Eastern junction with US 20 to western junction with US 20; US 20A. 84.6 m.
Mainly concrete with stretches of macadam; steep hills dangerous in winter.
The route branches south from the junction with US 20, 0 m., through the Little Finger Lakes area, rises and falls with the rolling hills that mark the southern edge of the Great Lakes plain, and rejoins US 20 south of Buffalo.
HONEOYE, 10.4 m. (844 alt., 400 pop.), is a one-street village catering to the hundreds of cottages along Honeoye (Ind., finger lying) Lake. The SULLIVAN MONUMENT (L), in the center of the village, a bronze tablet on a brownstone boulder, commemorates both the Sullivan-Clinton expedition and the erection of Fort Cummings at the foot of Honeoye Lake, where the expedition’s military stores and the ‘sick, lame and lazy’ were left to await the return from Genesee Castle.
The PITTS MANSION (R), a white frame house, was built in 1821 by Gideon Pitts, first owner of the village site. Here was born his daughter, who became the white wife of Frederick Douglass, Negro journalist and antislavery lecturer (see Rochester).
US 20A runs in common with US 15 (see Tour 31) between LIVONIA, 20.4 m. (1,044 alt., 747 pop.), and LAKEVILLE, 22.6 m. (825 alt., 476 pop.) (see Tour 31).
On a ridge overlooking the green and fertile land that is the Genesee Valley is GENESEO (Ind., beautiful valley), 29.3 m. (800 alt., 2,134 pop.), a farm trade village best known for its association with the Wadsworth family and the Genesee Hunt.
The Wadsworths have been the squires of the middle Genesee since 1790, when James (1768–1844) and William W. (1772–1833) migrated here from Connecticut. William served as a Major General in the War of 1812; James made a fortune out of land investments and trade. James’s son, James S. (1807–64), first president of the University of the State of New York, was fatally wounded during the Battle of the Wilderness. His son, James W. (1846–1926), served as member of Congress. In the present generation James W. Wadsworth, Jr. (1877———), after two terms as United States senator, is serving as representative in the House; his son, Jeremiah, is an assemblyman in the State legislature.
Every year since the establishment of the Genesee Valley Hunt in 1876 a Wadsworth has been M.F.H. (Master of the Fox Hounds). Just east of the village are the hound kennels, where skilled attendants care for the 100 or more English and Welsh hounds that make up The Pack. The field, made up of members from Geneseo, Rochester, Buffalo, New York, and more distant cities, and local farmers attending by invitation, gather at one of the Wadsworth homes on sharp October and November mornings three times a week, the Master of the Hounds, the Huntsman, and the Whips dressed in conventional hunting costume of red or blue coat, stiff hat, and near-white breeches. The horn sounds ‘Boots and Saddle,’ and the riders follow the hounds for 20 or 30 miles through fields and wood-lots.
Inside the west village line a dirt road (R) leads to the SITE OF THE FIRST WADSWORTH CABIN, erected by William and James Wadsworth and used by the Federal commissioners during the councils that led to the signing of the Big Tree Treaty with the Seneca in 1797. By this treaty the Indians ceded to Robert Morris almost all of the land in New York State west of the Genesee River for $100,000, the money to be invested in United States Bank stock and held in trust by the President of the United States. The idea of stock investment returning fluctuating dividends was conveyed to the Indians by explaining that the money was planted in a bank and in some years the harvest would be greater than in others.
West of Geneseo US 20A crosses the Genesee Valley, here two miles wide, a vast checkerboard of cultivated fields and orchards.
The BOYD-PARKER SHRINE (L), 32.4 m., is a small park dedicated to Lieutenant Thomas Boyd and Sergeant Michael Parker, scouts of the Sullivan-Clinton expedition who were captured by the Seneca on September 14, 1779, and were killed at the TORTURE TREE, now a 200-year-old oak, when, it is said, Boyd refused to divulge the strength and plans of Sullivan’s army.
CUYLERVILLE, 32.7 m. (600 alt., 254 pop.), a cluster of homes at a turn in the road, occupies the SITE OF LITTLE BEARD’S TOWN, probably the largest Seneca village in the Genesee Valley. Sullivan found fields of corn, squash, and beans and many fruit orchards, all of which he destroyed along with the village. This place marks the westernmost limit of his expedition.
