The History of Papermaking in New York

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You probably don’t think much about paper. It’s just… there. The book on your nightstand, the cardboard delivery box at your door, the note you scribbled for the milkman. But behind that simple sheet is a colossal story of invention, industry, and ambition. And for over two centuries, the beating heart of that story wasn’t in the sprawling forests of Canada or Scandinavia, but in the towns and valleys of New York State.

This isn’t just a tale of machines and timber. It’s the story of how a state built an empire on pulp, how tiny riverside villages became global powerhouses, and how the insatiable demand for news, knowledge, and packaging shaped the very landscape of America. We’ll journey from the days of pulping old rags in rickety colonial mills to the roaring, steam-filled factories that churned out mountains of newsprint for the world’s biggest city. It’s a story of incredible highs and crushing lows, and it all happened in a place you might not expect. So, let’s peel back the layers and uncover the forgotten history of papermaking in New York.

What Are We Talking About? The Basics of Making Paper

Before we dive into the history, let’s get our heads around how paper is actually made. It’s a bit like making a soup, but instead of vegetables, you’re using wood or cloth. The basic idea hasn’t changed all that much in centuries.

You need to break down plant fibres into a watery mush called pulp. Then, you press that pulp into a thin sheet and squeeze all the water out. Once it’s dry, presto, you have paper.

From Rags to Wood: The Two Main Ingredients

For a very long time, paper was made from rags. Old cotton and linen clothes were perfect. They were collected, cleaned, and beaten into a pulp. This made wonderfully strong and durable paper. The American Declaration of Independence, for example, was written on paper made from rags. But there was a big problem: there were never enough old clothes to go around, especially as more people learned to read and write.

This led to the great innovation of the 19th century: making paper from wood. Trees were plentiful and cheap. The challenge was figuring out how to turn a solid log into soft pulp. Two main methods were developed:

Mechanical Pulping: This is the brute force method. Big grinders press logs against a spinning stone, tearing the wood fibres apart. It’s quick and cheap, but it damages the fibres, making weaker paper (like newsprint) that turns yellow over time.
Chemical Pulping: This is the more clever approach. Wood chips are cooked in chemical solutions that dissolve the stuff holding the wood fibres together (a natural glue called lignin). This process leaves the fibres long and strong, creating high-quality, bright white paper that lasts.

Once you have your pulp, you need to turn it into a sheet. For centuries, this was done by hand, one sheet at a time, using a screen-like mould. It was slow and painstaking work. That all changed with a machine that would become the king of the industry.

The King of the Mill: The Fourdrinier Machine

Imagine a gigantic, automated pasta maker, but for paper. That’s essentially a Fourdrinier (pronounced ‘four-drin-ee-ay’) machine. It was a game-changer, a massive, clanking beast of British and French invention that could do the work of hundreds of people.

Here’s the simple version of how it works:

Watery pulp is sprayed onto a wide, moving mesh belt.
As the belt moves, water drains away, and the fibres start to lock together, forming a fragile web.
This wet sheet then travels through huge rollers that press more water out, like a giant mangle.
Finally, it snakes through a long series of steam-heated cylinders that dry it completely.
At the very end, a continuous, miles-long roll of perfect paper is wound up, ready to go.

The arrival of this machine in New York is a crucial part of our story. It turned papermaking from a craft into a mass-production industry.

The Early Days: Colonial Mills and Humble Beginnings

Before the boom, there was a trickle. Papermaking in colonial America was a tough, small-scale business. England, the mother country, wasn’t keen on its colonies developing their own industries. Paper, like most manufactured goods, was meant to be imported from Britain.

The very first paper mill in the American colonies was built near Philadelphia in 1690 by William Rittenhouse. New York, however, was a bit of a latecomer. While a man named Hendrick Doncker reportedly set up a small mill near New York City in the late 17th century, it didn’t last long.

The first truly successful and well-documented paper mill in New York was established in 1773 by Hendrick Onderdonk in Roslyn, on Long Island. It was a modest operation, powered by a water wheel on Hempstead Harbor. Like all mills of its time, it relied entirely on rags. Getting enough raw material was a constant struggle. Town criers would plead with citizens to save their old clothes, sheets, and sails for the papermakers.

