Taylor Pond with Catamount and Whiteface Mountains from Silver Lake Mountain.Taylor Pond is a 856-acre pond in Black Brook, just north of Catamount Mountain. There is a New York State campground at the north end of the lake. The dam was considerably enlarged in 1926 and the pond and five thousand surrounding acres was acquired by New York State in 1964.
Catamount from Taylor PondAdirondack Record-Elizabethtown Post, May 20, 1926
DAM NEAR TAYLOR POND IS FINISHED
New Storage Reservoir of J. & J. Rogers Co. Insures Supply In Driest Times
Human brains and brawn aided by man-made machines and dynamite and other materials at work within the shadows of Catamount Mountain, rearing over 3100 feet in air, have erected a lake where less than one year ago there stood a beast-infested forest through which wended a gravel road lined here and there with telephone poles, the tops of which now emerge a few feet above water. The lake is in the neighborhood of Taylor Pond, actually joining it and is only a twenty-minutes drive by car from Au Sable Forks. In another week completion of this stupendous task will have been accomplished and the great reservoir will sparkle in the sunlight, as a monument to the enterprise of the J. & J. Rogers Company of this village.
Its completion marks another milestone in the industrial progress of the J. & J. Rogers Company, whose officials see in it the realization of a dream born since the time the company took over the Northern Adirondack Power Company several years ago, for it takes the place of the old Taylor Pond and its rottening wooden dam and insures to the company an abundance of water in the summer time, the season of the year when it is driest. It is a mile wide and over four miles long. Work on the new dam now known as Carmel Dam was begun on August 4th, last year, when fifteen teams, two trucks and over two hundred men were put on the job. The Kingsbury Construction Company of Hudson Falls built the dam which is forty-five feet high and four hundred feet long, containing 2200 yards of concrete, a core wall with a dirt embankment on either side and a stone pavement on the upstream side. It was stated that the reservoir is capable of providing enough water to generate 200,000 horse power. The dam is the latest type, having a gate in the center that will allow water to pass under the dam so as to drain it completely or to supply water when needed to Big Black Brook which empties into the west branch of the Au Sable River on whose banks stand the pulp and paper mills of the J. & J. Rogers Company.
A spillway seven hundred feet long by twenty-five feet wide will take care of all surplus waters in the event the reservoir becomes overfilled by the spring waters flowing from the huge mountain range directly north of it. This spillway would carry the waters into Taylor Pond Brook, which joins with Black Brook.
It is one of the largest storage reservoirs in Northern New York and cost upwards of a quarter of a million dollars. Charles A. Sexton, superintendent of the Kingsbury Construction Company's job at Carmel dam, states that many difficulties were met during various stages of the work. Acres of woodland had to be cleared, stumps and boulders blasted. Thousands of tons of sand had to be drawn from the sandpit which fortunately was little more than a stone's throw away. And what is considered to be finite remarkable hardly a man was injured while working there.
Mr. Sexton will take a long fond look at the lake, the creation of which he helped to realize, for less than a week from now he will go to Ausable Chasm to take part in the building of the power house near the power dam at Rainbow Falls, another great engineering feat which in many respects is a greater achievement than the Carmel dam as the conditions under which the men employed there had to labor were more trying, due to the countless dangers at every hand.
Still, the conditions at Carmel dam were bad enough. Last winter was a stormy one as everyone knows and hardly a day passed when it did not snow with a biting frost constantly in the air, the thermometer registering anywhere from 20 to 40 below zero while up there in that high altitude a frigid wind blew incessantly to the discomfort of the workers. With three huge reservoirs at its fingertips the J. & J. Rogers Company is now in a position to generate enough electricity to supply a dozen towns within a radius of many miles of Au Sable Forks. The company furnishes light to Keene, Keene Valley, Peru, Port Kent, Jay, Upper Jay, Keeseville, Wilmington, in addition to Au Sable Forks. The other reservoirs are at Fern Lake and Ausable Chasm.
The water in the new reservoir at Carmel dam is about twenty-four feet deep and is rising at the rate of two inches each day.
Adirondack Record-Elizabethtown Post, July 2, 1964
Taylor Pond and 5,000 Acres Sold To State, Report
Taylor Pond, long a fisherman's favorite, is about to be sold to the State, according to reliable though unofficial reports.
It is understood the State is interested in acquiring approximately 5,000 acres of land, including Catamount Mountain and Taylor Pond, under its recreation program, and that once title to the tract passes to the state, it will be converted into a park.
But before the deal goes through title to the land must first be cleared. One section that borders on Taylor Pond is owned by Howard Betters and another parcel, owned by the New York State Electric & Gas Corporation, is located near the pond.
Reports say the State plans to create a public campsite at the pond.
