Harvey Mountain and the Tale of the Lost Gold Mine

The Harvey Mountain State Forest  in Austerlitz, NY, was created in 1999 through a purchase from the Millay Society, and  lies along the Taconic Ridge on the New York-Massachusetts line near Steepletop, the country home of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The 2065 foot  summit of Harvey Mountain, easily accessible by a 1.5 mile trail from East Hill Road off route 22, affords beautiful views of the Green Mountains to the north and the Catskill Mountains to the west. But this woodland was once far more populous and the scene of considerable commercial activity. And one particularly notorious murder.

The connecting trail from East Hill Road,  reaches the main trail from the fire tower on  Beebe Hill, 4.5 miles to the west, which then continues through gradually ascending forest. 

Meadows border the trail

Walking eastward, an open meadow is to your right and stone walls  can be seen marking old roads and enclosures, clear indications that this now forested  area was once heavily farmed.

The trail passes through gaps in old stone walls

Such walls – for those unfamiliar with them – go back to early New England farmers and are at least 150 years old. 

Mine, quarry or charcoal pit?

After about ¾ mile, a mine or possibly charcoal pit can be seen.  This seems to have been a fairly small operation and may not be related to what was once a major bridge across a ravine.  Why such a strong bridge abutment was needed is unclear but it seems that fairly heavy loads must have been anticipated, perhaps lumber or ore.

Foundation for a bridge over a steep ravine

After the trail crosses the stream near the old bridge site, the grade gradually increases. 

The stream can easily be crossed on stepping stones

Stone walls can still be seen, but it is hard to believe any farming could occur on such slopes. Perhaps these walls mark old pastures more than cultivated fields.

Stone walls date back at least 150 years

Views from the summit are ample reward for an hour’s climb.  And it appears that a roadway from the north offers another way to access the summit. (Although ATVs are prohibited in the state forest)

Blueberry meadow at summit of Harvey Mountain

View from summit north toward  Mass. & Vermont

This remarkably peaceful country, however, was the scene of a murder that attracted national and international attention in the 1880s – and which raises the intriguing possibility of a secret gold mine in these hills.

From Hudson Evening Register, March 1, 1888

On January 10, 1882 Simon Vandercook went to the shanty of 71 year old Oscar Beckwith, who had recently returned to these hills from years of wandering and prospecting in the West.  Although the various newspaper reports of the time differ somewhat, it does seem clear that the two men were partners in a gold mine company. According to Nick Bigg, who wrote a 2003 article for the Columbia County History and Heritage magazine, Beckwith believed there was gold on land he owned in this forest. He sold the land to a newly formed corporation in return for a third interest, while Vandercook became manager of mining operations. 1900 tons of rock were mined and carried out by wagon to the Chatham rail station, where they were sent out for assay. The ore was reportedly not rich enough to justify mining, thereby rendering Beckwith’s stock worthless – and Vandercook proceeded to sell off timber on the land and to pocket the proceeds. Then came the murder.

When Vandercook failed to come back from his morning visit, his landlord Harrison Calkins came  up from Alford, on the  Massachusetts side, inquiring and thought he smelled burning flesh. When old Oscar disappeared that night, neighbors broke into his cabin and found Vandercook’s remains, minus a hand, two feet and a head. Although cannibalism was not mentioned in the initial newspaper account in the Hudson Evening Register of January 13, the legend of “the Austerlitz Cannibal” soon became part of local folklore.

Amazingly, Beckwith remained free for three years and was finally arrested in 1885 some 200 miles north of Toronto. How a man of his age and apparent poverty managed what the newspapers reported as a flight across the continent and back is not clear. Nor is the role of a mysterious figure identified in reports of the time as the detective J.P. Gildersleeve of Kinderhook who is said to have pursued Beckwith. (What could have motivated this Gildersleeve or who would have paid for such a lengthy pursuit is not clear. Could gold have somehow been the driving force for both men?)

