April, 1921 
FOREST AND STREAM 
153 
however, hardly could have remained 
so much of a mystery to the guides as 
was indicated by their shadowy stories. 
A single roving beaver will litter a 
stream or lake with peeled sticks which 
will betray his presence unmistakably, 
even though he build neither house nor 
dam. 
There is every reason to believe, 
therefore, that the “beaver” hinted at 
by woodsmen of twenty years ago were 
otter, or else some grand-daddy muskrat 
which flipped under water in a smacking 
dive just at the moment that the listen- 
er’s thoughts were turning toward the 
legendary beaver of the region. 
I T was in 1905 that the Forest, Fish 
and Game Commission of New York, 
which then had jurisdiction over the 
woodlands of the state and the denizens 
thereof, decided that it would be most 
appropriate to attempt to introduce the 
beaver again in the Empire State. It 
was not the first experiment of the kind 
made by the commission; indeed it was 
merely a detail of a general plan to 
re-stock the Adirondacks with the abor- 
iginal fauna of the region- — wolves ex- 
cepted. 
Elk and moose had been liberated in 
the mountains in the hope that they 
would thrive and multiply. The numer- 
ous beaver meadows where ancient 
beaver ponds had silted up and become 
open glades, proved that once the beaver 
had found the Adirondack streams suit- 
able for his purposes and the commis- 
sion resolved to have beaver as well as 
elk and moose. Accordingly, in 1905, 
Courtesy New York Conservation Commission 
Beaver house near Indian Brook 
a few pairs were turned loose, some in 
the vicinity of Old Forge on the Fulton 
Chain of lakes in Herkimer County and 
some farther north. 
The elk and moose were confiding 
creatures, obtained from parks or pre- 
serves where they had become tolerant 
of man. They met a tragic end. Five 
or six of the elk were shot down in a 
group on Moss Lake, while the others 
perished singly by the hunter’s bullet or 
vanished leaving the suspicion of illegal 
slaughter. 
The sagacious beaver fared better. 
Caution had bred nocturnal habits in 
him for ages; he was on the verge of 
mastering the bitter lesson of extinction. 
When the crates containing the pioneer 
couples had been lifted from the guide- 
boats in which they were carried to se- 
cluded spots and the slats had been 
knocked off, the beaver slipped overside 
without ostentation and vanished. 
That was the last seen of them for 
months. Just where the pioneer colony 
was founded is not definitely known to- 
day. Judging from their present dis- 
tribution and taking into account the 
spot where they were first set free, it 
probably was on the headwaters of some 
stream between the Fulton Chain and 
Big Moose sections of the Adirondacks. 
From time to time reports were received 
indicating that the beaver had not gone 
the way of the elk and moose and by 
1909 the rejuvenated “old settler” was 
so numerous and confident as fre- 
quently to be seen by tourists. 
By that time a colony had picked out 
the marsh at the upper end of Big 
Moose Lake, a body of water whose 
shores are dotted with numerous camps 
and hotels, as a suitable site for a com- 
munity. A small dam was built across 
the inlet of the lake, two or three houses 
were erected and the summer folk re- 
garded it as one of the most interesting 
incidents of a vacation to row up to the 
marsh to see the trees the beaver had 
cut and hear the water gurgling over 
their dam. 
Still, the presence of the beaver in in- 
creasing numbers in the Adirondacks 
Courtesy New York Conservation Commission 
Beaver dam on Indian Brook near Fourth Lake, Fulton Chain as it looked on June 20 , igig 
