Warrensburg Mills Historic District

Along the south bank of the Schroon River in Warrensburg, New York, a compact district of mills, factories and workers' houses records the Adirondack lumber economy. Nearly every building is wood, including the Emerson Sawmill of about 1820, built out over the river on piles and powered by water until 1968, a small grist mill, two large shirt factories of 1878 and 1898, and a coal storage shed. Fifty-one wooden homes and one brick house line River Street, plain in form but distinguished by front verandas, many with brackets or spindled railings. A boulder mill dam and two bridges complete the district. As white pine and later hardwoods were cut out, clothing manufacturing replaced sawmilling as the main employer, a pattern that mirrors the wider region. The district was listed for this industrial history and for its modest vernacular housing. The sawmill's supporting pilings are weakening, and the local historical society has worked to save the mill from neglect.