(Bennington, Vt.)—Troy—Schenectady—Oneonta—Binghamton; State 7. Vermont Line to Binghamton, 171.9 m.
Two-lane concrete.
Rutland R.R. parallels route between Vermont Line and Hoosick; Delaware & Hudson between Schenectady and Binghamton; Delaware, Lackawanna & Western between Chenango Bridge and Binghamton.
Cutting across the southeastern corner of the State in a direct line between Vermont and Pennsylvania, State 7 loops over a number of watersheds and crosses a series of creeks and rivers whose names call up the mixed Indian, Dutch, and English origins of the Empire State: Hoosic, Hudson, Mohawk, Normans Kill, Schoharie, Cobleskill, Schenevus, Susquehanna, Unadilla, Chenango.
Section a. VERMONT STATE LINE to TROY; 26.3 m. State 7
This ‘east of the Hudson’ district through which the route passes is, in geography and mind, a distinctive community. In topography the Taconics and the Grafton Hills seem apart from the rest of the State; they lack the austerity of the Adirondacks and the rolling warmth of the Catskills.
State 7, a continuation of Vermont State 9, crosses the VERMONT LINE, 0 m., 4.7 miles west of Bennington, Vermont. During the long struggle between France and England, this region was in the direct line of warring forces. French and Indians cut their way through here to attack New England. It was not until after the Revolution that the valley enjoyed the peaceful ways essential to farming.
In the western outskirts of HOOSICK (Ind., stony place), 3.1 m. (480 alt., 300 pop.), is the HOOSAC SCHOOL, an Episcopal preparatory school for boys patterned after the English boys’ school, established in 1889 and incorporated in 1923. Pageantry and ceremony at the Hoosac School take the form of the annual Boar’s Head and Yule Log festival, for which distinguished guests assemble each year. Boys, representing tenants of the overlord, march into the huge oak-paneled dining room, dragging behind them a giant oak log, sacred wood of the Druids. Lifted into the big fireplace, the log is set blazing by the headmaster. The boar’s head, spiced and running with succulent juices, is carried in by scarlet-clad boys in doublet and hose.
Between 4.3 m. and 4.7 m. State 7 runs in common with State 22 (see Tour 20).
TOMHANNOCK RESERVOIR (no swimming or fishing), 14.6 m., is at the northwestern edge of the Rensselaer Plateau, more popularly called the Grafton Hills. An area five miles long and half a mile wide has been flooded to supply the city of Troy with water.
TROY, 26.3 m. (34 alt., 70,117 pop.) (see Troy), is at the junctions with State 96 (see Tour 20) and US 4 (see Tour 22).
Section b. TROY to ONEONTA; 82.7 m. State 7
West from TROY, 0 m., the highway crosses the Hudson. WATERVLIET, 0.6 m. (27 alt., 16,097 pop.), is an industrial city. The workers, many of them foreign born, live in smudged brick and frame two-flat or small one-family houses on side streets.
The U.S. GOVERNMENT ARSENAL (obtain pass at main gate), on South Broadway, was established in 1813 to produce arms for the war with England. Since then it has supplied guns for every war in which the United States has participated. During the World War, with arms production at record-breaking peak, 5,000 were employed within its closely guarded walls. In 1940 the plant was operating at top speed to keep pace with modern innovations in armaments. The 30 buildings, including imposing residences for officers, are equipped to build heavy ordnance for battleships and rapid-fire antiaircraft guns.
On First St., near the south city line, overlooking the Hudson is the SCHUYLER HOMESTEAD (private), where Philip Schuyler and his wife Margarita (see Albany) entertained many notables. Only slightly altered through the years since its erection in 1666, this low, two-story Holland brick structure with gambrel roof suggests something of the early elegance of manorial life.
In Watervliet is the junction with State 32 (see Tour 22).
At 4 m. is a traffic circle and the junction with US 9 (see Tour 21).
State 7 is bordered by truck gardens which supply Albany, Troy, and Schenectady with vegetables.
SCHENECTADY, 14.6 m. (220 alt., 95,692 pop.) (see Schenectady), is at the junction with State 5 (see Tour 11) and State 5S (see Tour 12).
The U.S. ARMY RESERVE WAREHOUSE (adm. by pass only), 17.8 m. (L), constructed in 1918, occupies 210 acres of flat land and contains 10 large one-story frame buildings, 10 officers’ barracks, and a nine-hole golf course.
DUANESBURG, 25.4 m. (720 alt., 197 pop.) (see Tour 8), is at the junction with US 20 (see Tour 8).
