Tour 8

(Pittsfield, Mass.)—Albany—Cherry Valley—Sangerfield—La Fayette—Auburn—Geneva—Canandaigua—Fredonia—Westfield—(Erie, Pa.); US 20.

Massachusetts Line to Pennsylvania Line, 387.6 m.

Two-, three-, and four- lane concrete, with stretches of two-lane macadam.

Rutland R.R. parallels route between New Lebanon and Brainard; Delaware and Hudson R.R. between Sharon Springs and Cherry Valley; Delaware, Lackawanna & Western R.R. between Richfield Springs and Bridgewater; New York Central R.R. and Lehigh Valley R.R. between Auburn and Geneva; and Pennsylvania R.R. between Geneva and Canandaigua.

In 150 years trails and woods-roads have been joined and improved to make US 20 a popular route spanning the Empire State but touching only two large cities—Albany and Auburn. From the crest of the Taconics the highway drops into the Hudson Valley; west of Albany it mounts the flank of the Helderbergs, dips into and out of the valley of Schoharie Creek, plunges into the upper valleys of the Susquehanna watershed, rides the serrated northern rim of the Allegheny Plateau, crosses the base of the Finger Lakes, then cuts across the rolling Ontario Plain to Lake Erie, and thence southwest to the Pennsylvania line. Steep grades through the eastern half of the route discourage commercial hauling and leave the highway open to light speed traffic. Following the trails made by moccasined feet, the route runs the length of the ‘Long House’ of the Iroquois Confederacy. Soldiers brought muskets to the red men; traders exchanged trinkets and rum for their furs; and the Jesuit missionaries, whose only weapon was the cross, offered salvation to their souls and suffered the worse for their pains. In the struggle for empire between Britain and France the allegiance of the Iroquois shifted with the fortunes of battle, until the British conquest of Canada made them staunch allies of the crown. In the early days of the Revolution they joined Walter Butler’s Rangers and Sir John Johnson’s Royal Greens to raid the outlying settlements. But this brought the Sullivan-Clinton expedition against them; the Patriot punitive force devastated the Long House, especially the land of the Seneca, and in the process cut the moccasin trails into roads.

The Revolution ended, Sullivan’s soldiers went home to New England bearing tales of a fertile land to the west; and with the peace, the westward rush was on. The State set aside the Military Tract for veterans, and the western part of the State was sold to the land companies, which offered special inducements to new settlers. The great trek to the promised land crowded this Cherry Valley route. Obstructing trees were cut away and swampy sections were ‘paved’ with logs and gravel. Riding was rough: pioneer families, taking cows with them, put the milk into a churn and the jolting of the wagon churned the butter as they went along.

The migrating New Englanders, besides settling the region with stubborn, sturdy men and women, added their characteristic religious and political vagaries. Memorials of their sects and cults are scattered along the route from the Shakers at New Lebanon to the Brotherhood of the New Life at Brocton. The route exhibits houses, taverns, and meetinghouses built by them in the New England style. Side-stepped by bustling industry in the later nineteenth century, these buildings retain the pungent flavor of their salty builders.

Section a.  MASSACHUSETTS LINE to ALBANY; 29.3 m.  US 20

Shaggy Mount Lebanon rises north of the point where US 20 crosses the MASSACHUSETTS LINE, 0 m., 7.8 miles west of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. As the highway winds down the mountainside it passes several brown, barnlike houses (L), remnants of the MOUNT LEBANON SHAKER SETTLEMENT, established here in 1785. The Shakers were one of the earliest religious cults to sprout along the east-west axis of the Empire State. Its distinguishing tenets were celibacy, community of property, spirituality, and refusal to take oath or bear arms. The social unit was the large ‘family’ housed under one roof, but the men and women eating and lodging separately. The physical paroxysms accompanying their religious exercises gave rise to the name ‘Shaking Quakers,’ later abbreviated to Shakers.

The leader of the cult, Mother Ann Lee, represented the incarnation of the Divine Spirit, who, according to the hymn, The Gospel Trumpet,

                By her sufferings overcame

                And taught the way of self denying

                Put the nasty flesh to shame

                In which Old Adam’s race were lying.

In response to a revelation, Mother Ann led six men and two women converts to America from England in 1774. This group settled originally at Watervliet, but Mount Lebanon was the first formal Shaker Society, organized by Joseph Meacham, a converted Baptist pastor.

A combination of communism, industry, and inventiveness built a prosperous society during the nineteenth century. Wide markets were found for Shaker herbs, garden seeds, blankets, brooms, and chairs, and many labor-saving inventions were provided for home and farm. But the sect’s exclusive dependence upon converts and the adoption of orphans to recruit its numbers has led to a slow disintegration until today there is only a handful of aged Shakers left.

At 2.1 m. is the eastern junction with State 22 (see Tour 20), which unites briefly with US 20.

NEW LEBANON, 2.9 m. (720 alt., 400 pop.), was the birthplace of Samuel J. Tilden (1814–86), who as member of the State legislature and as governor pushed the investigations that smashed New York City’s Tweed Ring and the upstate Canal Ring. Tilden was initiated into politics at an early age when conferences were held at his father’s house by Martin Van Buren, Silas Wright, and other big-wigs of the Albany Regency. Influenced by the personal glamor of his mentor Van Buren, Tilden participated in the revolt of the Barnburner, or free soil, faction of the New York Democrats, and in 1855 was candidate of the softshell, or antislavery, faction for attorney general of the State. Many of the revolters joined the new Republican party but Tilden remained a Democrat. In 1876, as presidential candidate he won a majority of the popular vote. But the electoral vote was so close that a special commission was appointed, which, voting strictly on party lines, gave Rutherford B. Hayes the office by a majority of one. Dying a bachelor, Tilden willed a large part of his fortune to found the New York City Public Library; his grave is in the New Lebanon cemetery.

At New Lebanon is the western junction with State 22 (see Tour 20).

Just west of the village is (R) the SHRINE OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES (open May 1–Nov. 1), built around a spring. On the Sunday nearest the feast of St. Christopher (July 25), thousands of motorists drive to the shrine for the annual blessing of automobiles.

Crossing the narrow valley of Wyomanock Creek, the road passes between the LEBANON VALLEY SKI-JUMP COURSE (R) and TOBOGGAN SLIDE (L), 5.3 m., thin crevices in the thick woods of the hillside.

BENJAMIN BUDD’S TAVERN, 11.2 m. (L), now a private residence, was built about 1800 on the site of the cabin of David Brainard (1718–47), Indian missionary.

At 11.8 m. is a junction with State 66.

Left on State 66 down the Kinderhook Creek valley to the BERKSHIRE THEATRE WORKSHOP, 3.5 m., a summer school for dramatic training, conducted by the Bishop-Lee School, Boston, Massachusetts. Students produce plays in the NELL GWYNN THEATRE (adm. 50¢), a huge old barn rebuilt to accommodate an audience of 250.

At NASSAU, 16.1 m. (403 alt., 670 pop.), when legal obstructions can be circumvented, greyhound races are run at the RENSSELAER COUNTY FAIR GROUNDS. Tickets for admission are distributed profusely without charge; the large profits are made from betting. The course is sometimes run with monkeys astride the dogs.

Skirting the Hudson Valley fruit belt, at 20.9 m. US 20 unites with US 9 (see Tour 21).

At 24.1 m. is the junction with US 4 (see Tour 22).

At 29 m. the route bears L. on the Parker Dunn Memorial Bridge.

In ALBANY, 29.3 m. (18 alt., 130,447 pop.) (see Albany) are the junctions with State 43 (see Tour 9), State 5 (see Tour 11), US 9 (see Tour 21), and US 9W (see Tour 21A).

Section b.  ALBANY to SANGERFIELD; 93 m.  US 20

West of Albany US 20 follows roughly the old woods-roads and Indian trails over which the Tory and Indian raiders struck eastward during the Revolution, wiping out settlements and isolated homes. Over this same route rode nineteenth century Paul Reveres, hunting horns blaring, to call the antirenters together to fight the sheriff and his deputies (see Tour 21).

Just west of ALBANY, 0 m., is MCKOWNVILLE, 5.8 m. (209 alt., 62 pop.), a clambake and midget-auto racing paradise. Almost every weekend during the warm season, Albany clubs and organizations crowd McKown’s Grove for a ‘bake.’ A cobblestone-lined pit is filled with cordwood, which is burned until the stones are almost white hot. Then the ashes are swept out and the pit spread with a layer of fresh seaweed. Wire baskets, each filled with two dozen or more washed and selected clams, two clambake sausages, one-half chicken, one white and one sweet potato, and one or two ears of corn (when in season), are set into the pit and the whole covered with a tarpaulin, edges sealed with wet clay. The steamed clams are supplemented by iced raw clams, bread, pickles, and olives.

On Sunday afternoons the Capital City Speedways sponsor midget auto races on the pear-shaped quarter-mile dirt track in McKown’s Grove. The light, stubby cars, 500 to 950 pounds in weight, whirl 21 laps for the main event, their open exhausts clattering, adding din and dust to the general excitement.

In GUILDERLAND, 9.4 m. (210 alt., 225 pop.), is (R) the SCHOOLCRAFT HOUSE (private), an excellent example of the mid-nineteenth-century fad, the Gothic Revival cottage. A yellow wooden structure, it is complete with carpenter-fashioned buttresses, drip moldings, and tracery.

The CASE TAVERN (L), a large, rectangular frame structure covered by white clapboards, was built by Russel Case in 1799. The building is typical of the 62 hostelries that at the peak of turnpike travel lined the 55 miles to Cherry Valley.

At 20.7 m. is the junction with a dirt road.

Left on this road 0.3 m. to the NORTH HOUSE (L), a square, two-story frame structure of Georgian Colonial design built in 1784–6 by William North (1755–1836). Born in Maine, North served during the Revolutionary War as aide to Baron Von Steuben, and was later adopted by Steuben as son, heir, and executor of his estate. Between 1798 and 1800 North was Adjutant General of the United States Army, and later served as speaker of the State assembly and as U.S.senator. His grave is in Christ Episcopal Church Cemetery, Duanesburg.

