Graphite

From 1880 to 1921, the settlement of Graphite thrived at the top of Route 8. It boasted 400 inhabitants. Along with their homes, they had  a church, post office, school, boarding houses, a bowling alley, social hall, stores, a sawmill, and saloons.     

HOW IT ALL BEGAN: A farmer named Sam Ackerman, logging in the snow sometime during the 1880s, stripped the cover from a rock outcropping. Tree trunks skidded over that rock came up with dark smudges….evidence of graphite. The word reminds most people of the lead in pencils but that's a minor use. Graphite primarily serves in manufacturing crucible steel, in electrochemistry, as a paint pigment, and as a lubricant. And in industrializing America, it was a necessity.
     Although Adirondack graphite had appeared before, not in amounts that proved commercially workable. This strike was different. Samples forwarded to the American Graphite Company in Jersey City, New Jersey, tested out for high content, and the company (which was later absorbed by the Joseph Dixon Crucible Company) quickly went into action. By 1888, a bustling town appeared on the previously unsettled mountainside, workers and their dependents moved into new frame houses, and the first mill was built. That mill burned down in 1891, but a larger one (500 x 100' and more than two stories high) replaced it.