| County: |
Lewis |
| Town: |
Lyonsdale |
| USGS Map: |
Port Leyden |
| Waterway: |
Moose River |
| Latitude: |
N 43.62166o |
| Longitude: |
W 75.31275o
|
| Drop: |
18' |
|
To get to Ager's Falls, travel NYSR 12 to Lyons Falls. Find
the bridge crossing the Black River and continue. This
becomes the Lyonsdale Road. Ager's Falls is located in the
Ager's Fall's Recreational & Historical Area, which will be on
your left a few miles up this road. You can't miss it.
For those techies with a GPS, the 911 address is 7757 Lyonsdale
Road in Lyons Falls, New York. Go left after entering the
area and the road will take you to a parking lot within view of
the falls.
This area is promoted as the site of an "early American
industrial complex which included a rag paper mill, sawmill,
workers' houses, mill owner's house and family
cemetery".
The area and falls are named after Joel W. Ager who, according
to a sign in the area, was born in 1820 in Warren, New
Hampshire. Trained as a papermaker in New England, he came
to Lewis County in the 1840s looking for a place to locate a new
paper mill. He built his home here so that he could watch
over the operations of the mill he built near these falls.
The home was a "two story, center hall, frame
structure". An addition on the back of it
"included a summer kitchen, wood shed, and the unusual
luxury, a two story privy"! The home was abandoned in
the 1930s and torn down in 1960.
Another sign at this location tells that the water powered
sawmill was constructed in 1871, "at the height of the New
York State timber industry". Its capital investment is
listed as $4,000 in 1880 and it employed three men at $1.50 per
ten hour day. The mill had two circular saws and it operated
four months of the year. It was in operation until it burned
in 1902.
The Moose River flows into the Black River just a few miles
downstream from this location in Lyons Falls. The Black
empties into Lake Ontario in the Jefferson County community of
Dexter.
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