A short distance beyond the North House stands the 12-room Georgian Colonial structure known today as the DUANE-FEATHERSTONHAUGH HOUSE, built about 1816 by James Duane’s youngest daughter Catherine. In form and plan the two-story frame dwelling marks a transition from boxlike structure by having unusually long proportions, front and side entrance porches, and a magnificent 70-foot-long, two-story porch on the garden side. In 1855 the estate was inherited by James Duane Featherstonhaugh.

US 20 continues to DUANESBURG, 21.9 m. (720 alt., 197 pop.), named for James Duane (1733–97), jurist, land speculator, and mayor of Manhattan 1784–9. Described as ‘plump of body . . . the dignity of his appearance enhanced by such luxuries as gold shoe and knee buckles,’ Duane had a ‘jolly good humor which quickly won him friends . . .’ Just prior to the Revolution Duane was zealously aligned with the conservatives; he was one of the prominent citizens who attempted to quell the Stamp Act mobs in 1765. In November 1766, he was ‘busily employed in a new remonstrance to the Parliament respecting our trade.’ He sat in the Continental Congress almost continuously until 1783, serving chiefly in connection with financial and Indian affairs and in assisting with the final draft of the Articles of Confederation. Duane’s greatest nonprofessional interest was in land development. Besides inheriting a large tract of land here from his father, he acquired a number of other tracts.

In Duanesburg is a junction with State 7 (see Tour 10).

On his land here Duane built a lovely little church, around which he planned to promote a settlement that would eclipse Schenectady. Only the church, the CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH (R), 22.9 m., surrounded by a few modest homes, remains, a plain, clapboarded square structure built in 1789–93. The oldest unaltered Episcopal church in the State, it still displays the interior arrangements typical of the eighteenth century when sermons from the high pulpit dominated the liturgy, which was recited at the miniscule altar to one side. The bright red desks and cushions contrast attractively with the white woodwork of box-pews, columns, and gallery, the latter built for slaves and servants. Only the circuitous stovepipes and the oil lamps show that time has passed since Duane and his family sat in the left front pew, which was curtained lest the villagers be distracted from their devotions by the presence of the lord of the manor.

At 28.7 m., in the Schoharie Valley, is the junction with State 30 (see Tour 24).

In 1806 General William North started to develop ESPERANCE, 29.2 m. (640 alt., 233 pop.), as a real estate venture on the newly opened Great Western Turnpike, renaming the original settlement of State Bridge. The PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (R), a two-story gable-roofed stone structure, was erected in 1824 and remodeled in 1897.

On the northern edge of the village (R) an evergreen tree marks the grave of ‘The Witch of Esperance.’ According to the legend, during the Napoleonic Wars a French soldier brought his family to the village. Upon his death his widow, unable to speak English and mingle with the villagers, became an object of suspicion and mystery and was called the ‘Grenadier Woman.’ At a solemn conclave in the stone church her neighbors decided she was a witch and voted her death. Her executioners fired a silver bullet molded from a teaspoon through the window of the widow’s cabin and killed her while she cooked at the open fire with her children playing beside her.

In 1838, in the same stone church which housed the witch-hunt posse, Sheldon Jackson (1834–1909), born in Minaville, was baptized. Fifty years later he was appointed superintendent of public instruction in Alaska, and during his incumbency he introduced reindeer into the territory as a food supply to end periodic famines among the Alaskan Eskimos.

West of Esperance US 20 follows Schoharie Creek (L) for several miles. At about 34 m., in the old turnpike days, a branch road cut around a tollgate and was known as the Shunpike Road. The Shunpike paralleled the main turnpike and joined it again a short distance east of Carlisle. This was one of the ways the early settlers had of beating the toll rates—12½¢ for a wagon, 25¢ for a coach, 20¢ for a score of horses, mules, or cattle, 6¢ for a score of sheep or pigs. This type of evasion also represented a protest against the poor condition of the turnpikes.

High up on the Mohawk-Schoharie divide is CARLISLE, 39 m. (1,250 alt., 200 pop.). In this region, on a summer evening the neighborhood folk occasionally gather on a churchyard green, beneath the yellow and orange glow of Chinese lanterns, to enjoy an ‘ice cream sociable.’ In the winter the women hold quilting bees; the hostess has the frames and groundwork of the quilts ready and some of the guests sew in the different designs and do the patchwork while others knot the quilting yarn.

In the CARLISLE CEMETERY (R) is the GRAVE OF CAPTAIN THOMAS MACHIN (1744–1816), an army engineer who aided in fortifying the American camp around Boston. His most distinguished achievement was the laying of chain and boom across the Hudson River at West Point in 1778 (see West Point).

From EIGEN’S POINT (R), 44.3 m., is a superb view of the Adirondacks. On display here is an ancient stagecoach with an elegant but confining passengers’ compartment, baggage racks on the top and behind, and a mail pouch recess under the driver’s seat.

During the Revolutionary War, SHARON CENTER, 47 m. (1,442 alt., 68 pop.), became a hideout for Tories and Indian raiders; the Tories were offering an $8 bounty for each scalp taken and 50 acres of land to each person who joined their cause. On July 10, 1781, Colonel Marinus Willett, with 260 Continentals and militia, deployed out of a cedar swamp near the present village and defeated 500 Tories and Indians under the command of Captain John Dockstader in the Battle of Durlach.

When the pioneers first came into this region they found blazes on trees leading from all directions toward the sulphur springs around which SHARON SPRINGS, 49 m. (1,320 alt., 364 pop.), grew up. The opening of the Great Western Turnpike from Albany and the Loonenberg Pike running from Athens across the Helderbergs brought increasing numbers of people to the spa. David Elbredge took the first steps to accommodate visitors when he moved a house close to the springs in 1825 and opened it to the public.

In the center of the village the WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, a natural sulphur- and magnesia-tainted spring, pour forth at an average of four barrels a minute. A distinct, startling odor permeates the pools and bathhouses, which give as many as 2,000 water treatments daily during the season, May to September.

The view from the long, three-story porch of the Pavilion Hotel sweeps northward for 100 miles up and down the Mohawk Valley and across the Adirondack foothills. Famous in the late nineties was the hotel’s annex, BACHELOR HALL, reserved for bachelor visitors who formed Sharon’s official ‘stag line.’

CHERRY VALLEY, 56.8 m. (1,332 alt., 707 pop.), once a roaring turnpike village, is now a sprawl of white, prim houses about a cluster of three-story business blocks. In 1740, when the spot was settled, the Reverend Samuel Dunlop became preacher and teacher in a log church that also served as a schoolhouse. In the Cherry Valley Massacre of 1778, Mrs. Dunlop was killed, but her husband and daughters were saved by Little Aaron, an Indian chief, after one of the raiders failed to scalp the minister, ‘being deterred from his purpose by intense astonishment when the parson’s wig came off suddenly.’

Before daylight, on November 11, 1778, a force of 700 Tories and Indians under Walter Butler and Joseph Brant (see Tour 11) swooped down upon the settlement, killed 32 residents and 16 soldiers, burned most of the homes, and marched off with between 60 and 70 prisoners. Brant later sent back half of the captives. According to local tradition, Brant, desiring to give one of the prisoners—a man named Vrooman—his freedom, ordered him to go back alone two miles and bring some birch bark. About two hours later, much to Brant’s disgust, the obedient Dutchman returned with the bark.

The MEMORIAL LIBRARY, corner of Main and Church Sts., an attractive brick building dedicated in 1924, houses a collection rich in Cherry Valley history. The VILLAGE HALL, corner of Main and Wall Sts., is a square stone structure built before 1850 for the John Judd Iron Foundry. Across the street is the DR.DELOS WHITE HOUSE, a small frame building erected about 1810. In the village cemetery (L) is the CHERRY VALLEY MONUMENT, a large marble sarcophagus raised upon a high stone base, erected in 1878 in memory of the victims of the massacre.

Six months before the atrocity at Cherry Valley, Joseph Brant and his raiders had pillaged the settlement at EAST SPRINGFIELD, 61.2 m. (1,324 alt., 200 pop.). These repeated raids were exploited by the Continental Congress to stir up a war spirit along the frontier.

At 64.1 m. is the junction with State 80.

Right on State 80 to VAN HORNESVILLE, 4.7 m. (1,145 alt., 150 pop.), a hamlet brought back to life by Owen D. Young. Born here to the sixth American generation of a Palatine family, Mr. Young is known for his Wall Street and General Electric connections; and, as chairman of the 1924 conference, had his name attached to one of a series of futile plans to reduce war reparations demanded of Germany to a collectible sum. At Mr. Young’s expense, Van Hornesville was electrified, supplied with water works and a sewerage system, and given a volunteer fire department. He restored the gristmill built in 1791 by Abraham Van Home, transformed a bog at the edge of Otsquago Creek into a park, and restored four Colonial houses in or near the village.

The VAN HORNESVILLE CENTRAL SCHOOL cost Mr. Young $1,000,000 and was built with ‘no boss and no contractor.’ Mr. Young and Abram Tilyou, a village friend, directed construction from their rocking chairs. Class work is supplemented by a public address system with connections in all rooms, a science laboratory dedicated to Madame Curie, and up-to-date motion picture equipment.

Owen D. Young’s own home is a low rambling Georgian Colonial stone building with sentinel lights in the gable ends. Slender white columns support the pedimented front portico.

State 80 continues northeast from Van Hornesville, following the winding and willow-bordered Otsquago Creek, to FORT PLAIN, 16.5 m. (320 alt., 2,761 pop.), at the junction with State 5S (see Tour 12).

This section of New York State might well be famous for its centenarian women: Grandma Delina Filkins, born in the Town of Stark, died in Richfield Springs, aged 113; Sophia Sitts, who was captured by Indians in the Revolutionary War, died at the age of 108 in Hallsville in 1888; Aunt Margaret Lumley passed away in Freysbush at the age of 105; and Mrs. Cornelia McChesney, who died in 1939 at the age of 102, remembered the old stagecoaches and had seen many trains but had never ridden in one.

