Three-Pocket Wood Grinder (1901)

The promotional activity of the Palmer Water Power Company most certainly attracted Albrecht, Rudolph and Alberto Pagenstecher to the Falls where they organized the Hudson River Pulp Company in January, 1869. Only a few year before the Pagenstechers had pioneered commercial wood pulp production at Curtisville, Massachusetts in 1867 by using the patented Keller-Voelter wood grinder they brought to the United States from Germany. 

The Pagenstecher's had both the investment capital and the entrepreneurial vision to realize that mechanically produced wood pulp would serve as an inexpensive substitute for the dwindling supply of rags which by 1860 had become the primary component of paper pulp. While the Pagenstechers realized great success at Curtisville at both producing wood pulp for sale to local paper companies and in manufacturing American-made Keller-Voelter grinders for lease to other pulp producers, the dwindling supply of timber in the Berkshires and the lack of sufficient waterpower needed to drive horsepower-hungry wood grinders, made the move to the upper Hudson River a sound business decision. 

Joined by investors Warner Miller and Charles Roberts, the Pagenstechers formed the Hudson River Pulp Company and leased a mill site from the Palmer Water Power Company in January 1869.  The details of the lease, that suggest that negotiations with the Palmer Water Power Company had commenced at least by mid-1868, demonstrate that only a year after successfully producing wood pulp at Curtisville the Keller-Voelter grinder the Pagenstechers were planning to move and significantly scale-up the production of wood pulp at Palmer Falls on the Hudson River.

While the omission of the word "paper" from the Company's name in its incorporation document suggests that the Pagenstechers did not initially intend to make paper at their new Hudson River site, within a year after producing their first ton of wood pulp the Company had installed a sixty-eight inch wide paper machine to produce writing paper.  It is quite probable that the relocation of the Pagenstecher's to the Town of Corinth was motivated also by a plan to consolidate wood pulp production and paper manufacturing within the same company and at the same location a manner that had not occurred at Curtisville.

Concrete Dam Workers (1913)

The industrial development of the Hudson at Palmer Falls - an event that forever altered the natural character of the River - was the primary factor in the successful development of the paper industry in Corinth. The 1858 Palmer Water Power Company map shows that before the first permanent dam was built at Palmer Falls, the Hudson flowed through a narrow gorge that left large areas of bedrock exposed. While it is not known if the canal proposed by the Palmer Water Power Company was ever built and used for power production purposes, a Seneca Ray Stoddard photograph, "The Flume, Palmer Falls," from about 1870, depicts a partially wooden raceway at the head of Palmer Falls.  This crude raceway was the original source of power for the Hudson River Pulp Company.

The Hudson River Pulp Company initially used the simple raceway and a 30-foot head to create 700 horsepower for the pulp and paper production until a flood destroyed the structure in 1877. The raceway's wooden sections were quickly rebuilt in stone, and in 1880 a 150-foot long crib dam with a tailrace was constructed that increased the useable head of Palmer Falls to 84 feet.   The crib dam, which for the first time caused the River to pool behind the dam and cover the upstream bedrock river-bottom, produced a significant increase in available horsepower at Palmer Falls.

The increase in power production was responsible for the rapid expansion of the Hudson River Pulp Company in the 1880's.

Seneca Ray Stoddard, "The flume, Palmer's Falls" (1870)

The Hudson River Mill also used coal and wood as supplementary fuel sources, but further improvements to the dam increased available water power.  Beginning in 1902 the River at Palmer Falls was used to drive 1,000-watt General Electric generators that powered a newly remodeled groundwood mill.

Following a 1913 flood that severely damaged the old crib dam, a new concrete dam with improved controls was built at the brink of the Falls that provided even greater control of the Hudson's potential power.   When the dam was completed in 1914, nearly 25,000 horsepower was available to the operations at the Hudson River Mill. The 1914 dam at Palmer Falls, along with a smaller hydroelectric plant river at Curtis Falls, provided most of the Hudson River Mill electricity needs for the better part of the 20 century.