Wilna's Black River Villages Sit on a Town Partly Lost to Fort Drum

Wilna is a North Country edge story. The town’s official site keeps the current government centered in Carthage, while Jefferson County NYGenWeb’s Wilna page gives the older pattern. It says much of the original physical Town of Wilna disappeared into the Fort Drum military reservation.

It also describes Black River villages such as Deferiet, Herrings, and Carthage as communities changed by the military encampment, and says Henry Boutin made a clearing at Long Falls, now Carthage, in 1798. Wilna was erected on April 2, 1813 from Leyden and Le Ray. That makes the town a layered place: Black River settlement, village industry, and military-base geography all shape its identity.

That is a lot for one town name to carry. Wilna has Carthage as a practical center, Black River villages with their own old work patterns, and a military-base edge that changed the local map in a permanent way.

The story is not scenery. It is a reminder that some North Country towns were reshaped by forces larger than a village street: waterpower, settlement, industry, and then Fort Drum. Carthage, Deferiet, Herrings, Natural Bridge, and the Black River keep Wilna from feeling like a blank space around the base.