Almanack Contributor Richard Tucker

Photograph of a group of guides and sports posing with deer heads. Back row: 2. Henry Smith, 5. George Lyon, 7. John or Ed Roark; Seated: 2. Ben Muncil. Photograph by Charles Derby. Photo credit: Paul Smith’s College Joan Weill Adirondack Library Archives

By Richard E. Tucker

On Sunday morning, 2 February 1902, when Will Martin and Ed Rork set out from McColloms to check their trapline, it was just a regular winter day.  So far as they knew, they were going to check their traps laid at various places between McColloms and Madawaska.  They would eat dinner at the Madawaska House with their fellow guide and friend Jimmy Eccles at the New York & Ottawa train stop of the same name situated near the outlet of Madawaska Pond and return to McColloms around dark.  This was not unusual.  They had done it many times before.

The weather that morning offered no clues as to what was about to happen.  Yes, the barometer had been falling, and yes, it was snowing lightly, winds were calm, but this was nothing unusual for this time of year.  Temperatures had been warm for the week prior and were still hovering around freezing.  The snowpack was thin and moist.  Travel would be fast and easy along the trail through the woods between McColloms and Madawaska.

What they did not know and could not have known is that the Weather Bureau had been issuing warnings of an approaching severe winter storm.  Their report was carried in The Watertown Times, but clearly the hotel/resort in McColloms where they were living had not yet received this issue of the Times, or even if it had, more certainly, neither Martin nor Rork had read it, otherwise they might never have set out to inspect their trapline on that Sunday morning.

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