AuSable: Iron Town on the Champlain Shore
Near Burlington, New York
The town of AuSable takes its name from the river that rushes out of the Adirondacks here and empties into Lake Champlain. Permanent settlement began in seventeen eighty-seven, and for its first decades it was a quiet farming community. Then iron changed everything.
Iron ore was discovered on Arnold Hill in eighteen oh six, and by eighteen ten the mines were producing. The AuSable valley became one of the most intensely industrialized iron-producing regions in the eastern Adirondacks, drawing immigrant labor from Sweden, Ireland, and French Canada. Forges, rolling mills, and manufacturing operations lined the river. At its peak, the combined communities of Clintonville and AuSable supported more than two thousand people on iron alone. The industry faded through the later nineteenth century as larger Pennsylvania and Great Lakes operations undercut local costs. Ausable Chasm, the dramatic river gorge nearby, was already attracting tourists as the iron trade wound down, pointing the region toward its next identity as an Adirondack destination.
