West to Wanakena, Star Lake & Newton Falls

7 miles west of Cranberry Lake is Wanakena. Wanakena was a company lumber camp/town built in 1902 from parts of defunct lumber town in Pennsylvania. Now Wanakena is a beautiful and quiet summer vacationers' town, with a general store and a restaurant. The Oswegatchie River flows through it but at Wanakena, the river is at lake level due to the dam's backwater. SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, of Syracuse, has its Ranger School here. If you go .4 miles on South Shore Road, off of Main Street, you will find the trail to High Falls on the Oswegatchie River. This website is the best one to check out this most interesting logging to summer retreat little hamlet, Wanakena General Store.

Star Lake is about 6 miles west from the Wanakena cutoff on NY Route 3. It is mainly summer homes with a good convenience store, a small hospital, community center, fishing access. Need less to say, the route here is great and wide and no one should have many problems with the road, two lane or not. NY 3 is a very well maintained road all the way to Plattsburgh or Watertown.

Iron Mine Works

Newton Falls is a small mill town about 3 miles north of NY 3 on Saint Lawrence County Route 60. There is a paper mill there that is shut down, but they are still maintaining it and hope to re-open it. What is more interesting is the old iron mine at the junction of CR 60 and NY 3. This was a huge iron strip mine and crushing plant that shipped out the processed ore on the railroad. It streches for miles and includes several ponds lakes. I am sure a nature type might frown on such an eyesore, but it is sort of a cool place to drive around and includes several bridges and the rail line to Newton Falls. It is a reminder when people in the North Country did some heavy extraction ore work.

NYRoute3.com: OlympicTrail.com

NY Route 3: The Olympic Trail