Taking the Oregon Trail to Cod Pond

By Bill Ingersoll

Cod Pond is a shallow body of water accessed by a short hiking trail – easy to reach but not frequently visited. It lies within a region that boasts a number of interesting placenames, though so much time has passed that few can remember their sources. What is now a largely unbroken forest owned by the state was not always so; in the 19th century, the valley of the East Branch Sacandaga River was a frontier community of tanneries and rustic farms.

Today, there are almost no reminders of this past as you drive the 13.5-mile section of NY Route 8 from the NY Route 30 intersection to Eleventh Mountain. Along this remote stretch of roadway, you are treated to frequent views of the river and the mountains that rise above it, with only a few small inholdings of private land.

Development of the valley began in 1835, when Daniel Wadsworth settled with his family along the East Branch above a rugged gorge called “The Narrows.” The site was only a few miles from Wells and relatively easy to access, so by mid-century the Wadsworths were joined by a modest community of self-reliant farmers and lumbermen. A few miles up the river, four additional families settled near the foot of Black Mountain. An 1858 map of Warren County showed the locations of the F. Harrington, L. Kenyon, J. Kenyon, and T. Cook farms.

Despite the presence of these small farms, this was a district controlled by lumbermen. Zenas Van Dusen, who operated a sawmill in Glens Falls, owned 55,000 acres of Adirondack forest in 1871, including extensive holdings throughout the headwaters of the East Branch Sacandaga. From 1873 to 1877, another lumberman named Stephen Griffin, who had previously logged the woods near Newcomb, gained title to at least 31,000 acres of forestland in Townships 10 and 29, encompassing the lower half of the river.

John Reed opened a tannery at Oregon in 1877, located on land purchased from Van Dusen for $3,000. To get the operations started, Reed negotiated with Stephen Griffin to buy 50,000 cords of bark at the price of 50 cents a cord, while his Boston partners supplied the leather. The Johnsburg town board paid for road improvements to the site from the northeast, providing a direct link between the tannery and the nearest rail station at North Creek – an early version of the modern Route 8. Teamsters carried hides imported from far-off locations over the mountain to Oregon, and then brought the cured leather back to North Creek for shipment.

The Oregon Tannery burned in the winter of 1892 and was not rebuilt. The Morgan Lumber Company sold 17,354 acres of lands formerly owned by Stephen Griffin – primarily the lots along the river and the main road through the valley – to the state for $26,031.32 in 1896. Officials from the state Fisheries, Game and Forest Commission inspected the property in July 1895 prior to closing the deal, and they found that it was “hilly and rough, having but a small percentage of arable land, and that very poor for agricultural purposes.”

The state chose not to purchase the cleared lands at Griffin and Georgia Brook, “as the commission prefers to confine its purchases to forest land only. Moreover, there were several families residing on these meadows, and it was not deemed advisable to eject them at present.”  But this purchase (combined with others that occurred in the same decade) brought nearly all of the forests surrounding the East Branch into the Forest Preserve, establishing the pattern of land ownership that still exists today.

Cod Pond was one of the features visited by state officials in 1895 while inspecting the lands offered for sale by the Morgan Lumber Company. They noted “there was a dam at the outlet of Cod Pond, the overflow from which had killed some timber around the shore, but to no great extent, as the pond is small and the water was drawn out each year before the trees were in leaf.”

Because it is such a short and easy hike, Cod Pond has long been a favorite destination for hikers and sportsmen. Today there is no dam to flood the timber around the shore – not unless the beavers choose to build one. Hypothetically the trail is available to mountain biking and snowmobiles, but this region is not a hotbed for either pursuit.

How to Get There

Cod Pond is located within the Wilcox Lake Wild Forest, south of the long section of Route 8 between Route 30 and Bakers Mills, known for its wild mountain and river views. The Cod Pond Trailhead is located on Route 8 where it crosses Stewart Creek, 8.4 miles from Route 30 and 8.8 miles from Bakers Mills. There is ample parking on the east side of the road next to the bridge.

The Hike

The route to Cod Pond begins by following a historic roadway named the Oregon Trail – not the one you may have read about in school or in a computer game, but the little-used snowmobile trail that was originally a route used to link the remote communities of Oregon and West Stony Creek. The terrain is rugged enough to convince you that the trip out for salt and other staples must have been an arduous, two-day trip for the 19th century settlers with their teams of oxen.

Begin by following the Oregon Trail uphill for 0.2-mile to a junction and trail register. Here, the Oregon Trail continues left (southeast) toward Stewart Creek; bear right (south) for Cod Pond. At 0.3-mile you reach another junction where the little-used snowmobile trail over Moose Mountain forks right. In this case, bear left for Cod Pond.

After climbing over the shoulder of a small hill, the trail remains relatively level for the remainder of the hike. The marked trail ends one mile from the trailhead at a small campsite located near the northwest corner of the pond; a path leads about 160 feet to the nearest part of the shore, where you will find a scenic rock ledge. Cod Pond is shallow and weedy, with no shortage of pond lilies and pickerelweed. It features a warm-water fishery.

Paddle Option

It would not be terribly difficult to haul a lightweight canoe to Cod Pond to extend your explorations beyond the confines of the campsite. By doing so you would not only have the 50-acre pond to explore, but also a good stretch of adjacent Stewart Creek.

Bill Ingersoll is a cofounder and the vice-chair of Adirondack Wilderness Advocates, as well as the author of Wilderness Camping in the Adirondacks, published in 2024 by North Country Books. For more info, visit: adirondackwilderness.org.