Another watering place along US 20, RICHFIELD SPRINGS, 70.3 m. (1,300 alt., 1,333 pop.), came to prominence in 1820 when the GREAT WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, now in the center of the village, became popular.

At the eastern edge of Richfield Springs is the junction with State 28 (see Tour 15), which unites for a few blocks with US 20.

West of Richfield Springs US 20 crosses the ridges of the Allegheny Plateau, which reach down like a many-fingered hand toward the level pastures of the upper Mohawk. Most of the villages along the way grew and flourished in the days of the turnpike and still preserve the atmosphere of the earlier age.

This is dairying country. Huge red barns and towering silos alternate on the roadside; and in a grove on a southward slope the white boxes of an apiary stand in rows like a miniature village. Occasionally the motorist passes a red flag with a sign ‘COW CROSS 3 p.m.’

The people here have tended their cows and bees well since 1790 when BRIDGEWATER, 84.9 m. (1,180 alt., 228 pop.), was settled. From this town have come two important figures in American agriculture. Dr. Stephen M. Babcock, born here in 1843, invented in 1890, while professor of agricultural chemistry in the University of Wisconsin, the Babcock milk test for accurately determining the percentage of butter fat in milk and cream. In 1830 Hiram Hunt and Albert Brockway, local farmers, invented the rotary rake, a machine for gathering hay.

In SANGERFIELD, 93 m. (1,246 alt., 225 pop.), is the junction with State 12 (see Tour 25).

Section c.  SANGERFIELD to LA FAYETTE; 41.7 m.  US 20

It is in this section of the route that the central New York State atmosphere is encountered in its full force and purity. Here the metropolitan aura of New York City definitely does not extend; the ‘big city’ is Utica or Syracuse. The villages are much alike, each with its Main Street, general store, candy kitchen, and, in the larger ones, a Bijou or Roseland cinema palace.

On the steep valley hillsides are herds of dairy cows and flocks of sheep. At sheep-shearing time, mounds of gray, dirty wool fluff against the gray walls of the shearing sheds. Prohibition almost killed the hop industry but repeal revived it, and today it has begun to flourish again.

Between SANGERFIELD 0 m. and BOUCKVILLE, 9.5 m. (1,149 alt., 250 pop.), is muckland striped with the lush green of pea and bean vines.

Left from Bouckville on State 12B, a macadam road, to HAMILTON, 5.1 m. (1,126 alt., 1,700 pop.), seat of Colgate University. Settled by New Englanders and incorporated in 1816, the village is built around a green reminiscent of New England. On the brow of a hill overlooking the village, COLGATE UNIVERSITY, main entrance at Broad St. and Kendrick Ave., spreads out over a landscaped campus of about 125 acres. The main quadrangle achieves a remarkable architectural unity by its use of the local golden buff sandstone. WEST HALL (1827) and EAST HALL (1834) are forthright post-Colonial dormitories, of fine simplicity in their rectangular mass, stepped gables, elliptical-arched entrances, and widely spaced windows. Similar in plan and use are STILLMAN HALL (1927), which finds its inspiration in early Georgian, and ANDREWS HALL (1922), which bows to Collegiate Gothic. The CHAPEL (1918), with sandstone walls and limestone trim, also adopts the English Georgian; it has a four-columned Roman Doric pedimented portico and a two-stage steeple reminiscent of Wren.

In the JONATHAN OLMSTEAD HOUSE, on lower Broad St., ‘thirteen men of yore’ met on September 24, 1817, and organized the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York, from which the university grew. In 1819 the State granted the society a charter, and seven years later Deacon Samuel Payne and his wife transferred to the organization their farm, the site of the present quadrangle. Until 1839 only men studying for the Baptist ministry were admitted to what was then called the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution. In 1846 it was incorporated as Madison University; and not until 1890 was the name changed to Colgate in recognition of the benefactions and interest of William Colgate and his descendants. In 1928 the Theological Seminary became part of the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School (see Rochester). At present Colgate offers work leading only to the A.B. degree. The plan of education provides for preceptorial and tutorial work in the first two years and seminar instruction in the last two. The student body is limited to 1,000.

In the valley bottom west of Bouckville US 20 crosses the Chenango Canal and continues through muckland truck gardens. In the summer season makeshift tents and crude trailers cluster in hollows, and the smoke from the campfires of small groups of itinerant workers rises through the trees.

On the edge of the swamp MORRISVILLE, 14.7 m. (1,326 alt., 583 pop.), prospers around its STATE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE, which occupies a dozen buildings (L), including a former county courthouse, built about 1866, and jail. The school, opened in 1910, offers agricultural and auto mechanics courses to boys, home economics courses to girls. Experimental farming is conducted on the school’s 200-acre farm south of the village.

Right from Morrisville on a macadam road, which follows the edge of Peterboro Swamp, to PETERBORO, 6 m. (1,321 alt., 330 pop.), a hotbed of antislavery radicalism when it was the home of Gerrit Smith (1797–1874). Smith labored in many reform causes, from vegetarianism to women’s dress reform, but is best remembered as an abolitionist. Of the 800,000 acres left him by his father he converted a quarter into 50-acre homes for emancipated Negroes; he supported John Brown’s activities, abetted the Underground Railroad, and organized posses to free fugitive slaves arrested in Syracuse. As one of the founders of the Liberty party, Smith was nominated for governor; he later declined the nomination for President, but was elected to Congress and served in 1853–4. The Gerrit Smith home burned in 1936, but many relics are in the village museum, and the library of Syracuse University has a collection of his letters and manuscripts. His grave is in the Smith family lot in the Peterboro Cemetery.

Near NICHOLS POND, 10 m., stood the stockaded fort of the Oneida Indians, attacked on October 11, 1615, by Samuel de Champlain and an expeditionary force of French and Hurons. This was the second skirmish between the French and Iroquois warriors and the first penetration of central New York by white men. It contributed to the orientation of the Iroquois to the English cause in the Colonial wars.

West from Morrisville US 20 enters the first of the series of land purchases of post-Revolutionary times representing one of the largest real estate promotion booms in American history. The road drops down into the Chittenango Creek Valley to CAZENOVIA, 26.2 m. (1,200 alt., 1,788 pop.), an orderly village with shaded streets and classical and Colonial homes. It cups the heel of CAZENOVIA LAKE (R), called by the Indians Hoh-wah-ge-neh, the lake where the yellow perch swim, a four-mile strip of gem-blue water margined by fine modern residences and summer homes.

The village was settled in 1793 by John Lincklaen (1768–1820), local agent for the Holland Land Company (see Tour 11), which here owned a small tract. Lincklaen named it for Theophile Cazenove, general agent for the company, who was playing the ‘grand seigneur’ in Philadelphia. During the turnpike period the village was a stopover place; the Cazenovia House was a drover’s tavern, accommodating York State cowboys and the livestock they drove to market; at such a hostelry stagecoach passengers were considered high society and were charged double.

The LINCKLAEN HOUSE (R), built in 1825, is a three-story hotel of yellow brick with green shutters; the front and side porches of stone are in the Greek Doric style.

On Seminary St. are the buildings of the CAZENOVIA SEMINARY AND JUNIOR COLLEGE (R), a college preparatory school founded in 1824 by the Methodist Church. The chapel, a two-story post-Colonial building of native stone and brick, was originally a wing of a building constructed in 1810 and used as a courthouse.

At the western edge of the village (L) is LORENZO (private), a two-story Georgian dwelling built in 1807 by Lincklaen after his first home had burned. It reflects the contemporary admiration for the work of Robert Adam in England by the delicate pilasters, elliptical arches, shallow projecting gable, and roof parapet.

Right from Cazenovia on State 13, down the Chittenango Creek Valley, 4.1 m. to the CHITTENANGO FALLS STATE PARK (picnicking, parking 25¢), where the creek cascades for 136 feet, the water roaring and rumbling over and under jutting rock ledges.

West of Cazenovia US 20 becomes a giant roller-coaster for 32 miles over the spurs of the Allegheny Plateau. At 29.5 m., the route enters Limestone Creek Valley, which for centuries sheltered the villages and farms of the Onondaga Indians.

Near the western edge, 29.8 m., of the valley stood the house in which Erastus Dow Palmer (1817–1904) was born. A graduate of Union College, he worked as a mechanic and carpenter until he was 29. Examination of a cameo portrait led him to cut a likeness of his wife on a shell; encouraged, he cut over 100 cameo portraits in two years. But failing eyesight forced him to attempt larger work, and in 1851 he exhibited at the Academy of Design in New York his first marble bust, The Infant Cares, for which one of his children served as model. Six years later he sculptured the group, The Landing of the Pilgrims, designed as a pediment ornament for the south wing of the Capitol at Washington, D.C., but never placed there. His Angel at the Sepulchre is in the Albany Rural Cemetery.

In POMPEY CENTER, 31.7 m. (1,260 alt., 211 pop.), is the junction with a macadam road.

Right here 3.4 m. to INDIAN HILL, today a green wave of corn, but until 1684 the capital of the Onondaga Indians, comprising 140 cabins. In the summer of 1654 the Reverend Father Simon LeMoyne, Jesuit missionary, was entertained here by the Indian chiefs; the following year in a chapel of bark and poles Fathers Joseph Chaumonot and Claude Dablon held Christmas service. So strongly was one chief impressed that he came to the door of the chapel the next morning and ‘exhorted all the young people to listen well.’

High up on a ridge is POMPEY, 35.7 m. (1,700 alt., 100 pop.), one of the first settlements in the 1,500,000-acre Military Tract. For a decade Pompey was the western end of the Great Western Turnpike. Historical groups are making an effort to preserve the village as a historical model and to build a museum for the coffee mills, hand-forged rakes and hoes, and other cumbersome equipment brought to the vicinity by the first settlers and now rusting in Onondaga County attics.

Pompey was inhabited by hardy, alert, adventuresome, imaginative pioneers. The village, together with the surrounding farms, was the birthplace, between 1795 and 1830, of 13 members of the State legislature, one United States senator, two State governors, mayors of five cities as far west as the Pacific coast, three Supreme Court justices, one major general, several authors, and at least two business geniuses. Not counted among these was the farmer who in his winter leisure prepared the ‘Pompey Stone’ hoax; the stone, bearing the date 1589, was for more than half a century accepted as the genuine record of the earliest advent of white men—Spanish, of course—in New York State.