Identical descriptions of  the detective’s success  appeared in the Long Island Star and other papers when Beckwith was apprehended:

Bracebridge, Ont. February 25, 1885: Detective J.P. Gildersleeve, of Kinderhook, Columbia county, N.Y., went to work on the case and followed the criminal to the Pacific ocean, and thence through Canada along the Canadian Pacific railway. He put himself in communication with Detective Rodgers, of Barrie, and D.F. McDonald, a government woodranger, and these, with the assistance of Chief Constable Perkins, of Gravenhurst, accompanied by Detective Gildersleeve and Sherif Hamor, of Columbia county, N.Y., succeeded in arresting the murderer Beckwith at South River, in the district of Parry Sound. The party passed through here with the murderer, en route to Toronto.

The conviction of Beckwith was no easy matter for prosecutors in Hudson. According to Biggs’ article, the records of the first trial  and appeals are missing, possibly destroyed in the 1907 fire at the Columbia County Courthouse.  A new witness testified during the motion hearings for a second trial: a Dr. Giles S. Hulett of Great Barrington said that Vandercook and his landlord had spoken of “getting rid of Beckwith” as an obstacle to their mining plans.  Beckwith himself testified that he only killed Vandercook in self-defense after the man attacked him.

The transcripts of the second trial are also incomplete and no record has been found of defense testimony. Beckwith was again convicted and again sentenced to death. A sanity hearing reported some delusional thinking but he was ruled sane enough to be executed.  On March 1, 1888 he was finally hung in Hudson, reportedly the last public execution in New York state.

Could this have been Oscar Beckwith's cabin?

And now, amid the state forest lands where mines and farms once flourished, a hiker may come upon an old stone foundation here and there, and wonder if this is the place where Simon Vandercook was struck down.

And the same hiker may wonder if there is any truth at all to the secret of a lost goldmine that old Oscar Beckwith took with him to the grave:

While awaiting the sentence to be carried out, he told some of his visitors about the discovery of a new gold vein, much richer than the first, which he discovered just before he eliminated his partner. No coaxing would get him to reveal the location of the new site, for he hoped the governor of New York would commute his sentence.

 

 

This 1962 historical novel by David Buckman was inspired the Beckwith case, but names and details have been changed. Even so, it offers an interesting imaginative look at life in the Taconic Hills in the 1880s. The book is long out of print but there is a reference copy at the Roeliff-Jansen Library in Hillsdale.

Crime in Austerlitz and a Death in Colonie

 Austerlitz is known for its annual Blueberry Festival  

and as the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay

People in the bucolic hamlets and villages of Columbia and Berkshire Counties learned last week that“a rolling drug factory” had been busted by police in Austerlitz, a region of second homes and organic farms only a few miles from Tanglewood, Jacobs Pillow  and other cultural attractions. The operation to manufacture  methamphetamine (lab reports are ongoing) had been set up in a family campground in a township where any kind of crime is almost non-existent.  And a young man linked to the drug lab, Agostino Jubrey, was killed in a gun battle with the police outside his home in Colonie.

As I pieced together the first reports on this incident, it occurred to me that the drug-makers had been quickly identified and stopped due to alert local people who did not hesitate to notify authorities of suspicious activities. However, after talking with many people in the area, I am not so sure it was that simple.

People at the Fox Hill Campground were unwilling to say anything for the record about an incident that can only bring bad publicity to a very attractive family-oriented site. However, chats with a few campers made it clear that the drug gang would certainly stand out in this location – yet no one reported anything until someone called in a report of Jubrey driving “erratically” on the day he died.  It is not clear yet if he was already making drugs in the tents, but the smell of the chemicals should have raised a red flag.

 St. Peter's Presbyterian Church in Spencertown was built in 1771

and is undergoing repair thanks to local fund-raising

 When I visited Spencertown, the nearest village of any size,  I found a surprising lack of knowledge of the drug lab bust a few days earlier. Some people in the village with whom I spoke had never heard of the incident and others knew only what they saw on WNYT. ( I tend to think that when the hardy  Massachusetts folk  first came over the Taconic Mountains to settle here in 1760, they were a lot more aware of everything everybody was doing.)

