A Virtual Tour of the River's History

Through movement, art and storytelling the river sings, creating a decolonizing map of memory and water...

The Nikentsà:ke / Grasse River is hidden. It runs behind forest walls, in back of houses and farms. Seemingly by chance, it has avoided much of the hydroelectric and tourist development of other Adirondack rivers. Its headwaters are protected as “forever wild” in the State Forest Preserve. Yet it ends at one of the most polluted sites in the United States at Massena’s Alcoa aluminum plant. 

Starting in the Adirondack Mountains east of Cranberry Lake, the South Branch flows from beaver ponds and lakes down through wild wetlands where it meanders, picking up tannins from sphagnum moss, pitcher plants, and Labrador tea to color the water deep gold. Early European settlers tried farming, logging and built a few tourist hotels at Massawepie Lake and Shurtleff’s on the Grasse River Flow.

Early Native Nations lived here for thousands of years, hunting and fishing and later guiding. Only in the past few decades has much of this formerly private forest become public land and State easement land for public recreation. The old Grasse River Railroad bed, now gravel road, follows the South Branch and is accessible by foot, bicycle or snowmobile. By canoe, at high water, some of this can be paddled. State Route 3 crosses the river and is the site for access to the south and north.

 The South Branch north of Route 3 flows through private lands, with easement access except during deer hunting season, down to State owned land by waterfalls along the Tooley Pond Road. Most of the waterfalls had mills in the 19th Century. One, at Twin Falls, was a mill and blast furnace for magnetite iron ore at the former village of Clarksboro during the Civil War.

Today, it is wilder than any time since guide Bill Rasbeck kept a journal, hunted, trapped and gathered spruce gum here in the mid-19th Century. The falls are a reminder that this water hits the hard metamorphic rock of the Adirondack dome, cutting down about a thousand feet to the St. Lawrence Lowlands, leaving waterfalls where the rock is most resistant.

 The first settlement the river reaches is at Degrasse, formerly Monterey, where glimpses downstream from the bridge show the remains of a series of mills once supporting the town in the 19th Century. Company houses here were built in World War II for the magnetite mine upstream, revived by the Hanna Corporation.

Downstream, the river soon joins the Middle Branch coming in from the east with headwaters near Little Blue Mountain among hunting clubs and timber land with State easements for recreation. The river’s volume has doubled by the time it reaches Lampsons Falls, a forty foot drop and popular recreation site. Whitewater paddlers navigate rapids and carry around further falls, eventually reaching the next settlement of Russell.

 By the time the river reaches Russell, it has picked up water from the North Branch and Plumb Brook, again increasing its volume. The North Branch drains forest land to the east above the original Stillwater Hunting Club where canoe builder J. Henry Rushton helped found the club and many community leaders gathered to hunt, fish and promote conservation.

The North Branch headwaters are on State land at Church Pond and continue down through private land, some of it with easements for non-motorized recreation, through Albert Marsh to Painter Mountain, Harpers Falls and the rapids above Russell.

By the time the river reaches Russell, it has picked up water from the North Branch and Plumb Brook, again increasing its volume. The North Branch drains forest land to the east above the original Stillwater Hunting Club where canoe builder J. Henry Rushton helped found the club and many community leaders gathered to hunt, fish and promote conservation. The North Branch headwaters are on State land at Church Pond and continue down through private land, some of it with easements for non-motorized recreation, through Albert Marsh to Painter Mountain, Harpers Falls and the rapids above Russell.

From Russell, the river passes a series of drops, not easily navigated by canoe at low water, until it reaches the quiet waters, called “Lazy River” east of Hermon. An old roller skating rink and campground is visible through the trees. And the river looks navigable downstream, but again passes a few rapids and the drop at Jackson Falls before reaching the former paper mill village of Pyrites. 

From the abandoned bridge in Pyrites you have glimpses of the former paper mill site and the only hydroelectric facility on the river, run now by the multinational Enel Corporation. Downstream of the twin turbines is a gorge ending at the County Route 21 Bridge and an eddy where canoeists put on for a quiet ride to Canton.