West of Duanesburg is a beekeeping area. White hives are clustered in the shaded borders of clover and buckwheat fields.
At 28 m. is the junction with Chadwick Road, macadam.
Left 0.4 m. on Chadwick Road to the OLD SCHOHARIE TURNPIKE, over which early Palatines in Schoharie (see Tour 24) carried their grain to Albany; left 2.2 m. on Schoharie Turnpike to the CHRISTMAN BIRD SANCTUARY, a 105-acre hill farm, bisected by Bozenkill Creek. Forty of the acres were reforested in spruce and pine by W.W. Christman (1865–1937), farmer-poet.
In dedicating to native and migratory birds the farm which he found too thin to plow, he wrote:
Years hence, some boy driving tranquil,
Slow cattle up the pasture hill,
In a spring morning dewy and sweet
When field sparrows stay his loitering feet,
Shall see my pine spires tipped with sun
And hear the thrushes carillon.
When Christman died his ashes were scattered among his pines.
Born on this farm where he lived all his life, Christman spent only a few winters in a one-room country school under which woodchucks loved to dig. As a boy and young man, he spent his spare time reading and fishing. Later he dug hard at gleaning a living for his nine children in his ‘untillable hills.’ Forced to send his children seven miles to the nearest high school, he revolted against the rural school and fought for consolidation of country schools. At 60, after the battle had been largely won and his family grown up, he turned to writing poetry. In 1934 his Wild Pasture Pine won the John Burroughs medal for the year’s best nature writing.
On Chadwick Road is KNOX CAVE (open May to Nov.; adm. $1.10), 5.8 m., a series of caverns in the limestone strata beneath the thin soil, developed on six levels to a depth of 165 feet.
QUAKER STREET, 28.7 m. (1,025 alt., 450 pop.), is a quiet country village of old houses inhabited for the most part by families whose roots go back to the first settlement in 1790 by the Quakers. The FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE (R) is a plain two-story wood structure painted white, with a barren interior. Here Quakers in diminishing numbers have worshipped since 1790. Once each summer, however, the spirit in the Meeting House assumes some of its old fervor, when Quakers from all over the State gather in reunion.
At 33.5 m. is the eastern junction with State 30 (see Tour 24), which runs in common with State 7 to WRIGHT (Sidney’s Corners), 35.9 m. (610 alt., 24 pop.).
In the summer of 1935, farmers revolting against fallen milk prices and dwindled incomes, turned this section into a battleground. Milk trucks crept over State 7 guarded by armed troopers and deputy sheriffs to protect the cargo from angry farmers bent upon stopping the flow of milk.
The dust-powdered buildings of the NORTH AMERICAN CEMENT CORPORATION PLANT rear (R) above the village of HOWES CAVE, 39.5 m. (790 alt., 125 pop.). The great roof of the storage rooms, the tall, cyclone dust collectors, and the vast rock cliffs beyond are silhouetted against the sloping, cultivated fields. This cement plant, in operation since 1869 and increasing its production through the years, has kept the village in employment.
At 40.6 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
Right on this road 1.6 m. to a fork.
1. Right here 0.7 m. to HOWE CAVERNS (adm. $1.65), an elaborately developed series of caves 160 to 200 feet underground. Modern elevators drop visitors 156 feet to well-lighted chambers crossed by dry paths. Although Lester Howe is credited with the discovery of the cavern in 1842, a Palatine refugee, the Reverend John Peter Resig, reported in his diary that Jonathan Schmul, a Jewish peddler, lived in a cave in this vicinity long before the Revolution.
2. Left at the fork 1.5 m. to SECRET CAVERNS (adm. 40¢), developed in fissures in subjacent limestone where subterranean waters have dissolved the rock.
In COBLESKILL, 45.3 m. (950 alt., 2,654 pop.), the two major industries are the manufacture of pancake flour and of silos and refrigerators.
The BORST & BURNHANS PLANT, 19 Grove St., was founded in 1800 as a feed, flour, and grist mill. In 1890 it began to make a prepared pancake flour to dispose of the huge buckwheat surplus. The product is shipped in paper bags to all parts of the country. Local restaurants serve steaming hot pancakes for breakfast and dinner, and some offer second and third helpings free.
The HARDER REFRIGERATOR PLANT, at the southwest edge of the village, established in 1859, first produced a small grain-threshing machine powered by a horse treadmill, an invention of David Anthony of Cobleskill. In 1898 George Harder, son of the factory’s founder, invented the continuous opening stave silo, which has become standard equipment for the dairy industry of the State. Through the years the firm turned from threshing machines to silos to manure spreaders to refrigerators.