 Spencertown Academy, now an art center, was built in 1847 

as a institute to train teachers

Instead ofa land filled with the aroused  yeomanry of my imagination, this part of upstate may be singularly vulnerable to criminal drug labs of the kind  busted on July 14 in Schoharie., A couple, who had apparently learned their trade in Kentucky, returned from that state with all they needed to set up a meth lab in the heart of the village. In that case, officials said that the arrests would not have been possible  "without information provided to them by concerned citizens."

Although neighbors did not detect the drug-making operation operation at the Fox Hill campground, NYSP Senior Investigator Gary Mazzacano described to me how a  tip to police was crucial in the chain reaction of events that  led to young Jubrey's death. 

Jubrey, 21, rented two campsites at the far end of the campground, up against the woods,  on Monday July 19 and set up two tents.  On Wednesday July 22 at 4 pm he was apparently driving to the campground in his Plymouth Reliant when he struck a 60 year old motorcyclist at the intersection of Route 9 and Keegan Road in the town of Kinderhook and sped off. This is a busy area near the Hannaford shopping center and he probably feared that he had killed the man, or that someone had noted his license plate. However, no license tag was reported at that time. 

Speeding away from the injured motorcyclist, Jubrey evidently drove straight to the campground, about 18 miles to the east, in order to break down the drug-making operation.  There may have been one man already at the site, but the only car at that point was Jubrey’s. He called the other two or three men and told them to come out from Albany and to take the drug equipment and chemicals and dispose of it. 

The four men in the second car stopped in Ghent where they put the drug paraphernalia in a dumpster of an apartment building. The owner thereupon called the police to report illegal use of his rented dumpster. The four then continued south on 66 where they were spotted  near Konig Road by a state trooper on regular patrol. According to a Times Union report by Tim O’Brien:

Trooper James Lydon  noticed a strong chemical smell and observed chemicals and paraphernalia associated with making illegal drugs in the car. The four were taken to the Livingston Barracks to be interviewed and were released pending further investigation and laboratory results.

Scene of gun battle between police and Agostino Jubrey, 

courtesy Albany Times Union

Apparently, the trooper did not immediately connect the materials from the dumpster with drug-making, nor did the four implicate Jubrey. It was his own highly emotional state that brought him to the attention of authorities and that ultimately led to his death.


When Jubrey returned to his home in Colonie, he became involved in a quarrel with his mother and stepfather and shot his stepfather in the hand.  Meanwhile, however, someone had seen him driving erratically as he left the Fox Hill Campground and called in a car description and plate number. 


It was this tip that brought Columbia County Sheriff's Deputy Toby Van Alstyne and Colonie Police Officer David Belles to Jubrey's home just before 7 p.m. to investigate the motorcycle accident. They apparently did not know of the shooting when they arrived . But Jubrey, having already shot his stepfather, was in the family’s driveway and highly agitated:

As police arrived, Jubrey turned and fired two shots at the deputy's car. One bullet lodged in front of the driver's side door.

Belles exited his car, assumed a firing position and traded gunfire with Jubrey. At the police station Thursday, investigators showed off Jubrey's Plymouth Reliant. Three of its four side windows were shattered, and five bullet holes marked its passenger side. At the passenger front end, a dent and scrapped paint showed where police say Jubrey struck the motorcyclist.

As Belles fired at Jubrey, the sheriff's deputy drove away down Leach Avenue, turned around and exited his vehicle with an assault weapon in hand. By that time, the incident was over and Jubrey was critically wounded.

Agostino Jubrey died two days later at Albany Medical Center without regaining consciousness.