Coming in from the west is Harrison Creek, draining the farmland toward Hermon, the old sulfur mines at the ghost town of Stellaville, the wild lands of Huckleberry Pond, camps at Trout Lake and the old zinc mine near Edwards. Just above Canton, the Little River joins on the east bank. Canoes often leave the river here to avoid the rapids at Canton and take out by the St. Lawrence University boathouse. 

This Little River drains most of Canton and Pierrepont, cutting down through a gorge on Dutton Road and meandering down to Brick Chapel before it picks up water from Grannis Brook and Tracy Brook. These lower valleys are wide, having once carried water spilling over from the Raquette River down “Lost Channel” to Grannis Brook and Tracy Brook during post glacial melt periods. The Little River meanders for a few miles in the floodplain near St. Lawrence University. 

Below the old mill sites at Canton’s US Route 11, the river widens further and meets Indian Creek on the west. Though the water has been dammed for a State Wildlife Refuge, this channel once connected the Oswegatchie River from the west, and some of that river flowed in during flood periods. From here, the river’s character is wider and flatter as it meanders down to the first sedimentary ledges at Morley (formerly Long Rapids) and on to Buck’s Bridge and Madrid. 

A small dam at Madrid retains water where mills once used the waterpower. Below it, salmon and sturgeon make their way up from the St. Lawrence. This lower river is considered critical habitat for spawning. Glimpses of the river are possible at bridge crossings in Chamberlain Corners, Chase Mills and Louisville. Each crossing marks where the river drops. Few roads parallel the channel except for a series of houses and camps along Ruddy Road.

Most people crossing the high bridge on Route 37 don’t even notice the Grasse River beneath. Only when the river comes into the north edge of Massena (formerly called “Nikentsà:ke,” the Mohawk name for the river) does it pass by many houses before reaching the old mill sites in the village. And below these rapids, under two bridges, the river flows next to the wall of old turbines where the Power Canal from 1900 connected the St. Lawrence River into the lower Grasse.

It’s here that the Pittsburg Reduction Company, later the Aluminum Corporation of America (Alcoa, now called Arconic), exploited the elevation drop between the two rivers to produce electricity for making aluminum. It’s here the lower river was dredged through the “Indian Meadows” of the Mohawk Nation, out to the mouth of the Grasse to accommodate water coming in from the St. Lawrence. The mouth of the river, where it meets the St. Lawrence, is below the locks and below the present Moses-Saunders hydroelectric dam of the Seaway Project.

From the old Power Canal at Massena, to the mouth, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) and other toxics from aluminum production have contaminated the sediment and fish. The EPA ordered a clean-up after deaths and disease on the Mohawk Reservation. A “capping” project is underway here and Akwesasne has received funds to monitor fish and freshwater clams to assure their propagation.

 The Grasse River, though hidden for most of its length, connects the past and future, revealing its unique qualities at every turn. Unlike its neighbors, the Raquette and Oswegatchie, the Grasse never had the hydroelectric dam development that flooded falls and created reservoirs. Its flow was slightly lower, its access more limited. Today, following it back upriver, after leaving the lights of Massena, going up along roads through Louisville to Madrid and Morley and Canton to Pyrites, the river corridor is mostly dark.

By the time you’re back in Degrasse and the upper reaches of the South Branch, Middle Branch and North Branch, the sky is full of stars and the air and water pure. At Long Tom Mountain, drink deep from the spring flowing off the hillside. On the lower reaches of the river, where muskellunge prowl for frogs and the water is deep, dive in. Give more than a glimpse to the Grasse.

Narration of history and water by Tom VandeWater, an environmental historian and educator who is currently writing a book about the environmental history of the Grasse River. 

Dances of memory by Blake Lavia & Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo (Talking Wings Collective),

Paintings by Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo. 

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This virtual TAUNY (Traditional Arts of Upstate New York) Center Exhibition, was was funded in part by Humanities New York, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

As the Grasse Talks is part of the North Country Art, Land and Environment Summit, connecting the region’s past with its environmental future.