Indian River (Moose River)

The Indian River of the Moose River Plains is one of many rivers of the same name in the Adirondack Park. This particular river starts in Brook Trout Lake in the West Canada Lakes region of the southwest Adirondack Mountains. Traveling downstream, it picks up the Cobblestone Creek coming in on its left, just before it forms the Green Stillwater, a 1/2 mile long flatwater section at the base of Indian Mountain. Then the river forms a series of rapids for a half mile or so before it slows and forms what is locally called the Big Eddy, a deep pool where the river makes a hard left. After this, the outlet of Mountain Lake joins the Indian from the left, only 50' below what once was the first crossing of the Indian, a log bridge that loggers constructed back in the 1960s, in order to bring their logs out to market from the deep woods. The bridge was destroyed by authorities in the 1970s, about when the Indian was declared a wild river by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Now the river again drops down a series of rapids, and picks up the outlet to Horn Lake and Ice Cave Creek, both from the left, as it bends around right. Horn Lake sits at about 2301' in elevation, in a high bowl, and has no inlet. Horn still holds fish brook trout, the Horn Lake strain from after the ice age, an acid rain tolerant strain.

The rapids continue for a while, and then pass the second crossing, another logger's bridge that was destroyed. This cut off the road to Horn, and to Cahans Farm, an old homestead way back in the woods below Ice Cave Mountain, and on the way to Canachagala Mountain and Natural Hatchery Brook. Once the river passes this second crossing, it's all flatwater for over a mile, with Stink Lake Mountain to the left, as it winds its way to the Moose River. It soon is joined by the outlet of Beaver Lake, the largest lake in the Plains themselves. Now over a few short rapids in the backwoods, past a small island where every season the deer cross on their way to the wintering grounds (the yard), the Indian river has wound its way through the backcountry that French Louie traveled in his time, and she finally spills into the Moose River, a mile or so above Rock Dam.