Of the business men, William George Fargo (1818–81) stands out as a genial fellow who made friends easily. At the age of 13 he rode a mail route of 30 miles twice a week. Appointed in 1840 messenger for Pomeroy & Company, the express firm between Albany and Buffalo, he became their Buffalo agent the following year. Four years later he acted as messenger for Wells & Company, the first express concern west of Buffalo, which later became Wells, Fargo & Company.

Fronting on the tree-rimmed village green (R) stand frame post-Colonial houses and a general store built in 1836 of native limestone. Beside the store is a remodeled stone home built in 1797, which, as HANDY’S TAVERN, was the roistering place of the village when it was an important frontier crossroads.

On the right side of the green is the PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, built in 1817–19 by the Congregationalists. It is a two-story frame building, the square tower topped by six pillars bearing the final octagonal spire and a wrought-iron weather vane, in the Christopher Wren style of church architecture.

Across from the village green stands (L) the rebuilt two-story BIRTHPLACE OF HORATIO SEYMOUR (1810–86), State governor and presidential candidate against Grant in 1868. He learned the political ropes under Governor Marcy and joined the conservative Democratic faction known as ‘Hunkers.’ During his first term as governor his veto of a bill prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors brought down on his head a campaign of vilification that charged him with being a drunkard and called his attacks of dyspepsia a form of insanity, although he was in fact a ‘teetotaling Episcopalian.’ In the seventies Seymour helped Tilden tumble Tweed from the political heights and took an active part in early efforts to reform Tammany Hall.

Right from Pompey on State 91, down the slopes of the Allegheny Plateau, to the junction with State 173 in JAMESVILLE, 7 m. (580 alt., 495 pop.). Left on State 173 to the CLARK STATE RESERVATION (R), 1.2 m., containing limestone cliffs 200 feet high and a small, deep lake. The park contains one of the few American stations of the Hart’s Tongue fern (Scolopendrium vulgare), which grows only on the slopes of limestone channels or plunge basins. The scientific name, from the Greek meaning centipede, is applied because of the resemblance of the rows of elongated sori along each side of the midrib to the legs of the centipede. The plant is common in the British Isles, in the Azores, and in Japan.

West of Pompey are apple orchards, pink in May, green in the height of summer, and startlingly red with fruit in the autumn.

LA FAYETTE, 41.7 m. (1,160 alt., 100 pop.), is at the junction with US 11 (see Tour 18).

Section d.  LA FAYETTE to AUBURN; 25.4 m.  US 20

Between LA FAYETTE, 0 m., and Auburn US 20 whips up and down over the ragged southern edge of the Lake Ontario Plain, the crests of the mile-long gradients providing brief glimpses of the blue Finger Lakes and farm-green valleys.

Set like a delicate cameo at the base of the little digit of the Finger Lakes, SKANEATELES, 18.6 m. (868 alt., 1,882 pop.), is today, in the minds of thousands of people, synonymous with KREBS (L), a story-and-a-half white frame house set off by deep lawns; and Krebs is synonymous with food. Here a one-time impoverished Alsatian caterer has provided a place to delight a gourmet. Krebs came to Skaneateles in 1900 for his health and started serving meals to make a living. By word-of-mouth the fame of his cuisine spread until now during the summer months more than 1,000 meals a day are served, continuing the original policy of giving customers more than they can possibly eat.

In 1750 Moravian missionaries from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, visited the Indian village on this site. The Indian trails were widened through this area by a detachment from the Sullivan-Clinton expedition; even so, Abraham A. Cuddeback, believed to be the first white settler, who arrived here about 1792, required 43 days for his trip with family and effects from Orange County.

In 1841 a water-cure sanitarium was started here by Dr. W.C. Thomas, who conducted the cures for 40 years, and who could at least offer his long life, 107 years, as a recommendation of the curative value of the waters.

Before the Civil War the village was a headquarters for the abolitionist activities of Gerrit Smith and an important station on the Underground Railroad. In 1843–5 it had its touch of ‘ism’ in the form of a commune of ‘infidels’ led by John Anderson Collins (1810–79), who bought a 300-acre farm two miles north of the village and advertised in the papers for followers. The principles of the group were denunciation of individual property, negation of all force, easy divorce, universal education, and vegetarianism. The community attracted the usual seekers after free board and lodging and received the usual round of condemnation from outsiders. Disillusioned, Collins liquidated the venture. At the opposite pole from the antireligionists was the work of the Quakers. About 1818, Lydia P. Mott came to the region and started the Friends’ Female Boarding School, known as the Hive.

At one time or another Skaneateles attempted to develop industries of its own. As a sideline to its effort in textiles, an industry nourished here which is almost unique: teasel raising. The fuller’s teasel, a thistle-like biennial, native of the south of Europe, is used in tearing or raising a nap on cloth. While visiting his home in England in 1840, William Snook, a resident of Onondaga County, became interested in the plant and on his return brought with him teasel seed. Although the raising of teasel never spread far, it became an important means of livelihood for this area until foreign competition drove it from the market. Machines have been invented to supplant the teasel hook, but the plant, which is strong enough for the work and yet elastic enough to ‘give’ before breaking the cloth, is still the more practical.

AUBURN, 25.4 m. (650 alt., 35,705 pop.) (see Auburn), is at the junction with State 5 (see Tour 11).

1. Left from Auburn on State 38 along the western shore of Owasco Lake, past summer cottages, to (L) ENNA JETTICK PARK (open Decoration Day to Labor Day; bathing, boating, fishing, picnicking, amusements), 2.6 m., a 38-acre, privately owned public park.

In MORAVIA, 18.5 m. (741 alt., 1,295 pop.), ST. MATTHEW’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH contains seven wood carvings by Hans Meyer of the Oberammergau Passion Players. A tablet commemorates the marriage in the church of Millard Fillmore to Abigail Powers.

FILLMORE GLEN STATE PARK (parking 25¢; dancing, bowling, swimming, hiking), 19.5 m., contains 511 acres of forested slopes and ravines with picturesque waterfalls.

In LOCKE, 21.8 m. (800 alt., 315 pop.), is the junction with State 90; left on State 90 to SUMMER HILL, 5.2 m., birthplace of Millard Fillmore (see Buffalo).

On State 38, in GROTON, 28 m. (1,020 alt., 2,086 pop.), a quiet industrial village, is the plant of the L.C. Smith and Corona Typewriters, Inc., employing between 800 and 900 workers and producing about 100,000 portable typewriters annually.

The GEORGE JUNIOR REPUBLIC, 35 m., founded in 1894 by William Reuben (‘Daddy’) George, is a nonsectarian community in which boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 21 receive practical training in useful citizenship. Its constitution is modeled on that of the United States; the laws are those of New York State supplemented by special laws enacted by the young citizens in their town meeting. Discipline is also enforced by the young people. The motto of the Republic is ‘Nothing without Labor.’ Every citizen works for his token money; boys learn carpentry, printing, farming, plumbing, or aeronautics; girls learn office work or home economics. Buildings include a schoolhouse, governmental buildings, and a chapel.

At 46 m. is the junction with State 221; left on this road 0.6 m. to junction with a gravel road; right here 1.8 m. to junction with an unimproved road; left here 0.3 m. to the (L) reputed BIRTHPLACE OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER (see Tour 21), not claimed as such by the Rockefeller family. The weatherbeaten two-story frame house is occupied by a caretaker.

State 38 continues south to OWEGO, 70.8 m. (818 alt., 4,742 pop.), at the junction with State 17 (see Tour 3).

2. Left from Auburn on State 34 to the HARRIET TUBMAN HOME (L), 1.7 m., which was used as a station on the Underground Railroad. ‘Aunt’ Harriet Tubman (1821–1913), called the Moses of her people, was born a slave in Maryland. In the pre-Civil War period she led more than 300 Negro slaves to freedom, aided by the strong abolitionist sentiment in central New York. During the war, she nursed to health hundreds of white and Negro soldiers. In 1914 the citizens of Auburn erected a tablet to her memory in the Cayuga County Courthouse. Her small house and 25 acres of land were deeded to the A.M.E. Zion Church, which still owns it. In 1908 it was opened as a home for indigent Negroes. It is now unoccupied and deteriorating.

In FLEMING, 5.4 m. (910 alt., 68 pop.), is the junction with State 34B, which the side tour follows.

State 34 continues to the WARING HOMESTEAD (R), 1.4 m., a two-story frame house built in 1806, which served the public as a tavern in turnpike days and was later used as a Masonic lodge, a schoolhouse, and finally as a farm homestead.

On State 34B, in SHERWOOD, 13.6 m. (1,060 alt., 100 pop.), is (L) the HOME OF EMILY HOWLAND (1827–1929), born here of pioneer Quaker stock, who worked long years to free and rehabilitate Negro slaves. In 1857 she went to Washington to teach in Miss Miner’s School for Negro girls; during the Civil War she helped to organize the Freeman’s Village for refugees at Camp Todd. After the war, her father bought land in Northumberland County, Virginia, to which she transported destitute families and opened a school for Negro children, maintaining it for 50 years, until the State took it over. In 1871 she founded in her native village the Sherwood Select School for white pupils and in 1882 assumed financial responsibility for it, erecting a new building and taking the teachers into her own household. In 1927 she relinquished the school to the State, and it was renamed the Emily Howland School, now a regular high school of the State public school system.

In POPLAR RIDGE, 15.3 m. (1,047 alt., 96 pop.), is (R) the HOME OF JETHRO WOOD (1774–1834), who invented the first cast-iron plow to contain no wrought iron, and patented it in 1819. Infringements on Wood’s patent were frequent; though supported in his fight against them by outstanding legal talent, he died in 1834 before his rights were clearly defined; his family received only $550 from the patent.

In SOUTH LANSING, 32.2 m. (846 alt., 300 pop.), is the southern junction with State 34, which continues south along Cayuga Lake to ITHACA, 40.2 m. (400 alt., 19,647 pop.) (see Ithaca), at the junction with State 2 (see Tour 30).