During the American Revolution, paper became a vital war material. It was needed for messages, money, and, crucially, for making musket cartridges. Onderdonk’s mill was so important that its workers were exempt from military service. When the British occupied Long Island, they seized the mill for their own use.

For the next fifty years, papermaking in New York grew slowly. Small mills, each employing just a handful of people, popped up wherever there was a source of water power and a local supply of rags. But the seeds of an empire were being sown. The state had two things in abundance that would soon become incredibly valuable: fast-flowing rivers and vast, seemingly endless forests.

The Boom: How New York Became a Paper Powerhouse

The 19th century changed everything. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Cities were exploding, literacy rates were soaring, and the penny press was creating a new, insatiable demand for cheap newspapers. New York was at the centre of this whirlwind, and it was perfectly placed to quench the nation’s thirst for paper.

Three key factors turned New York into America’s paper capital:

Water Power: The state is crisscrossed by powerful rivers like the Hudson, the Mohawk, and the Black River. These were the engines of the 19th century, driving the grinders and machines in the mills.
Forests: The Adirondack Mountains and other wilderness areas held a staggering amount of spruce, fir, and hemlock—the perfect trees for making wood pulp.
Location, Location, Location: New York’s mills were connected by canals (like the famous Erie Canal), and later railways, to the biggest paper market in the world: New York City.

The Machine Arrives in Saugerties

The first sign of the revolution to come appeared in 1827 in the small Hudson Valley town of Saugerties. It was here that the first Fourdrinier machine in the United States was put into operation. Imported from England by the firm of Henry Barclay, it was a technological marvel. It could produce a continuous roll of paper, something that had been unimaginable just years before. The era of mass production had begun.

Mills with these new machines began to spring up. But they still relied on rags, and the supply was tighter than ever. The industry was like a powerful engine sputtering for lack of fuel. The solution was waiting in the great northern forests.

The Black River Valley: The Wood Pulp Revolution

The real explosion happened in the 1860s and 70s, particularly in the Black River Valley in the northern part of the state. Towns like Watertown became the Silicon Valley of paper production. Entrepreneurs here pioneered the use of groundwood pulp in America. They built huge mills along the river, which drops dramatically in elevation, creating immense water power.

Suddenly, paper could be made cheaply and in unbelievable quantities. The forests of the Adirondacks were felled and the logs floated down the rivers to the hungry mills. Watertown and its neighbouring towns became known as “Paper Mill City.” For a time, it was one of the wealthiest communities in the United States, all built on groundwood pulp.

Troy’s Paper Collars: A Curious Case Study

The industry wasn’t just about newsprint. In the city of Troy, a unique papermaking niche created a global fashion trend: the disposable paper collar. In an age of starched, stiff collars, laundry was a chore. In the 1860s, a Troy resident invented a collar made of thick, laminated paper that looked just like linen but could be thrown away when soiled.

The industry boomed. At its peak, Troy’s factories were churning out hundreds of millions of paper collars, cuffs, and shirtfronts a year, shipping them all over the world. It was a perfect example of how New York’s paper industry could innovate and dominate a market. The trend eventually faded, but it left Troy with the nickname “The Collar City.”

The Golden Age: An Empire of Pulp and Paper

From the 1880s to the 1920s, New York was the undisputed king of paper. In 1898, the state’s dominance was cemented when the largest paper companies in the northeast merged to form a single, colossal corporation: the International Paper Company. Its headquarters was in Corinth, New York.

International Paper (IP) became the largest paper company in the world. It owned over a million acres of timberland and operated dozens of mills, many of them along the Hudson River in towns like Glens Falls, Hudson Falls, and Fort Edward. This region became the new heartland of the industry.

Life in a Mill Town

The paper mills defined these communities. The mill was usually the largest building in town, its smokestacks visible for miles. The day was structured around the mill whistle, which signalled the change of shifts. Entire families worked in the mills, with generations following each other into the noisy, dangerous, and often grueling work.