On a hill (L) overlooking the village are the buff brick buildings of the State-maintained COBLESKILL AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. On the practice farm the students apply the theoretical knowledge they acquire in the classroom.
At 48.6 m. is the COBLESKILL BATTLESITE, where on May 30, 1778, Joseph Brant, leading an Indian-Tory raid, lured the Americans under Captain Samuel Patrick into an ambush. After Patrick was killed, Captain Christian Brown, to whom the command fell, ordered a retreat, and the battle became a running fight.
Farms stretch back from the road over the broadening flats of Schenevus Creek hemmed in by two chains of hills. The towns along the way seem cut from the same pattern; each has its general store and small hotel and its trim white frame houses and gardens of lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, and onions. Deer cross the road frequently and ‘Warning—Deer Crossing’ signs have been erected to warn motorists.
In COLLIERSVILLE, 77.3 m. (1,119 alt., 100 pop.), is the northern junction with State 28 (see Tour 15).
ONEONTA (Ind., stony place), 82.7 m. (1,120 alt., 11,649 pop.), called the City of Hills, is surrounded by, rather than built on, hills. Large railroad shops, school and college buildings, and several small factories producing women’s lingerie, gloves, automobile trailers, milk products—butter, bottled milk, and ice cream—give the place an urban air; store displays of farm feed, overalls, dairy supplies, chicken brooders, farm machinery, and felt-topped boots give it a rural touch.
Oneonta, a post-Revolutionary settlement, was slow in developing until the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad, now a part of the Delaware & Hudson, established a car-building shop here in 1863. Twenty years later, on September 23, 1883, eight trainyard employees met in a sidetracked caboose and organized the Brotherhood of Railroad Brakemen, the labor union that was the nucleus of the powerful Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen.
HARTWICK COLLEGE, adjacent to West St., on the north edge of the city, is a coeducational institution. Under the direction of the Lutheran Synod of New York, the college was founded in 1928 when the church raised $500,000 and the city of Oneonta donated 70 acres of land for a campus and $200,000. The present college hall is in the Georgian Colonial style.
The HOMER FOLKS STATE HOSPITAL, West St., is a tuberculosis sanatorium named for Homer Folks (1867———), well-known social worker. High above the valley and backed by rock ledges and evergreens are the seven plain, two-story red brick buildings.
The ONEONTA STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, State St. at the head of Maple St., is a State-maintained training school for teachers, in operation since 1889. There are two large buildings: one a heavy red Romanesque structure, built in 1894 to replace the original school destroyed by fire; the other a modern modified Tudor Gothic structure with limestone trim, bow windows, and door arches, called Bugbee Hall in honor of a former principal.
In Oneonta is the southern junction with State 28 (see Tour 15).
Section c. ONEONTA to BINGHAMTON; 62.9 m. State 7
Between ONEONTA, 0 m., and Binghamton, State 7 follows the Susquehanna and Chenango Valleys through a dairying section. Jerseys and Guernseys pasture on the cleared sides of the wood-capped hills as high as the Allegheny Plateau; huge white barns and sturdy silos dwarf the farmhouses along the road; the beauty of the distant view is emphasized by sugar maples and wine-glass elms silhouetted against the sky.
At 2 m. is the junction with State 23.
Right 1.1 m. on State 23 to the junction with State 205; straight ahead on State 205, up the high-walled valley of Otsego Creek, 5 m. to the junction with a side road marked with Gilbert Lake State Park sign. Left here 0.3 m. to LAURENS (1,117 alt., 246 pop.), a dairying village with many old white houses and deep lawns. At 0.8 m. is the junction with a side road; right here and at 1.2 m. again right to GILBERT LAKE STATE PARK, 3.9 m. (open Apr. 20—Sept. 15; parking 25¢; boating; bathing; cabins), a densely wooded area surrounding a 40-acre lake in the heart of the Laurens hills. The forests are laced with trails for hiking, and an observation tower affords a wide view of surrounding hills and the distant Catskills.
There was no distinction between right foot and left foot in the days when itinerent cobblers used to whip the cat in this isolated region; from one last, cut perhaps from a stick of firewood, they would make hand-pegged shoes for the whole family, cutting the largest first and whittling the last down for each smaller size.
UNADILLA, 18.2 m. (1,023 alt., 1,063 pop.), manufactures silos and farm machinery.