Section e.  AUBURN to WESTERN JUNCTION WITH STATE 5; 71.3 m.  US 20

In the imagination of the Indians, the Great Spirit laid his hand upon their country in benediction, and left the crystal-blue Finger Lakes as his mark. Geologists explain these long, slender bodies of water as preglacial valleys whose south-flowing rivers were bottled up by glacial debris and their courses reversed. A roll is given to the landscape by rounded hillocks 60 to 100 feet high that fold away with smoothing monotony into the distance; early settlers thought these were Indian burial mounds, but the unimaginative geologist calls them drumlins, heaps of debris dumped by the glaciers.

West of AUBURN, 0 m., US 20 runs in common with State 5.

At 10.6 m. is the junction with State 90.

Left on State 90, which skirts the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake, to MUD LOCK, 1.1 m., junction of the Cayuga and Seneca branches of Barge Canal and a favorite spot for perch and bullhead fishing. Archeologists have discovered remains of a very ancient Indian culture here.

CAYUGA, 3.3 m. (420 alt., 466 pop.), settled in 1789, is one of the oldest Finger Lakes villages. To overcome the obstacle of the Montezuma Swamp and the lake to westward travel, the Cayuga Bridge, one of the engineering marvels of its day, was built in 1799. Across its one and one-eighth miles of wooden trestle, the Genesee Turnpike stages rumbled; during the War of 1812 the Army of General Wood and General Scott crossed it on its way to the Niagara Frontier. Today only the abutments remain.

CAYUGA LAKE (R), 40 miles long, 2 miles wide, and 435 feet deep, the longest of the Finger Lakes, is connected by canal with Seneca Lake on the west and with the Barge Canal on the north. In the nineteenth century it was an important transportation link between Ithaca, concentration point for the produce of southern New York, and the Erie Canal; a regular steamboat service was carried on until the 1920’s, but now lake traffic is limited to pleasure craft and the slender shells of Cornell University crews. The moody blue waters of the lake and the life on its shores have been envisioned by two generations through Grace Miller White’s novels.

UNION SPRINGS, 9.2 m. (419 alt., 894 pop.), takes its name from the numerous sulphur and salt springs in the vicinity. Rich archeological remains have been found near by and on FRONTENAC ISLAND, in Lake Cayuga. This is one of the very few islands in the Finger Lakes, a knot of land that was once an Algonquian burial ground but is now a bird and game refuge.

GREAT GULLY BROOK, 11.6 m., is crossed by the highway at the site of an old Indian village, for many years the capital of the Cayuga, and near the site of the second Roman Catholic chapel in New York State, served by Father René Menard, 1656–8, and Father Etienne de Carheil, 1668–84. State and Knights of Columbus monuments stand on the sites. Father Etienne de Carheil, appointed to Father Menard’s chapel, devised several original methods of showing the Cayuga the fallacy of worshipping animals. The Cayuga regarded the beaver as the master of their lives, and Father Carheil offered a prayer to the beaver: ‘Thou, O, who canst not speak! Thou, who hast no soul, thou art master of my life who have a soul.’

At LEVANNA, 13.3 m. (424 alt., 100 pop.), is the site of a prehistoric Indian village; huge figures of a bird and animals outlined in stone and facing a primitive stone altar have been found here by archeologists. Reproductions of Algonquian villages of A.D. 900 have been built near this shrine.

AURORA, 15.6 m. (436 alt., 371 pop.), was named by General Benjamin Ledyard, who was impressed with the splendor of the site revealed in the first rays of the morning sun. The impressive campus of WELLS COLLEGE (L) rises from the lake shore. Henry Wells, co-founder of the Wells-Fargo Express Company, established this college for women in 1868. Most of the buildings are of brick in the Tudor Gothic style; some are adorned with sculptures by Erastus Dow Palmer. The curriculum includes courses in the liberal arts, dietetics, library science, and domestic science. The student body numbers about 270, the faculty 45.

‘Frankie’ Folsom (see below), as she was known to her schoolmates, went to school here while being courted by President Grover Cleveland.

At KING FERRY, 24.2 m. (950 alt., 320 pop.), is the junction with State 34B (see above). On the hills back from the lake shore are the ranks of Seckel pear trees, whose small russet, sugary fruit weigh down the candelabra-like branches. King Ferry boasts of the largest Seckel pear orchards in the United States.

The RENÉ MENARD MEMORIAL BRIDGE, 11.1 m., which carries US 20 across the Seneca River, was dedicated in 1933 in honor of Father René Menard. Beyond the bridge the road enters the Montezuma Swamp (see Tour 32), a dense growth of alder, willow, and maple, reeds and cattails, 1.5 miles wide where the road crosses it. This part of the swamp has been set aside as a bird sanctuary; migratory fowl stop here to feed and rest, and in the spring the trumpeting of the loons echoes and re-echoes over the dreary tangle with demonic fury. The Montezuma Swamp was one of the hide-outs of the famous Loomis gang (see Tour 25) and other swashbuckling highwaymen of the early nineteenth century.

At 12.9 m. is the junction with State 89.

Left on State 89 to CAYUGA LAKE STATE PARK (bathing, picnicking, games), 3.5 m.

At 6 m. is the SITE OF RED JACKET’S BIRTHPLACE (R). Grand sachem of the Iroquois and one of the wiliest diplomats in Indian history, Red Jacket (1750–1830) was used as a runner by British officers on the frontier and was given an embroidered red coat as a reward; he became so fond of it that he wore red coats on state occasions for the rest of his life. Thereupon the whites dubbed him Red Jacket. To the Indians he was Sa-ge-ye-wat-ha, he keeps them awake, a tribute to his oratorial powers. A fondness for rum brought him before the sachems several times on the charge that he was a disgrace to the tribes, but his quick tongue saved him from being read out of the clan. It was Red Jacket’s influence that swung the Iroquois to the side of the Americans during the War of 1812 and kept the warriors from scalping enemy dead during that conflict.

SENECA FALLS, 16 m. (465 alt., 6,449 pop.), owes its early industrial development to the 50-foot waterfall which provided power, and its fame to great women who mothered the causes of woman suffrage, antislavery, and temperance. Seneca Falls gave the world the Holley inventions: a water system for municipalities and the rotary fire engine used throughout the Nation.

In Seneca Falls the ‘New Woman’ first asserted her equality with man and began throwing off her shackles. Mrs. Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818–94), wife of the local postmaster, did not invent the ‘bloomer’—that honor goes to Mrs. Elizabeth Smith Miller, daughter of Gerrit Smith—but she introduced it and advocated it as a uniform for the soldiers of the woman suffrage cause. The New York Tribune described the get-up as follows: ‘Mrs. Bloomer was attired in a dark brown changeable tunic; a kilt descended just below the knees, the skirt of which was trimmed with rows of black velvet. The pantaloons were of the same texture and trimmed in the same style. She wore gaiters. Her headdress was cherry and black. Her dress had a large open corsage, with bands of velvet over the white chamesette in which was a diamond stud pin. She wore flowing sleeves, tight undersleeves, and black lace mitts. Her whole attire was rich and plain in appearance.’ But the costume was abandoned when men stopped ‘not to think of the cause for which it was worn but to grin and jeer,’ and children trooped after the wearers chanting derisively

                Hi Ho,

                In sleet and snow,

                Mrs. Bloomer’s all the go.

                Twenty tailors to take the stitches,

                Plenty of women to wear the britches.

Mrs. Bloomer worked persistently for woman suffrage and with Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) called the first convention of the movement at Seneca Falls in 1848. Mrs. Stanton, born in Johnstown, New York, moved to Seneca Falls with her husband in 1847. Her father disinherited her for her activities; she was arrested and suffered insult from judges and juries, was fined and imprisoned, but she persisted and was soon recognized as leader of the movement.

Woman suffrage was closely allied with other reform movements of the hectic forties and fifties, especially temperance and abolition. Mrs. Bloomer lectured ardently for temperance, and Mrs. Stanton shocked the delegates to a temperance convention in Rochester by advocating that drunkenness he accepted as grounds for divorce and by declaring that she believed in birth control for drunkards’ wives.

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) was already interested in temperance and antislavery when in 1850 she met Mrs. Stanton in Seneca Falls. The two women worked together for 50 years. As a militant abolitionist Miss Anthony campaigned under the slogan, ‘No union with slave-holders,’ and advocated Negro suffrage. In 1872 she and 15 other women voted in Rochester in an attempt to test the legality of woman suffrage under the Fourteenth Amendment; she was arrested, but before the trial, held in Canandaigua, she voted again. The court, however, evaded the constitutional test and fined Miss Anthony $100; she refused either to pay or to go to jail, and the sentence was never carried out. Miss Anthony served as president of the American Women’s Suffrage Association until 1900, when she resigned at the age of 80.

In the WESLEYAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH BUILDING, corner of Fall and Mynderse Sts., now an automobile showroom, was held in July 1848 the first American woman suffrage convention, which, presided over by Henry B. Stanton, Mrs. Stanton’s sympathetic husband, proclaimed that ‘women have the right—or ought to have the right—to vote and hold office.’

At the entrance to the Fall St. bridge is (L) the SENECA FALLS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, which has several pieces of Mrs. Stanton’s furniture, including her rosewood piano.

The 78-acre GOULD PUMP WORKS (open), at the western edge of the village, is the largest of its kind in the country. Gould pumps are used not only for moving water, but also for moving molten lead at more than 500 degrees Fahrenheit; moving bread dough from mixers to molding devices in large bakeries; moving molasses in sugar refineries; and moving wood pulp, road tar, and printing ink.

On the ashes of the Indian settlement of Skoiyase grew WATERLOO, 19.8 m. (450 alt., 3,992 pop.), which shares county seat honors with Ovid. County buildings and a new high school border Lafayette Park in the center of the village. Near by stands the PATRIARCH ELM (R), a gigantic landmark nearly 20 feet in circumference and said to be 350 years old, which was spared when the first road was laid out in 1795.

