Northwest Bay Road over Spruce Hill to Keene (NYS Route 9N)

On leaving Elizabethtown, the cortege would enter the dense Adirondack forest creating a dark canopy overhanging the road in many places. On this day, it must have been especially gloomy for this part of the trip.

The wagon that hauled John Brown's body over Spruce Hill was owned by James Palmer of Whallonsburg. It took two hours for the cortege to clear the eight miles to Keene with its washed out bridges and deep mud. Oxen were used to travel parts of the road and there is a local legend that the casket fell off the wagon at one steep spot. Two years later, this section of road was described as the worst along the route to North Elba.

Phineas Norton Home Site (Old Cemetery Road)

The road down the mountain entering Keene Valley is one of the more spectacular views in the Adirondacks. It seems certain that the old road to Keene was located in a different route in 1859. In maps of the period, it turned north of the present road, passing the cemetery enroute to Keene.

The cortege took a midday meal at the home of Phineas Norton, an old friend of the Brown Family. Norton farmed some of the most productive lands in the valley.

Keene (NYS Route 73)

"Two miles beyond Keene we begin to ascend the mountain in good earnest; ... When we got to the steepest part, mercy to the horses induced us to alight; nor did we reenter the vehicle until we had passed the crest of the mountain. Near the top we came to a lily pond, from whom whose southern border Pitch-Off Mountain raises almost perpendicularly several hundred feet in height; the scenery is here truly majestic, the gorge is narrow, that the really towering mountains on either side seem more overshadowing than they really are." Wendall Phillips

In 1861, it took the Quaker Friends from 7 am to 4 pm to travel the 22 miles from Elizabethtown to North Elba. Their observations are quoted below:

"...we come to the village of Keene, which is a sad looking place enough; the Methodist meeting-house, the only one in the village, though ornamented with gothic pointed windows, yet had many of its panes broken and several of the clap-boards were hanging by a single nail; it is wholly innocent of paint, and we suspect, from the appearance of the inhabitants, it will remain so. The hotel of the village looks like a habitation for owls and the bats. While the horses were being fed, we asked for a bowl of milk, but the bowl was greasy all over, and smeared with tobacco juice on one side, so we were glad enough to pay for the privilege of leaving it untouched." Friends' Intelligencer

The hotel in Keene was filled to overflowing with mourners enroute to the funeral at the Brown family farm.

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