Sometime during the late 1950's my father in law, Jim , and his brother Bill, decided to purchase some land to build a camp on the tughill plateau. The plateau is an elevated plain, situated to the east of Lake Ontario and to the west of the Adirondack Mountains. It really is the foot hill of the Adirondacks. The area is sparsly populated ( Montaque is the smallest town in New York State with a constant population of 47) and sometimes uninhabitable. The maps above show the county in New York State and the county. A very good description provided by the Lewis County Chamber of Commerce is a seperate page linked below. Being born in raised in the City of Utica, NY, I had no appreciation for the outdoors, or for the hard work necessary to build and maintain a camp. My idea of a camp was a house on the lake. The camp is situated on approx. 500 acres of prime wood lands and the area's topography is generally hilly with slight ridges and many swamps. The land that the camp was built on was used as a base logging camp prior to WW I and an earthen dam was built to hold the logs, which were then floated down the Mad River to Watertown, NY. Most of that dam is gone as well as the structures that supported that operation. The entire camp is built from trees that were cut, peeled and prepared by hand. A portable saw mill provided the rough cut lumber and an old bull dozer prepared the road which was 2 1/2 miles from the closest road. Maintaining that road is one of the most difficult chores we have.
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