Several North Country communities got an early taste of winter when a snowstorm socked eastern New York. The Tri-Lakes area reported about six inches of snow. Heavy wind, rain and snow knocked down several power lines in the village of Port Henry. Albany took the brunt of the storm.
Clinton County legislators may soon take the first steps toward building a limited-access highway across Cumberland Head. An item in the proposed 1988 county highway budget would allocate $50,000 to study the feasibility of such a road project, including possibly enough money to begin property acquisition proceedings.
As the Mohawk Indians on the Ganienkeh land on the Military Turnpike begin building their bingo hall, they might do well to look at what gambling has brought their brethren 50 miles to the west on the St. Regis Reservation. The Mohawks there have had bingo for five years, and they become a tribe divided, split by internal wars.
50 YEARS — 1962
State Corrections Commissioner Paul D. McGinnis announced this week that a team of doctors from Albany Medical Center will provide plastic surgery for inmates of five maximum security prisons. The project results from a prison survey that shows that defects and deformities have been blamed for offenses committed by 6 to 8 percent of the inmates.
A seaplane pilot crashed in Lake Champlain near Westport, and was rescued by the man to whom he meant to sell the plane. He was flying the plane to the Westport airfield to close the sale at the time of the crash.
The State University of New York has asked an abstract company to make a title search on deeds owned by property owners whose property may be taken for expansion of Plattsburgh State University College. The area in question includes 51 parcels of land and is bounded by Rugar Street, Beekman Street and College Avenue.
Clinton County is moving with speed to set up a temporary detention home for children. The action came on the heels of a letter received by Family Court Judge Sherlock E. Haley from the Third Department of the Appellate Division.
75 YEARS — 1937
At the regular meeting of the Common Council the following letter from Harry J. Arbenger, city clerk, in connection with the progress made in acquiring the site for the sewage treatment and disposal plant was read. “Please be advised that at the mouth of the Saranac river, the Plattsburgh bank owns a small piece of land which is necessary for us to have in connection with the sewage disposal plant. The bank is now ready to deed us this small parcel of land, which they would not do until the condemnation proceedings were completed. It is absolutely necessary that we purchase this land from the bank.”
Thomas Carmon, 40, serving a sentence of from 15 years to life, escaped from the recreation yard of the tuberculosis hospital at Clinton Prison in Dannemora. Posses of guards and attendants at the prison were posted on all roads in the vicinity of Dannemora while others were scouring the mountain and forest land nearby.
A story of Spanish War horrors told by 22-year-old “Juan del Valle Christiano Medio” dissolved into a flight of imagination by which a small-town youth hoped to escape his humdrum existence. The author of the bizarre tale, held six weeks by immigration authorities on a federal charge of illegal entry, admitted in writing that he is in reality Leonard Carley, of Adams Center, Jefferson County. “I wanted to see the world so I made up the story of being a Spanish war refugee,” Carley wrote in his statement.
100 YEARS — 1912
From Pittsburgh to Detroit in a day, over the notoriously worst roads in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, is the record just made by a “Light Six,” the latest product of the Lozier motor company. For the past three months, it is said, the car has been undergoing a series of road and factory tests in the vicinity of Detroit. Lozier motor company was founded in Plattsburgh in 1900 by Henry Abrahm Lozier, and the company built cars here until 1910 when it was moved to Detroit, Michigan.
Colonel Joseph F. Scott, state superintendant of prisons, desires to employ some of the convicts in Clinton prison at Dannemora in getting out timber. He has made application to the state prison commission for permission to establish such an industry. There are 18,000 acres of land belonging to the state connected with Clinton prison, most of which is forest land. Colonel Scott’s idea is to use convict labor to get out the available lumber, and to reforest under the plans of the state conservation commission.
