154 
FOREST AND STREAM 
April, 1921 
was not generally known. In 1912 Bar- 
num Brown, a curator of the American 
Museum of Natural History in New 
York City, deplored the virtual extinc- 
tion of this interesting creature, saying- 
in an article in the “American Museum 
Journal” in which he urged rigid protec- 
tion for beaver in the United States and 
Canada for a period of twenty years, 
that he had seen only seven occupied 
beaver houses on a fossil-hunting trip in 
the Red Deer River section of north- 
western Canada the preceding year. 
“Formerly the American beaver had a 
wider distribution than any other mam- 
mal except the puma,” he wrote. “Its 
range extended from Alaska to Califor- 
nia, across Canada from Hudson Bay, 
along the Atlantic Coast as far south as 
Georgia and northern Florida and 
thence along the Gulf of Mexico as far 
as the Rio Grande. In the northwest- 
ern section of Canada beavers are still 
quite numerous, especially in the mus- 
keg region.” 
F OR the first ten years of their re- 
turn to the Adirondacks the beaver 
managed generally to escape pub- 
lic notice. When discovered, as they 
were occasionally, they were objects of 
curiosity and interest. By 1916, how- 
ever, the Conservation Commission of 
the state, which had succeeded the 
Forest, Fish and Game Commission, 
acknowledged that there were places in 
the Adirondacks where the beaver might 
have made a nuisance of himself and 
should be discouraged. In general, how- 
ever, its report for that year on the ex- 
periment of introducing beaver in the 
Adirondacks is most optimistic. 
“The success of the stocking of the 
Adirondacks with beaver,” it was said 
in the report, “has become increasingly 
apparent throughout the entire region. 
The universal testimony from hotel men 
and others in touch with the large num- 
ber of summer tourists is that the beaver 
and their dams and houses constitute 
one of the most interesting phases of the 
wild life of the woods. On streams 
where they have built their dams fishing 
has been very materially improved be- 
cause of the better opportunity for the 
breeding of trout in the beaver ponds. 
“In certain instances damage has been 
caused either fi’om flooding, resulting in 
the killing of timber, or from the felling 
of trees upon valuable camp sites. Per- 
mits to destroy dams and houses have 
been issued by the commission where it 
has appeared upon investigation that 
such relief should be granted. In a few 
cases permission has even been given to 
trap the beaver but it has always been 
stipulated that the skins be turned in to 
this office. Up to the time of writing 
this report, however, no skins have been 
received.” 
Meanwhile the industrious beaver was 
thriving in a manner to delight the 
heart of the author of copy-book 
maxims. Every season colony after col- 
ony ejected its lazy members and was 
abandoned by its more adventurous spir- 
its and these spread abroad through the 
land mating and forming new commu- 
nities. 
An example of their method of colo- 
nizing was seen on Dart’s Lake on the 
north branch of the Moose River. In 
1916 there was a prosperous beaver vil- 
lage on Moss Lake, a mile to the east 
and on the opposite side of a precipitous 
mountain. There was only one beaver 
on Dart’s Lake. William Dart, owner of 
the lake and a man wise in the ways 
of the woods, averred that the lone 
beaver had been driven out of the Moss 
Lake community because he was a 
loafer. 
Certain it was that during that first 
year on Dart’s Lake the exile devoted 
himself whole-heartedly to loafing. He 
built no house he dammed no stream. 
Such trees as he cut were saplings and 
apparently he lived from hand to mouth, 
no food stores being evident. 
The next year, however, the situation 
had changed. Having sown his wild 
oats, the lone beaver of Dart’s had 
mated, built a substantial home for his 
family and seemed a model beaver in 
every respect. In due course he probably 
will become a patriarch, tinged with 
gray about the muzzle and revered and 
feared by every ne’er-do-well youngster 
of his village. 
T O the north, on Big Moose Lake, the 
beaver had prospered mightily. 
Their dam had waxed so great as 
to flood the marshland adjoining the in- 
let, rendering trails to other lakes which 
started in the marsh utterly impassable. 
Similar conditions began to be reported 
in the Beaver River country to the 
north and in districts still farther' away 
from the spot where the beaver were 
planted. 
The beaver were claiming the entire 
region for their own and most uncom- 
plimentary reports began to drift into 
the office of the Conservation Commis- 
sion at Albany in place of the “universal j! 
testimony from hotel men and others”. 
Sometimes they were to the effect thac 
the fishing on some lake or stream had 
been spoiled by the industrious beaver; 
sometimes it was the scenery that had 
been spoiled ; sometimes it was valuable 
timber land which had been flooded and 
the trees killed; sometimes it was a 
watery throughfare that had been ob- 
structed by beaver dams. 
Among the last is Brown’s Tract In- 
'et, a sluggish, meandering stream flow- 
ing into the south end of Raquette Lake « 
which has been an important unit in the 
main camp route through the Adiron- 
dacks ever since their glades were trav- 
elled by man. In fact, Raquette Lake 
got its name from a “cache” of snow- 
shoes found on its shores which are 
thought to have been abandoned by a 
party of French and Indians on a winter 
foray to the Mohawk Valley by way of 
the frozen surface of Brown’s Tract In- 
let, Fulton Chain and the Moose River.,r| 
The raiders were caught at Raquette 
Lake by a thaw which rendered their 
snowshoes useless, according to the le- 
gend and abandoned the enterprise, hid- in 
ing their “raquettes” in the fir thicket 
where they were discovered long after- 
ward. 
Now Brown’s Tract Inlet, a highway 
of the woods from time immemorial, is 
obstructed within a few hundred yards 
of Raquette Lake by a beaver dam. The 
dam and some of the beaver houses are 
within plain view of a road which 
crosses the inlet and lumber wagons, 
stages and motor cars thunder across 
the bridge at brief intervals. Yet for 
three years the beaver of Brown’s 
Tract Inlet have held their own. 
A dozen times a day boats and canoes 
are hauled over their dam to the detri- 
ment of the structure and of the way- 
farer’s temper. Yet as often as the 
dam is injured the beaver repair it and 
cling doggedly to the site ■ they have 
selected. They probably are the busi- 
est beaver in the world and if they| 
have any spare time, they undoubtedly 
spend it at beaver mass meetings called 
to adopt resolutions favoring the ex- 
pulsion of humans from the woods. 
At the head of the inlet there is an- 
other colony on Brown’s Tract Ponds 
The level of the water in the lowei 
(continued on page 182) 
. 
Courtesy New York Conservation Commission 
A beaver dam anchored by boulders 