In the vicinity of Waterloo is Hi-Yan-ka Farms, operated by Clarence H. Van Wickle, who owned Sillon B, the largest horse in the world. This proud stallion, foaled in 1930 and bought by Mr. Van Wickle for $5,500, was a Percheron, weighing 3,000 pounds, standing 21 hands high (7 feet) at the shoulder and 9 feet at the neck, and with a girth of 9 feet 4 inches. It took blue ribbons everywhere for size and beauty and was to be exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair, but died in 1933.

West of Waterloo, US 20 follows the Genesee Road, early nineteenth-century carrier for traffic from the headwaters of the Mohawk River west.

In 1861 James Wyburn Johnson, a farm boy, hearing of the firing on Fort Sumter, made up his mind to carry on the tradition of John Brown. Hanging his scythe on a six-inch sapling, now the SCYTHE TREE (R), 22.8 m., a large Balm of Gilead poplar, he said, ‘Let it hang there till I get back,’ and enlisted. He was killed in battle in 1864. The tree has grown around the scythe, so that today only six inches of the blade sticks from the trunk; the handle has rotted away long ago. On Memorial Day ceremonies are held at the tree, and an American flag flies over it at all times.

At 23.6 m. is the junction with State 2A.

Left on State 2A to ROSE HILL (R), 2.7 m., one of the finest Greek Revival houses in the United States, on a splendid location overlooking Seneca Lake and the city of Geneva. The great central block with its six-Ionic-columned portico is crowned by a cupola and flanked by one-story wings with porches. The fine scale and restful majesty of this mansion are marred only by the substitution of two-light sashes in the first-story windows. The farm carries the name of Robert Selden Rose, Jr., who brought his family here from Virginia in 1803. In the early thirties the property passed to a Mr. Boody, who built this grand house about 1835.

GENEVA, 26.9 m. (460 alt., 15,543 pop.), at the foot of Seneca Lake, is important for its nurseries and industries and as a center for Finger Lakes tours. The untidy streets along the lake front contrast sharply with the almost unbroken line of striking post-Colonial, Greek Revival, and Victorian Gothic buildings, set off by landscaped grounds, on the ridge above. In July crowds gather on the lake docks; the water is flecked with sails and the put-put of outboard motors bounces against the hills, heralding the Geneva Outboard Regatta.

The 2,400-acre tract covered by the city includes the site of the Indian settlement Kanadesaga (new settlement village), a name also applied to Seneca Lake, destroyed by the Sullivan-Clinton expedition in 1779. Soon after the Revolution settlers began to arrive. Captain Charles Williamson, agent for the Pultney Estate (see Tour 31), recognized the superb advantages of the site and lost no time laying out Main Street on the terrace overlooking the lake. Despite the incursion of motor traffic, the street retains an air of dignity and comfort seldom preserved even in somnolent ‘ghost’ villages. In its spacious Victorian days the place attracted an unusually large number of retired ministers and reconciled spinsters and was nicknamed ‘The Saints’ Retreat and Old Maids’ Paradise.’

The outskirts of Geneva are fringed with the fields of 50 nurseries, growing fruit trees, berry bushes, and ornamental plants and shrubs. Foundries turn out ranges, furnaces, radiators, and high-grade cutlery; mills produce cereals, and canneries preserve the fruit of the countryside; factories make optical goods and enamelware.

The TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 518–30 Main St., was begun in 1841 under the Reverend Pierre Paris Irving, nephew of Washington Irving. Although Calvin Otis was the nominal architect, his other work makes it clear that here he was supplanted as designer by an amateur architect, Dr. Benjamin Hall, then president of Hobart. Dr. Hall copied details from Trinity Church, New York, then being built by Richard Upjohn. Not the least of Trinity’s distinctions was its famous quartet composed of Mr. Fox, Mr. Fowle, Mrs. Bear, and Mrs. Partridge.

HOBART COLLEGE, Main St., just beyond Hamilton St., a liberal arts college for men founded in 1822 by Bishop Henry Hobart by the union of the Fairfield Theological School and Geneva Academy, was called Geneva College until 1851. The oldest buildings, classical stone Geneva Hall and Trinity Hall, were financed in part by gifts from Trinity Church, New York. The Chapel, 1858–62, a stone Gothic Revival structure, was designed by Richard Upjohn. Later buildings include the Victorian Gothic library, 1901; Elizabeth Medbury and Coxe Halls in brick and stone, by Clinton and Russell, architects; and more recent neo-Georgian additions. Between 1834 and 1872 the Geneva Medical College was allied with Hobart. Here Elizabeth Blackwell fought her way through to graduation in 1849 to become the country’s first woman physician. Four years later she established the New York City Infirmary for Women and Children. Dr. John Towler, Dean of the Medical College, long taught here an amazing array of subjects, which included modern languages, mathematics, philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, and medical jurisprudence.

The WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGE FOR WOMEN, adjoining Hobart College on the west, was founded in 1906 by Geneva’s philanthropist, William Smith, who, ironically, was a bachelor with little use for women. Smith students attend Hobart classes. Blackwell House, a dormitory, was once the W.B. Douglas residence, built in 1861–3, from plans by Richard Upjohn. The polychrome brick bands and elaborately carpentered dormers give a rather jittery air altogether unwarranted by the straightforward rectangular plan.

The BURIAL MOUND (L), Castle St. west of the intersection with Old Preemption Road, was once the center of the Indian village of Kanadesaga. To win Indian assistance during the French and Indian War, Sir William Johnson sent Myndert Wemp and son here in 1756 to build a log fort amid the 50 long houses; the Indians, politely refusing a white garrison, manned it themselves. When Sayenqueraghta, local chief, became ‘king’ of the Seneca in 1763, the settlement took on a large importance. In 1765 Samuel Kirkland, missionary, hiked here on snowshoes from Johnstown in 23 days to teach Christianity to the Indians.

The NEW YORK STATE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, Castle and North Sts., was founded in 1882, and has to its credit many important discoveries in entomology and agricultural bacteriology. It is associated with Cornell University (see Ithaca).

In the rear of the BROOKS HOME, 620 Castle St., is the observatory in which Dr. William R. Brooks discovered several comets, the most famous being the Pons-Brooks comet of 1883 and the Olbers-Brooks comet of 1887. The observatory now belongs to Hobart College.

At 41.7 m. is the junction with State 21A.

Left on State 21A to BARE HILL (R), 9 m., the sacred hill of the Seneca. Here, according to primitive Indian legend, the Creator caused the ground to open, allowing the ancestors of the Seneca nation to come into the world. A great serpent was coiled around the base of the hill, and one by one he ate the members of the newborn race. At last a young warrior, inspired by a dream in which the Creator commanded him not to fear, went down and slew the serpent with a magic arrow. In its death throes, as it writhed down the hill and into the lake, the serpent disgorged the heads of the Senecas he had eaten. For decades after white settlement began, delegations of warriors paddled across the lake, climbed the sacred slopes, and lit ceremonial fires at the summit. Lying in front yards and rock gardens of homes along State 21A today are large, rounded stones, divided into geometric patterns by veins and cracks, weirdly like weathered skulls. The Seneca believed the rocks to be the petrified skulls of their ancestors disgorged on Bare Hill; geologists explain that the patterns in the stones were formed by a slow deposit of lime in the post-glacial period.

US 20 curves around the base of CANANDAIGUA LAKE (L), 42.3 m., the thumb of the Finger Lakes. Its changing hues and varying moods have prophesied the weather to Indian and white alike: a streaky surface like mares’ tails in the sky is a sign of storm.

In Canandaigua Lake is SQUAW ISLAND (L), which has been taken over as a State reservation because of its geologic interest. Pebbles on the shore of the island, locally called ‘water biscuits,’ are coated with algae, a soft, green plant that steals carbonic acid gas from the water and forms a lime deposit on the stones. According to legend, the island takes its name from its use by the Seneca as a sanctuary for their women and children during the Sullivan-Clinton expedition.

CANANDAIGUA, 44 m. (766 alt., 8,291 pop.), set in an agricultural region, has lined its upper streets with imposing post-Colonial and Greek Revival homes and public buildings surrounded by neat lawns and hedges. Industries of the town produce enameled ware, corsets, chemical solvents, and knitted goods.

After purchasing from Massachusetts all of New York State west of Geneva and extinguishing the Indian title to a large part of the tract, Phelps and Gorham appointed William Walker as their agent and he opened here the first office for land sales in America. The first party of settlers, led by General Israel Chapin, arrived in May 1789, and within two years the town was overrun with emigrants from New England moving west over the Great Western Turnpike and up the Mohawk Valley. The first religious meeting was held in Judge Phelps’s barn in 1790; the first academy on the Phelps and Gorham Purchase was established here in 1795; here the Ontario Female Seminary, organized in 1825, was a pioneer in the education of women.

The ONTARIO COUNTY COURTHOUSE, top of the Main St. hill, a two-story gray brick Greek Revival structure built in 1858, replaced the second courthouse, which is now the city hall. The bulbous dome with its octagonal drum and lantern is a motif reflecting in very diluted form the construction at that time of the great dome of the Capitol at Washington.

Here was held in 1873 the trial of Susan B. Anthony and her associates, who had voted in a national election in Rochester (see above). In 1937 women began jury service in this same courthouse where the pioneer suffragettes were found guilty of voting.

A boulder on the courthouse grounds commemorates the Pickering treaty signed here in 1794, whereby the Indians granted to the whites the right to settle the Great Lakes basin. Before the treaty was signed, however, Anthony Wayne had beaten the Indians in the Battle of Fallen Timbers and had won the Ohio country. It is said that the purpose of the treaty council was to distract the attention of the Iroquois from Wayne’s campaign.

The CITY HALL, 2 N. Main St., erected in 1824, which served as the second courthouse until 1858, when it became the town hall, is a rectangular, two-story, gray-painted brick structure. The graceful pedimented portico has its slender Scamozzi Ionic columns paired at the corners, illustrating the Georgian Renaissance character of the late Federal period. If it is true that Francis, son of Gideon Granger, furnished the design for this building, he may well have been influenced by the Virginia State capitol, completed in 1798 by his father’s friend, Thomas Jefferson. The felicitous belfry comes, however, not from Jefferson, but from ecclesiastical models.

