When Pulp Was King

Bult in 1870 by Albrecht Pagenstecher, the Manufacturers Paper Company’s first mill can be visited as the Pulp Mill Museum today.

Along the banks of Mill Creek in downtown Lake Luzerne stands the Pulp Mill Museum, a space which tells the remarkable story of Albrecht Pagenstecher and his brothers who came here from Germany to start a paper mill. They brought two pulping machines from their native Germany and had another one built in Watertown.

Nowhere else in the nation had this American-made approach -- using spruce logged in abundance in the Adirondacks -- been incorporated in pulp-making. This mill was the first of many that would adopt it in the following years.

What you'll find in this museum is the original equipment that Pagenstecher incorporated in his process, a window into the beginnings of pulp paper-making, the essential technology that would evolve and later be incorporated in the giant mill to be built by International Paper at Palmer Falls in Corinth.

Pagenstecher started the Manufacturers Paper Company in 1870 with this technology, making his mill the first in the country to use American made-made equipment. That company later evolved into Hudson River Pulp and Paper, of which Pagenstecher was the founding director. When that evolved into the International Paper Company in 1898, he joined its board.

When you visit the Pulp Mill Museum, you'll want to also explore the Frances G. Kinnear Museum of Local History, to which it's linked by a trail. Located in an 1880's Victorian home, the home was donated by Frances Garnar Kinnear to the Hadley-Luzerne Historical Society in 1982. She was born in 1900 and was the daughter of Anne (Garnar) and William Kinnear and the granddaughter of one of the Garnar Leatherworks tannery owners.

One display features Lake Luzerne's Wayside Inn Hotel, including a register signed by such luminaries as Ulysses S. Grant, Sarah Bernhart, and celebrated Adirondack guide Ira Gray. Rooms are furnished in period style. An upstairs exhibit -- the Adirondack Room -- focuses on the history of local commerce, the logging industry, early farming and tourism.

The museum is staffed by volunteers and is generally open during July and August on the weekends from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. From September to June it is usually open on Saturday from 1:00 p.m. to 4 p.m. You might want to check first. It is also open by appointment by calling 518-696-4520 or email: kinnearmuseum@gmail.com.