A hike to the fire tower on Beebe Hill

Beebe Hill rises 300 feet above the uplands of the Taconic range in the town of Austerlitz in Columbia County, and offers beautiful views in all directions from the firetower at the summit. The hike is an easy one, taking about an hour on a well-marked trail. Access to parking for the trail is from country road 5, which branches north from State Route 2 a few hundred feet north of the 22 and 203 intersection. Access to the trail and parking is on a dirt road at the north end of Barrett Pond.

view of Beebe Hill across Barrett Pond

Trailhead Parking

The western slopes of the Taconics were far more populated in the early 1800s than they are today, and largely settled by New England yankees who swarmed into the area just after the Revolution. Soon lured westward by new (some would say stolen) lands opened up by the defeat of the Iroquois allies of the British, many of the early farmers soon moved on. Among those who passed through was the family of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and other Yankees who formed the core of the earliest Latter Day Saints.

The rocky farms of these early settlers have long since returned to woodland, but evidence of their presence is clear. A small cemetery adjoins the parking area, suggesting old sorrows. Ruth Browter's stone can easily be read, altho some others have become illegible. Ruth lived to age 87, dying in 1875, and rests now beside her young husband who died fifty years earlier. Many of the stones memorialize the Crowter and Harmen families and indicate an extensive settlement into the 1840s. The young are too often found here, but all were sustained by their Christian faith. On the stone marking the grave of 81 year old Deborah Goodrich can be found this poem:

Her Soul has gone to rest

While here her Body Lies

To moulder back to dust again

Till Christ shall bid it rise

Daniel Barrett is still remembered

Stone fences mark the boundaries of 19th century fields and pastures

After paying our respects to the hardy farmers who once struggled with this rocky and ungenerous soil, we set out up the trail, clearly marked with blue  markers. The climb is an easy one, suitable for children, and in winter offers numerous views of the surrounding country

Typically easy grade on this trail

Well maintained bridge on the trail

After perhaps a half hour's ascent, the trail reaches a plateau on the top of the ridge, and unless it is very dry, you will see a pond ( or tarn) to your left. Just beyond is a sturdy lean-to erected by the volunteers. Very soon you will come into a grassy area and your first view of the firetower.

Tarn on the top of the ridge

Lean-to built by volunteers

First view of the firetower

The firetower is open for hikers to climb to the top and the stairway, although steep, is enclosed for the most part. The views are beautiful in all directions: west into the higher ranges of the Taconics on the Massachusetts line and east toward the Hudson and the Catskills beyond.

Views from the firetower

The forest fire observatory on Beebe Hill operated continuously from April of 1964 until the end of the 1987 fire season. Prior to 1964 the fire tower was located on the summit of Alander Mountain from 1928 through 1930 and on Washburn Mountain from 1933 until November 1963.  Ten years after the closing of the facility, local residents came together to restore the fire tower and observer's cabin. This group also created the hiking trail system throughout the Beebe Hill State Forest.  The Beebe Hill Volunteers maintain an interesting website, which provides more of the history of the tower and information on contributing to their good work.

Hiking Mates of the Capitol Region have posted a report of a visit by 15 of their members to Beebe Hill, and provide some good photos of views from the tower.

Restored ranger cabin

An abandoned cabin

I recommend returning by the same trail and avoiding the temptation offered by a broad access road leading downhill. If you take this route, as I did,  your return walk will be closer to five miles than the one mile back to the parking area.

The road not to take back down the mountain

For those interested in another glimpse of how busy this area was back in the early 1800s, I suggest a visit to Bash Bish Falls State Park  just outside of Copake Falls, 10 miles or so south on Route 22.  In addition to the beauty of the falls itself, you can see the remains of the Copake Ironworks. In the early 1800s much of the forest in this area was cut down to provide charcoal for such early forges.

Copake Iron Works

Bash Bish Falls

And bicyclists may want to explore the three mile section of the Harlem Valley Rail Trail which follows a small piece of the old railroad route that once connected the industries of Copake with New York City and Boston, via a link at Chatham. The bike trail can be found crossing the parking lot of the Copake Falls area of the NY state Taconic Park.

Mile marker on the Harlem Valley Rail Trail

(103 miles to Grand Central Station)

The southern terminus of the Rail Trail

currently ends with this view