Idea for Deferiet mill: a museum of industry

Another possible future for the Deferiet paper mill is to make it into a museum of the Northern New York paper industry. (Assuming that at least some of the machinery is still there.) Such conversions of now-defunct, but once economically crucial, elements of the industrial past fall under the rubric of "industrial archaeology."

It's a respected professional field, with its own Society for Industrial Archaeology (www.sia-web.org or just Google industrial archaeology). My father, Clarence Nugent, was office manager of the Taggart/St. Regis mill at Herrings from 1921 to 1966. He once told me that when he began work, there were 38 paper mills along Black River. When he retired, there were two.

Census figures show that Jefferson County flourished from 1880 to the 1920s on the paper industry. The industry should be commemorated, not only for cultural reasons. Industrial museums have been preserved in many parts of the country. So have decommissioned military posts in the West and elsewhere. They promote tourism, which means economic activity. They are a sound investment. Enterprising Watertown people, possibly with the support of the successor of the St. Regis Paper Company, could make this happen and benefit the community and the region.

Walter Nugent

Highland Park, Ill.

The writer is emeritus professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.