The Howell Tract was a parcel of land on the north side of Gilpin Bay on Upper Saranac Lake owned by Richard L. Howell and Mary T. R. Howell. Part of it was described this way in a legal record:
All that tract or parcel of land, situate in the Town of Santa Clara, County of Franklin, and State of New York, being a parcel of land situate, lying and being in what is called the "Barbour Tract" of 4000 acres of the west 10,661 acres of the North half of Township No. twenty-three (23) in Great Tract one of Macomb's Purchase in said County and State, to wit: Beginning at the north east corner of a flat rock marked "W." lying on the westerly shore of Upper Saranac Lake in a southerly direction from Pear Point, lying south of the "Narrows" in said lake on a tract of land owned by Richard L. Howell, and running on a course therefrom north sixty degrees west (N. 60 W.) fifty-five (55 l.) links to a stake and stones at the base of a fallen hemlock tree in the northerly line of Howell's said tract; thence north seventy-five degrees west (N. 75 W.) along said north line a distance of nine chains and seventy-seven links (9 chs. 77 lks.) to a stake and stones being the northwest corner of a subdivision of Howell's said tract known as Lot No. 9, also being the northeast corner of Lot No. 8 of said tract; thence south fourteen degrees west (S. 14 W.) eight chains and seventy-five links (8 chs. 75 lks,) to the shore of Upper Saranac Lake at low water mark; thence easterly and northeasterly along the shore of said lake at low water mark to the place of beginning, containing all the land within the above described bounds be the same more or less, and subject to same terms and conditions contained in the deed from Emerson, Hall and Patton [Henry Patton?] to Richard L. Howell bearing date December 15th 1890 and recorded in Franklin County Clerk's Office in Liber 89 of Deeds, page 24.
