This town is located about thirty miles southeast of Watertown , in up-state New York .  Actually it is situated about twenty miles east of Adams Center , on Hwy 177, and then three miles south of Bellwood on Sears Pond Road .  Today this small village of about 55 inhabitants uses the zip code of 13367 from near-by Lowville, in Lewis County .  The town was formed in 1850 and a school was built that year.  It was named for Miss Mary Montague Pierrepont, of Brooklyn , NY , a daughter of Hezekiah Pierrepont, a former owner of large land tracts in this and adjoining counties.  The Montague Post Office was established in 1856.  Several sawmills had already been in use for some time.  There were about 100 residents there at this time.  Its principal industry has been dairying, for which the land is best adapted.

Today the Montague Inn and Motel is the only active business in town.  It caters to the snowmobile crowd in the winter and the ATV bunch of recreationalists the rest of the year.  The Bar and Restaurant were quite busy with lots of family ATV’s coming and going the Saturday night we were there.  Doris and I can attest to the good meals they serve.

The “Radar Dome” that tracts all the weather in the area for The National Weather Service is close by.  On January 21, 1997 it recorded a record seventy-seven inches of snow in a twenty-four hour period.  The old record of seventy-six inches was set in 1921 at Silver Lake , Colorado .  In a dispute of how the recording was done, Colorado still holds the nations record of seventy-six inches of snow falling in a twenty-four period.