Adirondack Maple Syrup and The Horse Shoe Forestry Company
Matthew M. Thomas
The remarkable story of well-heeled Brooklyn, NY, businessman A. A. Low’s foray
into the maple business at the end of 19th century. A successful businessman and
from a line of successful businessmen, Low was a multi, multi-millionaire in the
1890’s. As such, he understood such concepts as vertical integration and was
aware of the hotly debated conservation and forestry sustainability movements
of his age. While many of his New York City peers, with new railroad access to the
vast Adirondack forests, acquired large tracts for palatial estates focused on
hunting and summer recreation, Low had other ideas, big ideas. And with his
wealth and background, he was competent at executing big ideas.
The result was an enormous maple operation of 50,000 buckets in the late 1890’s.
If one good man could collect 400 buckets a day, it would take 125 of these
heartly souls to gather one day of Low’s sap run. They would lug the sap to nearby
pipe systems which would carry it down slope to tanks along the railroad. That’s
right, to collect the sap Low built miles of narrow gauge train track connecting his
sugarbushes to his three maple factories. Assuming an average of a gallon a
bucket a day and using the largest, state of the art, wood fired evaporator of the
day, 50,000 gallons would require in excess of 250 hours of boil at 200 gallons per
hour. Thus he equipped his factories with several dozen 5 by 15 foot Grimm
evaporators. The logistics are staggering. It would require 50 cords a day, 6,400
cubic feet, for an average day’s boil. They would boil 20 to 30 days a season. Like
gathering the sap, the railroad greatly facilitated the movement of cordwood and,
importantly, moved the finished product to his high-end market. Still, a
phenomenal deployment of vision, manpower and capital. Using conventional
ratios, 50,000 buckets would produce around 15,000 gallons of syrup per season.
And Low had a rail line right to his established business base of New York City at a time sweeteners were still an expensive grocery item. His business went very
well, for a while, until disaster struck.
As impressive as his operation was, it is perhaps more noteworthy how little
evidence remains just over a century later. Agriculture has always been
precarious in the northeast. All that is left are minor foundations and railroad
grades. And surprisingly very little oral history as the setting was the wilds of the
Adirondacks and the labor transitory. Families never established and their
histories were never recorded. Fortunately, we have Thomas’ work and
accounting, and it is a great look into a bygone era.
- Bruce C. Treat -
https://sugarbushlikenoneother.com/
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