The ONTARIO COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND WOOD LIBRARY BUILDING (open weekdays), 55 North St., is a brick structure designed in the Georgian Colonial style by Claude F. Bragdon, architect, of Rochester. The Library was named for William Wood, brother of Mrs. Nathaniel Gorham, Jr., who established the Mercantile Library in New York and similar libraries in London and Liverpool, England. The Historical Society museum contains the original deeds and maps of the Phelps and Gorham Purchase, the Six Nations’ copy of the Pickering treaty, and one of the two existing life masks of Abraham Lincoln.

The FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 58 N. Main St., erected in 1812, is a two-story brick structure. The unique façade adopts a pedimented gable above a wide, low-proportioned arch opening into a recessed porch flanked on each side by two fluted Ionic pilasters. The arrangement, ultimately derived from Roman triumphal arches, is somewhat startling when met in an American frontier village.

The CANANDAIGUA ACADEMY, corner of Main St. and Fort Hill Ave., built in 1905, is the modern successor to the original academy of 1795. Stephen A. Douglas, the ‘Little Giant,’ attended the old academy three years in the early 1830’s.

The GENERAL PORTER HOUSE, 210 Main St., was built about 1800 by General Peter B. Porter (1773–1864), famous as the defender of Black Rock in the War of 1812. He lived in Canandaigua from 1795 to 1806, holding the offices of county clerk and member of the Assembly; then he moved to the Niagara Frontier, where he became a prominent figure; and he served as Secretary of War under President John Quincy Adams. In the same house John Canfield Spencer (1788–1855) spent 36 years in Canandaigua. Born in Hudson, he graduated from Union College in 1806. He held judicial offices in the State, and as special prosecutor in the famous anti-Masonic case resulting from the abduction of William Morgan he rose to national prominence. Under President John Tyler he served first as Secretary of War and then as Secretary of the Treasury. While he was Secretary of War his son Philip, a midshipman, was executed for attempted mutiny on board the brig Somers.

The GIDEON GRANGER HOUSE, 295 N. Main St., was built in 1814 by Gideon Granger (1767–1822) after his retirement as Postmaster General under Jefferson and Madison. Although the sides and rear of the house are clapboarded, the facade aspires to the Palladian order in its treatment of the first story as a high base for the second story, enriched by applied Scamozzi Ionic columns in the center and pilasters at the corner. Tradition attributes the design to Jefferson himself, and a certain facility with architectural paraphernalia might favor this view; but there is an English feeling and carpenter character present that would be difficult to reconcile with Jefferson’s love of solid, heavy Roman forms. After Granger’s death in 1822, his son Francis resided here.

Francis Granger (1792–1868) was, like his father, an important figure in State and national politics, and under President William Henry Harrison served, like his father, as Postmaster General. His long silver locks were responsible for the name of a faction of the Whig party, the ‘Silver Grays,’ bestowed when he was chairman of a Whig convention.

The DR.EDSON CARR HOUSE, 50 Gibson St., built in 1826, is an excellent example of a late Federal house. The broad five-bay facade is treated with flush boarding and is subdivided by two-story panelled Scamozzi Ionic pilasters. A light Doric cornice is surmounted by a light balustrade.

The U.S.VETERANS’ HOSPITAL (open to relatives of patients only), Fort Hill Ave., south of Main St., cares for more than 500 veterans of the World War. The administration building is a four-story brick and stone structure of modified Tudor-Gothic design.

In the PIONEER CEMETERY, at the western city line, is the grave of Oliver Phelps (1749–1809), land speculator who laid the foundations for the settlement of western New York. Joining with Nathaniel Gorham, who never visited the region, he contracted for the 6,000,000-acre holding of Massachusetts in western New York. They bought the Indian title to the easternmost third of the tract—about 2,600,000 acres—and for several years did their utmost to meet the payments to Massachusetts, but they finally defaulted and the remaining two thirds were turned back to Massachusetts. Of the land they held, they sold about 1,200,000 acres to Robert Morris, who in turn sold the land to the London Associates, headed by Sir William Pulteney. The strain helped cause Gorham’s death, but Phelps, though a heavy loser, kept his courage and turned to other fields, in five years acquiring title to nearly 1,000,000 acres along the lower Mississippi. When the land bubble burst in 1796 he was hopelessly involved; and fearing he would follow other land speculators to debtor’s prison, he disappeared. In 1802 he turned up at Canandaigua, and until his death he managed what was left of his land and served as the first county judge of Ontario County and later as a member of Congress, 1803–5. Part of the inscription on his gravestone reads: ‘Enterprise, Industry, and Temperance cannot always secure success but the fruits of those virtues will be felt by society.’

Canandaigua is at the junction with State 21 (see Tour 29).

At 49.7 m. is the junction with US 20A (see Tour 8A).

EAST BLOOMFIELD, 52.3 m. (1,060 alt., 365 pop.), is the original home in this country of the Northern Spy apple; Herman Chapin planted the first seed about 1800 and sprouts from the original tree were taken by Roswell Humphrey, who set them in his orchard. The original tree died but the cuttings flourished. The name Northern Spy grew out of the abolitionist movement rampant at the time: the apple was considered an interloper, hence a spy.

ROADSIDE CRAFTS (R), 52.7 m., is a workshop rebuilt from a Baptist church erected in 1833. Handhewn beams in the ceiling are 43 feet long and pegged. The minute book, communion set, and antique collection box of the church are on display in niches on the stair-well. In the basement and on the first floor are rooms for weaving and woodworking; bedspreads made here are woven with the Cumberland mountaineer design.

In EAST AVON, 68 m. (821 alt., 250 pop.), is the junction with US 15 (see Tour 31).

AVON, 70 m. (583 alt., 2,337 pop.), is a farming and canning center with a considerable milk industry. The region is a horse-breeding area, and the annual Avon Horse Show, conducted by the Genesee Valley Breeders Association, draws a large gallery of spectators.

Up to about 1860 Avon was a noted health resort. The United States Hotel and a dozen others were filled with guests who came to drink of the sulphur springs. Old registers carry the names of princes, dukes, and counts, Presidents and Senators.

At 71.3 m. is the western junction with State 5 (see Tour 11).

Section f.  WESTERN JUNCTION WITH STATE 5 to WESTERN JUNCTION WITH US 20A; 61.9 m.  US 20

Making a beeline between Avon and Buffalo, US 20 crosses flat farm country, with fields of corn, grain, and hay sweeping away on each side; it is as if the highway were suddenly crossing northern Illinois or Iowa. Large barns and freshly painted houses of inarticulate architecture indicate relative prosperity. Windmills tower above the trees in the farmyards; on the top of a barn or corncrib the propellerlike fan of a wind-motor spins with sprightly enthusiasm as it charges the storage battery for the farmer’s radio.

From the western junction with State 5, 0 m., US 20 runs past the intersection with State 19 (see Tour 35), 15.7 m., and through a dozen service hamlets for the farmers of the region.

At 25.5 m. in ALEXANDER (940 alt., 264 pop.) is the junction with State 98.

Left on State 98 to the ATTICA STATE PRISON (open to relatives of inmates only), 4.3 m., completed in 1931 and accommodating 3,700 prisoners. Surrounded by high, massive walls, it looks like a fortress and is visible for miles. Modern methods of criminal rehabilitation are used.

ALDEN, 37.8 m. (862 alt., 954 pop.), had its black water baths as a starting impetus. Discovered in 1896, these black waters are said to be four times stronger than the Nauheim water of Germany and 40 times stronger than the waters of Aix-les-Bains, France. Patients still come from many lands for treatments in the four private sanatoriums.

Left from Alden on State 239 to COWLESVILLE, 4.8 m. (940 alt., 200 pop.). One mile beyond the village, on an intersecting dirt road (L), is the first of a series of five covered bridges crossing Cayuga Creek, no two alike. In the old days a toll tender served each bridge; charges included ‘one man and his family in a surry, one span of horses 25¢.’ Fines included $1 for traveling faster than a walk or within 30 feet of the vehicle ahead.

At 5.7 m. is the junction with an improved road; left here 6.6 m. to FOLSOMDALE (1,000 alt., 50 pop.) and the old FOLSOM MANSION, home of Frances (‘Frankie’) Folsom, who married President Grover Cleveland. The house is built in the Georgian Colonial style with heavy cornice supported by nine Doric columns. The Folsoms were early pioneers, ‘lords of the manor.’ They operated an inn about 1838, also a brewery in the glen beside Cayuga Creek. The brewery daybook, which has been preserved, shows that two quarts of the brew were retailed for 13¢.

In the Folsom house President Grover Cleveland courted Frankie, the daughter of his old Buffalo law partner. Frances Folsom, as Mrs. Cleveland, became one of the most popular women to be ‘first lady.’ It is told of her that her tact covered any situation; one incident is given of a great public reception where she had to shake hands with hundreds: after the handshaking ended, a little mouse of a country woman, among the guests, whispered to her, ‘Dearie, be ye tired?’ and ‘Frankie’ answered instantly, ‘Yes, I be.’ She is now (1940) Mrs. Thomas J. Preston, Jr.

TOWN LINE, 42.2 m. (750 alt., 350 pop.), is remembered for the fact that a majority of the townfolk seceded from the Union along with the Southern States, and the indignant minority called the town a ‘nest of Copperheads’; at least five villagers joined the Southern army. Late in 1861 matters came to a head; 80 Town Line citizens voted for secession, 45 to support the Union. The latter threatened sedition charges, arrests, and even lynching; in August 1864 came the scare of an invasion by a wing of the Confederate force from Canada, and feeling ran so high against the Copperheads that most of them left town. The old desk on which the articles of secession for Town Liners were drawn up is now in Henry Urshel’s blacksmith shop, formerly the district schoolhouse, in the village.

LANCASTER, 47.7 m. (680 alt., 7,224 pop.), is a residential suburb of Buffalo. COMO LAKE PARK (L), Lake Ave., is a 321-acre playground equipped with fireplaces, pagodas, and an artificial lake for swimming.