In LEICESTER, 34.2 m. (661 alt., 285 pop.), is the junction with State 36.
Right on State 36, near RETSOF, 5.2 m., is the RETSOF SALT MINE (open; permits at mine office) of the International Salt Company, the largest in America, with a perimeter of 15 miles. At the mine level, a quarter of a mile underground, where the temperature is always 63 degrees Fahrenheit, are offices and machine shops. Rock salt, mined much like coal, is raised to the top of the surface plant, through which it descends from floor to floor to be crushed, screened, and packed. Its chief uses are in packing meat, curing hides, refrigeration, melting ice on highways, making hydrochloric acid, and feeding livestock.
The route drops down to the Wyoming Valley and WARSAW, 48.5 m. (1,000 alt., 3,541 pop.), a manufacturing community producing elevators, vegetable ivory buttons, paper boxes, knit goods, lanterns, and re-enforced concrete vaults. The soldier’s monument at the intersection of Main and Court Streets, a Corinthian column surmounted by a brass statue of a soldier, was the national monument at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876.
The GATES HOUSE, Perry Ave., a rectangular, two-story post-Colonial structure, was built in 1824. Seth M. Gates, ardent abolitionist, purchased the house in 1843, and for the next 15 years it was a station on the Underground Railroad, Gates concealing the fugitive slaves in the cellar and attic.
At Warsaw is the junction with State 19 (see Tour 35).
West of Warsaw the road roller-coasters over a series of north-south ridges, the hilltops giving picture views of the countryside. According to local legend, wagoners hauling supplies to the American Army on the Niagara Frontier in the War of 1812 tied saplings to the rear wheels of their wagons to brake them on downhill slopes; left by the wayside in the valley hollows, these saplings took root and today are the largest trees in the region.
EAST AURORA, 74.2 m. (926 alt., 5,239 pop.), in violation of its name, lies 90 miles west of Aurora, New York. The main street is wide, its trees and shrubs softening the bleakness of the wooden homes. The business district, all east of the railroad trestle, consists mostly of two- and three-story red and yellow brick buildings. A sizable toy manufacturing plant employs several hundred workers.
In the early 1900’s East Aurora was made famous by Elbert C. Hubbard (1856–1915) as the home of his Roycrofters. The ROYCROFT SHOPS, S. Grove St., are a group of English Gothic stone and timber structures on neat lawns. Here Elbert Hubbard printed his Philistine and A Message to Garcia and made artistic book covers. After his death the Roycroft institution gradually declined until in 1939 the plant was sold.
After some experience as a journalist and soap salesman, Hubbard, a lover of horses, settled in East Aurora, attracted to it by its reputation for famous horsemen and breeders. A meeting with William Morris at the Kelmscott Press in Hammersmith, England, in 1892, gave him the idea of the Roycrofters; Morris’s motto, ‘Not how cheap, but how good,’ became Hubbard’s guiding principle. Assisted by his wife and Harry P. Taber, an East Aurora journalist, and village boys and girls, and with such money as his writings brought him, he produced his first art books, A Study and Reprint of the Song of Songs and The Book of Ecclesiastes. A new shop was built by hand alongside the Hubbard home, the stones gathered in the fields and the timbers tied together with wooden pins. To printing and illuminating were added binding, sculpture, clay-modeling, furniture-making, and rag carpet knitting. All employees chose their own work; if a pressman or a compositor desired to be a carpenter or a mason, he became one. None but local talent was employed, the number of workers at one time exceeding 1,000. In 1899 Hubbard published A Message to Garcia, a tract whose lesson of perseverance so appealed to businessmen that more than 42,000,000 copies were sold. Elbert Hubbard and his second wife went down with the Lusitania.
In East Aurora is the junction with State 16 (see Tour 38).
ORCHARD PARK, 81.2 m. (868 alt., 1,301 pop.), contains a number of estates of wealthy Buffalonians. A barrel factory is the only industry.
Left from Orchard Park on State 277 to CHESTNUT RIDGE PARK, 3 m., 404 acres developed by Erie County, containing eight miles of improved roads, fireplaces, Adirondack-type shelters, trails, and athletic fields. The park is a bird and game refuge, with large flocks of State-bred pheasants.
At 84.6 m. is the western junction with US 20 (see Tour 8).