The work was physically demanding. Men wrestled logs, operated grinding machines, and worked in hot, humid machine rooms. The air was thick with the smell of sulphur from the chemical pulping process. Accidents were common. Yet, for many, a job at the mill offered a steady wage and a chance at a better life, particularly for the thousands of European immigrants who flocked to these towns.

The companies often owned the town, building houses, shops, and community halls for their workers. They were paternalistic, providing for their employees but also controlling much of their lives. These towns rode the wave of the paper industry’s success, booming when demand was high and suffering when it wasn’t.

The Environmental Cost

This golden age came at a steep price. The drive for production took a heavy toll on the environment.

Deforestation: Huge swathes of the Adirondacks were clear-cut to feed the mills, leading to soil erosion and spoiling the natural beauty of the region. This eventually sparked a conservation movement and the creation of the Adirondack Park to protect the remaining forests.
River Pollution: The mills treated the rivers as their private sewers. They dumped a toxic cocktail of pulp slurry, chemical waste, and dyes directly into the water. Rivers like the Hudson became choked with industrial filth, killing fish and making the water unusable for communities downstream. For decades, the water in some areas would change colour depending on what kind of paper the mills were making that day.

Decline and Transformation: The Empire Fades

No empire lasts forever. By the mid-20th century, the New York paper industry, which had seemed so invincible, began to face serious challenges. Its decline was slow but relentless.

Several factors were at play:

Competition: The industry began to move south. Southern states had vast pine forests that grew much faster than the northern spruce and fir. They also had cheaper labour and fewer regulations. Mills in New York, with their older equipment and higher costs, struggled to compete.
Technology: The industry became more automated. New, faster machines required fewer workers. The smaller, older mills couldn’t afford to upgrade and were forced to close.
Environmental Regulations: The devastating pollution of the past finally led to action. New laws in the 1960s and 70s, like the Clean Water Act, forced companies to install expensive wastewater treatment facilities. For some struggling mills, this was the final straw.
Globalisation: By the late 20th century, competition was coming from all over the world, from places like Canada, Scandinavia, and Asia, where production costs were lower.

One by one, the great mills fell silent. The huge factories that had been the lifeblood of their communities for a century were shut down and often abandoned. For towns like Hudson Falls, Corinth, and Watertown, the closures were an economic catastrophe, leading to mass unemployment and a painful period of adjustment that, for some, continues to this day. The sound of the mill whistle was replaced by an eerie silence.

The Legacy and a Glimmer of a Future

Today, the landscape of New York is dotted with the ghosts of its papermaking past. You can see the imposing brick shells of old mills standing silent by the rivers, monuments to a bygone era. But the story isn’t entirely over.

A Modern, Niche Industry

A handful of paper mills have survived by adapting and innovating. They can’t compete on sheer volume, so they focus on high-value, speciality products.

Finch Paper in Glens Falls is a prime example. Once a producer of commodity paper, it now makes premium, uncoated papers for digital and commercial printing—the kind of high-quality paper used for brochures and marketing materials. They’ve invested heavily in sustainable forestry and clean energy.
Other smaller mills specialise in things like filter papers, art papers, or products made from recycled fibres.

The industry is a shadow of its former self, but the survivors are lean, green, and highly specialised.

The Environmental Recovery

The legacy of pollution is still being dealt with. The Hudson River, in particular, suffered greatly. A long and difficult cleanup process has been underway for decades. But the results are remarkable. The river, once an industrial sewer, is now cleaner than it has been in a century. Fish populations have returned, and people are once again using the river for recreation. The recovery is a powerful lesson in both the damage industry can do and nature’s ability to heal.

The story of papermaking in New York is a classic tale of the Industrial Age. It’s a story of ambition, innovation, and exploitation. It shows how an industry can build a region up and, just as quickly, leave it behind. It reminds us that the simple, everyday objects we take for granted often have complex and dramatic histories. The next time you pick up a piece of paper, take a moment to think of the roaring rivers, the vast forests, and the generations of workers who toiled in the great paper mills of the Empire State.

The Paper Empire State: The Great Story of Papermaking in New York

What Are We Talking About? The Basics of Making Paper

From Rags to Wood: The Two Main Ingredients

The King of the Mill: The Fourdrinier Machine

The Early Days: Colonial Mills and Humble Beginnings