In DEPEW, 49.1 m. (680 alt., 6,043 pop.), an industrial suburb, is the junction with State 78 (see Tour 36), with which US 20 runs in common for 6.1 miles.

The route skirts BUFFALO (600 alt., 575, 150 pop.) (see Buffalo).

The western junction with US 20A (see Tour 8A) is at 61.9 m.

Section g.  WESTERN JUNCTION WITH US 20A to PENNSYLVANIA LINE; 65 m.  US 20

This final section of the route, paralleling the Lake Erie shore, cuts through the largest vineyards of the State. Gentle hills hardly break the monotony of the flatlands splotched with grapes and grain and grazing cattle. It is a land of varying climate, cold and damp in winter, sunny in summer, with sudden storms from the lake.

West from the junction with US 20A, 0 m., US 20 crosses the junction with US 62 (see Tour 37), 0.8 m., skirts the corporate boundaries of half a dozen lake shore villages, and offers intermittent views of Lake Erie (R), a limitless blue stained by the smoke smudges of lake steamers and ringed on the north by the hills of Ontario, Canada.

Between 19.6 m. and 21.7 m. US 20 passes through a tip of the CATTARAUGUS INDIAN RESERVATION, 21,680 acres, the second largest Indian domain in the State, with a population of 2,000, mostly Senecas, with some Cayugas and Onondagas. There are no travel restrictions, for the old tribal law banning white visitors from the reservation after sundown has not been enforced in half a century. Some of the Indian homes are poor and humble, others are large and well kept. On the unpainted sides of the humbler homes hang strings of corn or apples drying in the sun for winter consumption. Indian children scamper about, broad copper-colored faces alert and curious, keen black eyes watching the cars go by.

Many whites attend the Indian Fair in autumn, very much of the old-fashioned kind with some more modern circus antics thrown in. The Feast of the White Dog corresponds to the New Year of the whites, the date determined by the first new moon after the winter solstice. The Green Corn Festival comes with the ripening of the first corn.

Lands on the reservation, on which gas has been discovered, are leased to white operators. Every year the Federal Government gives each Indian $8 and several yards of calico cloth in accordance with treaty provisions. The families eke out an existence as farmers, fishermen, and trappers; they go into the cities and villages to trade, in the springtime with sassafras, wild flowers, and pussywillows, in summer with beads, baskets, and other handiwork. At roadside stands Indian women, old and wrinkled, with the wisdom of the forests in their eyes, smile when their beadwork is praised. A number of the young men and women are graduates of high schools and colleges.

At 21.7 m. is the junction with a macadam reservation road.

Left on the road 5.8 m. to (L) the modern brick buildings and farms of the THOMAS INDIAN SCHOOL (open 2–5 Mon., Wed., Fri.). Founded as a mission in 1855 with funds contributed by Philip E. Thomas of Baltimore, the school was taken over by the State in 1875, and has since been maintained for orphan and needy children of all State reservations. The model farms and dairy are used to teach agriculture to Indian boys. Graduates are encouraged to enter high school in Salamanca or Buffalo.

At 22.8 m. is the junction with State 5 (see Tour 11), with which US 20 here runs in common for 2.9 miles.

SILVER CREEK, 25.7 m. (640 alt., 3,160 pop.), is at the northern end of the Chautauqua grape belt. Abel Cleveland and David Dickinson made the first land purchase along Walnut Creek, named for a giant tree, 31 feet in circumference. When the tree was blown down, the butt was transformed into a grocery, and the village that grew up around it took its name from another creek flowing into Lake Erie.

The grape belt here is five or six miles wide and extends to Harbor Creek, Pennsylvania, 55 miles away, comprising half of the grape acreage of the State, mostly Concord in variety. The clay soil of northern Chautauqua County is particularly fitted for grape culture, a fact discovered by Deacon Elijah Fay in 1824. His nephew began selling young vines in 1834. By 1870 the acreage had reached 600, and a decade later one Jonas Martin shipped the first carload. The grape growers’ union was formed in 1886, but the big grape boom began in the early 1890’s. Businessmen, professional men, and everyone who could shake loose a down payment bought farms and set out vines; production swelled to such a degree that it pushed the bottom out of the market, ruining many who had invested their last dollar. As the market fell, many of the farmers ripped up their vines and converted the land to other crops. Along with the grape industry the basket-making industry flourished and declined. By 1900 the grape juice industry, founded by Dr. Thomas Branwell Welch, got under way and offered a new market for the grapes. Today annual shipments from Chautauqua County average about 5,000 carloads of grapes, and about one third again as many are used locally in making wine and unfermented grape juice.

In the years of the early grape boom, grape culture was wholly in the hands of American farmers, but Italian immigrants were attracted to an industry familiar to them in the homeland. They flocked to the grape belt, bought and paid for their farms, and within a few years increased the output of wine. Grape harvesting, while it involves hard work, has about it a carnival spirit. Thousands of pickers travel in all sorts of conveyances to and from the vineyards. Some come in trailers and remain for the season; others come out daily from the near-by cities.

At 34 m. is the eastern junction with State 39 (see Tour 34), which runs in common with US 20 for 0.8 mile.

FREDONIA 37.7 m. (740 alt., 5,814 pop.), was called by Chauncey M. Depew ‘the most beautiful village in New York State.’ Families acquiring wealth from the grape belt have settled here, and their handsome homes do much to eclipse the grape juice and conserve plants, wineries, nurseries, and seed companies. Natural gas was discovered early in the nineteenth century and exploited almost immediately for lighting; the streets of the village are said to have been the first in the world to be lighted by gas.

In LAFAYETTE PARK, at the center of the village, is the STATUE OF MRS.ESTHER MCNEIL, who in 1873 led local women to organize one of the first units of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. For years the group battled valiantly against the evils caused by the fermenting grapes from local vineyards. The influence of the W.C.T.U. is responsible for the development of the Chautauqua belt as a fresh fruit and grape juice region rather than as a wine center.

Near the park is the WEBSTER HOME, where Jean Webster, grandniece of Mark Twain, lived and dreamed the stories that afterward became Daddy Longlegs and Patty Went to College. GRANGE HALL, NO.1, Main St., is an object of pride in Fredonia as the home of the first subordinate grange, established here in 1868, of the National Grange of Patrons of Husbandry.

Left from Fredonia on State 60 to CASSADAGA, 8.1 m. (1,340 alt., 480 pop.), a small grape basket manufacturing village and resort center. Right from the village four corners 0.9 m. to LILY DALE (adm. 35¢ per party after 6 p.m.; picnicking, 35¢ at any time), spiritualist center. The Lily Dale Assembly was organized in 1879 and dedicated in 1880 to ‘Free Thought, Free Speech, and Free Investigation.’ Its situation on the eastern shore of Upper and Middle Cassadaga Lakes and its altitude (1,312 ft.) have made it a popular summer resort. The grounds, occupying 67 acres, are laid out in streets and parks; the hotels and the 215 cottages are owned and occupied by the stockholders.

Readings, seances, and ‘thought exchanges’ can be arranged for almost any time. The FOREST TEMPLE (free), open-air meeting place, is the scene of daily spiritualist conferences during the summer. Near by is the HYDEVILLE COTTAGE (adm. 25¢), in which the Fox sisters experienced the first knockings and originated modern spiritualism. The cottage was moved here from Hydeville (see Tour 32).

BROCTON, 44.9 m. (740 alt., 1,301 pop.), celebrates the memory of Deacon Elijah Fay by holding a grape harvest festival each autumn, with pageants, street fairs, and dances. Deacon Fay, born September 9, 1781, in Southborough, Massachusetts, pushed westward by oxcart to Chautauqua County at the age of 30. He began experimenting with grape culture, trying several varieties that failed, but was finally successful with the Isabella and Catawba, and later with the Concord variety, which has since become the favorite of the region.

From 1867 to 1883 Brocton was the home of the Brotherhood of The New Life, a semireligious sect founded by Thomas Lake Harris, once pastor of the Independent Christian Congregation of New York City. According to him, angels dictated his sermons and poetry came to him when he was in a trance.

The colony’s estate, known as The Use, lay on the lake shore west of the village. Harris was treasurer of the estate, and many of his followers were forced to turn their personal fortunes over to him. Lady Oliphant, widow of an attorney general of South Africa, and her son, Laurence, an ex-member of the British Parliament, were the most prominent of Harris’s followers. Laurence became a farm hand at The Use, cleaned the cow stables, hauled wood, and peddled fruit at the railroad station. The presence of the Oliphants influenced six Japanese dignitaries, two Indian princes, and several American socialites to join the brotherhood. When the disciples began to grumble Harris moved to California.

WESTFIELD, 53.8 m. (748 alt., 3,466 pop.), has since 1896 been the headquarters of the Welch Grape Juice Company, the largest producer of grape juice in the world. Dr. Thomas Branwell Welch, graduate of Syracuse University, practiced dentistry in several cities and finally established a dental supply business in Philadelphia. He is said to have made his experiments in the manufacture of unfermented grape juice in 1869 in the kitchen of his home, then in Vineland, New Jersey. Both he and his son, Dr. Charles Edgar Welch, abandoned dentistry for the grape juice business in 1893; their first small factory was opened in Westfield three years later. The plant was enlarged four times during the next decade. Dr. Welch died just as his product became nationally known. The present main WELCH PLANT (open), N. Portage St., erected in 1910, produces 3,000,000 gallons yearly and employs about 500 men and women. Other local industries include the grape juice division of Armour & Company and auxiliary shops manufacturing grape baskets.

Westfield is at the junction with State 17 (see Tour 3).

RIPLEY, 61.8 m. (730 alt., 1,000 pop.), was for a long time the State’s busiest Gretna Green. Rival justices had large signs in front of their homes, neon-lighted at night and open for business 24 hours of the day: out-of-State couples could take their pick. But since the passage of the Todd ‘anti-hasty’ marriage law, requiring three days to elapse between the license and the wedding, the marrying business has evaporated.

At 65 m. US 20 crosses the PENNSYLVANIA LINE, 19.1 miles northeast of Erie, Pennsylvania.