Black River

About

Black River, New York — 1823-1880s Iron Smelting Lyon Mountain, 1990s-2010s Restoration, NYS DEC 120-mi. Long before the mills, the Black River watershed lay within the territory of the Oneida Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The Oneida and other Haudenosaunee peoples used the river corridor for travel and fishing, a pre-contact pattern of movement along water that would later be repeated by loggers, industrialists, and paddlers.

The river's defining historical chapter opens in 1823, when iron ore from the Lyon Mountain region was discovered at what would become the Chateaugay Ore and Iron Company, one of the major iron producers in New York. Through the 1825–1870s iron smelting era, Chateaugay stood among the region's major employers, and the water that had drawn the Oneida now drew industry. From the 1830s through 1900, the Black River powered dozens of tanneries and sawmills that processed Adirondack hemlock and spruce. In 1855, the Black River Canal was completed, connecting the river to the Erie Canal system and tying the timber country of the western Adirondacks to the wider commerce of the state.

The hydrology behind all this work was catalogued in stages. The 1870s–1890s USGS survey, the 1880s–1910s establishment of gauging stations, and the 1910s–1930s state geological survey streamflow assessments produced the first comprehensive hydrological studies of the Black River. Later, the 1950s–1970s state water pollution control studies and the 1972–2000 Clean Water Act assessments confronted more than a hundred years of logging, agricultural, and industrial impacts. The river's water quality had been affected by historic iron mining and tanning operations, and modern restoration and TMDL programs became the major current outcomes.

That restoration work defines the river's recent decades. The 1990s brought the Black River Watershed Restoration Project, and the 2010s the Black River Remedial Action Plan. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has announced the completion of two aquatic habitat improvement projects in Jefferson County. Today the river supports the Watertown, Lowville, and Lyons Falls economies and draws anglers as a trout and bass-fishing destination, while the nine-mile Black River Trail threads the Black River Wild Forest.

For paddlers, the river reads in three sections. The run from Forestport to Lyons Falls offers Class II–III water through Adirondack foothills. The Lyons Falls Gorge is the marquee stretch, Class IV–V. Below, the Watertown Section runs Class III–IV through a dam-controlled urban gorge — the same falling water that built the mills. Since around 2010, these whitewater sections have seen a recreation renaissance as paddlers discovered the reliable dam-controlled flows and challenging gorge runs, best paddled in the 800–4000 CFS window. The river remains a tributary of Lake Ontario and a key part of the larger Lake Ontario watershed, its working legacy carried forward by the water that first fell through Watertown in 1802.