During the early years of the Revolution the Indian castles in the vicinity of Unadilla were the gathering place for Tories and Indians bent on destruction of frontier patriot settlements. In October 1778, an American force destroyed the Indian villages—‘real towns of stone houses with glass windows and brick chimneys’—and burned 4,000 bushels of corn.
The place began to grow with the construction of the Catskill Turnpike (see Tour 7) soon after 1800. In the UNADILLA LIBRARY AND COMMUNITY HOUSE (L), Main St., is the book collection of Francis Whiting Halsey (1851–1919), literary editor of the New York Times and editor of the Literary Digest. A native of the village, Halsey wrote The Old New York Frontier, a valuable source book on the history of the Unadilla region.
At 22.5 m. is the junction with State 8.
Left 0.2 m. on State 8, across the Susquehanna River, to SIDNEY (900 alt., 2,444 pop.), home of the Scintilla magneto, which is standard equipment on airplane motors made in the United States. It is manufactured here by the Scintilla Magneto Company, now a subsidiary of the Bendix Aviation Corporation. The plant also manufactures magnetos for motor trucks, tractors, and stationary, portable, and marine engines.
In 1777, believing a lasting peace could be reached with the Indians to avert further raids on the Mohawk Valley, General Nicholas Herkimer (see Tour 12) met Joseph Brant on the fertile flats at 26.8 m. (L), near the confluence of the Unadilla and Susquehanna Rivers. Herkimer’s large escort of Tryon County militia did not intimidate Brant, who with a sweep of the arm toward the soldiers, asked: ‘Have all these men come to confer with the poor Indian too?’ Giving an impression of great Indian strength which did not exist, Brant said he was ready for war. Unsuccessful in his mission, Herkimer returned to Fort Dayton and soon thereafter, in the Battle of Oriskany (see Tour 12), met his death at the hands of Brant’s warriors.
The Susquehanna flows deep through a narrowing valley; the hills close at BAINBRIDGE, 28.2 m. (1,000 alt., 1,324 pop.), on the outside of a sweeping bend in the river. Milk products plants hug the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, paralleling State 7.
AFTON, 34 m. (974 alt., 812 pop.), has two large pasteurization plants, a feed mill, and the annual Afton Fair. Alcoholically dry under local option—not even beer is sold—the village preserves the moral fervor of the days when Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, worked his miracles in the neighborhood.
In Afton is the junction with State 41.
Left on State 41, across the river, to the entrance 0.9 m. to the Afton Fair Grounds, where stands the MORMON HOUSE, a simple wood structure with two stories in front and a long roof sloping to a single story in the rear. In this house, on January 18, 1827, Joseph Smith married his first wife, Emma Hale, described as ‘very beautiful, with large dignified body, and bewitching eyes.’ It was an elopement; Emma’s stern pioneer father could see ‘no good’ in a man ‘looking into peep-stones and hunting for treasures with a witch-hazel.’
Smith’s early struggles to found the Mormon Church are closely intertwined with this countryside. West of Afton, in 1827, he dug up one of the plates which later became a part of the Book of Mormon. In Colesville, near by, Smith worked the first miracle of his faith—the casting out of the devil. Newell Knight, who attended Smith’s meeting but refused to pray, was stricken. Smith’s own report described Knight’s condition: ‘His visage and limbs were distorted and twisted in every shape and appearance possible to imagine; and finally he was caught up off the floor, and tossed about most fearfully.’ Smith commanded the devil to leave, and in the prophet’s own words, Knight’s ‘countenance became natural, his distortions of the body ceased, and almost immediately the spirit of the Lord descended upon him. So soon as consciousness returned, his bodily weakness was such that we were obliged to lay him upon a bed.’
News of the miracle spread, shocking the community out of its rural complacency; Smith was arrested, charged with using his ‘priestly powers on credulous men to get their property away from them.’ After spending the night in Bainbridge jail, he was tried and freed. At the trial Knight said that he was sure the devil had seized him but refused to tell what the devil looked like ‘because it was a spiritual sight.’
State 7 turns right at 41.3 m. to climb the right shoulder of the Susquehanna Valley. PORT CRANE, 55.5 m. (880 alt., 497 pop.), is at the junction with State 369.
Right on State 369 to the CHENANGO VALLEY STATE PARK (L), 4.3 m., covering 925 acres, a highly developed recreational area with two large lakes (bathing, boating, cabins, tourist camps, fishing, picnicking, hiking).
BINGHAMTON, 62.9 m. (845 alt., 78,242 pop.) (see Binghamton), is at the junction with State 17 (see Tour 3), US 11 (see Tour 18), and State 12 (see Tour 25).