of sedimentary rocks that tip up on one side, rising from about 350 feet on the west to over 2,000 feet in the east. The Tug Hill Plateau is part of four Upstate New York counties: Jefferson, Lewis, Oneida, and Oswego. Tug Hill has 150,000 acres (600 km²) of unbroken northern hardwood forest with many brooks and streams. A vast majority of this area is controlled by New York State. A minority of the area is privately owned. Private owners generally maintain permanent residences in Tug Hill, usually only on state highways or county roads. Sometimes permanent residences are found on secondary roads as well, although their distance from a state or county road is short. Contrary to popular belief, permanent residences have electricity and indoor plumbing. Usually camps in the remote areas of Tug Hill that are maintained during the hunting season do not have electricity and indoor plumbing. The more remote areas of Tug Hill remain mostly undeveloped; thus few roads, villages, and buildings exist in these areas of Tug Hill. The undeveloped areas of Tug Hill are a haven for wildlife. Deer, rabbits, beavers, turkeys, fishers, bobcats, coyote, and the occasional black bear can be found. Salmon, trout, bass, walleye, and waterfowl can be found in the water also. One interesting feature that is rarely found in today's camps is a second front door directly above the ground-level front door. This door is only used when so much snow has accumulated that the ground-level door can not be accessed. Tug Hill is known for record levels of snowfall. Levels of snow reaching 200 inches are not uncommon, since Tug Hill has a high elevation and its location in relation to Lake Ontario leads to ideal conditions for accumulation of lake effect snow. The hamlet of Montague located on Tug Hill owns the single day New York State record of snowfall with 77 inches (6 feet, 5 inches). Another Tug Hill hamlet, Hooker, holds the state record for annual snowfall. Hooker also received an extraordinary accumulation of snow in the winter of 1976-77, with a total accumulation of 466.9 inches -- approximately 39 feet.