Schuylerville—Saratoga Springs—Johnstown—Dolgeville—Middleville; State 29. 79.7 m.
Mainly two-lane concrete, with stretches of macadam.
Boston & Maine R.R. parallels road between Schuylerville and Saratoga Springs.
Linking the towns in the southern foothills of the Adirondacks, the route offers glimpses of the mountains to the north and, from the hilltops, broad views of the Mohawk Valley to the south, falling away to the river and clambering up toward the Catskills beyond the horizon.
West of SCHUYLERVILLE, 0 m. (216 alt., 1,411 pop.) (see Tour 22), homemade signs invite tourists to stop at farmhouses; milk cans sit on roadside platforms; small patches of corn break the monotony of pasture land and hayfield.
SARATOGA SPRINGS, 11.1 m. (330 alt., 13,670 pop.) (see Saratoga Springs), is at the junction with US 9 (see Tour 21), State 50 (see Tour 21), and State 9K (see Tour 23).
At 14.3 m. is the junction with a dirt road.
Right on this road 0.6 m. to the PETRIFIED GARDENS (open Apr.–Oct.; adm. 35¢, small children free, picnic facilities; geological museum), a privately owned park exhibiting Cambrian Hoyt limestone and the fossils and solution cracks it contains. The fossils are the remains of lime-secreting plants known as Cryptozoon, which made up the base of a great reef surrounding the eastern and southern sides of the Adirondacks when the latter formed an isolated island in a broad inland sea.
In LESTER STATE PARK (R), 1.3 m., about an acre in size, solution cracks have been filled with concrete to preserve fossils by checking erosion (do not remove specimens).
Though the branding of cattle to identify ownership is associated with the western States, town clerks hereabouts kept the ‘Book of Marks’ before the West was settled. Peleg Taber’s mark, registered in 1796, was ‘a crop off the right ear tip, and knick under it’; Joseph Covert’s mark, registered in 1800, was a ‘swallow fork’ in each ear.
The rock outcrop (R), 26.8 m., shows the line of contact between New York’s oldest geologic strata (Archean) and beds of a period almost 500,000,000 years younger (Potsdam), representing the enormously long period elapsing between rocks containing no traces of animal life and those with abundant marine fossils.
BROADALBIN, 33.7 m. (820 alt., 1,386 pop.), was named by its Scottish population when the post office was established in 1804. The first white settlers came in 1770, but the village developed slowly because of its comparative inaccessibility and the frequent Indian raids.
The HOME OF ROBERT W. CHAMBERS (1865–1933), N. Main and North Sts., is on a large estate. Here the novelist, who first won popularity with his historical romances of the Mohawk Valley, planned the books he wrote in a private New York City office. His grave, marked by a plain stone, is in a tree-surrounded clearing on the estate.
On the north side of Maple St. are the beautiful CHAMBERS ITALIAN GARDENS (open by permission).
VAIL MILLS, 35.2 m. (780 alt., 110 pop.), is at the junction with State 30 (see Tour 24) and at the southern extremity of the Sacandaga Reservoir (see Tour 23).
JOHNSTOWN, 44.2 m. (660 alt., 10,734 pop.), on the fertile Cayadutta Plateau, is a city with fine residences and a bustling business district, named for Sir William Johnson (see Tour 11), who settled here in 1762 at the height of his picturesque life as a frontier statesman and empire builder.
Johnstown and Gloversville (see below), centers of fine glove making, merge along Cayadutta Creek. Glove manufacture overshadows subsidiary industries like tanning and the making of glove lasts and cotton fleece.
On N. William St. just north of W. Main St. is the FULTON COUNTY COURTHOUSE, erected by Sir William Johnson in 1772, a low, red brick, gabled-roof structure with white painted doors and windows. In the octagonal cupola is the metal triangle used to announce the sessions of court since September 8, 1772.
The DRUMM HOUSE, on W. Green St., built by Sir William Johnson in 1763, was for some time occupied by Edward Wall, the schoolmaster who taught in the free school established by Johnson.
The GRAVE OF SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON, in the rear of St. John’s Episcopal Church, N. Market St., is marked by a marble slab and four simple cornerstones.
The old FULTON COUNTY JAIL, corner of Montgomery and S. Perry Sts., a two-story stone building with a heavy cornice at the eave line, was built in 1772.
JIMMY BURKE’S INN, corner of S. William and Montgomery Sts., now the headquarters of the local chapter of the D.A.R., was a popular early nineteenth-century tavern. Built in 1793, the white clapboarded building has a one-story porch across its façade flush with the sidewalk.
The KNOX GELATINE PLANT (open 9–4; guides), W. Madison St., a white-painted concrete factory surrounded by greensward, packs consumer packages of plain gelatine and contains the home offices of the company, operated by the third generation of the Knox family.
Right from Johnstown on State 148 to GLOVERSVILLE, 4 m. (800 alt., 23,279 pop.), named for its outstanding industry. While the manufacture of heavy gloves and mittens has spread into every State, the making of fine kid gloves remains a Fulton County specialty. The larger factories are open to visitors during working hours.
Most of the steps in the process of manufacture require a high grade of skill; earnings are in most cases reckoned on a piecework basis. The sorter’s practiced thumb separates the hides by grades and determines which will best take the various colors, the highest quality being reserved for the darkest color. In the shaving room the skins are thinned and cleaned; workers feed them under cylinders where emery paper takes off the rough surfaces. The cutters stand facing each other hunched over long tables, plotting out on the soft skins the rectangular ‘tranks’ from which the gloves are cut, and stretching and plying them to ‘work out’ the leather in order to assure a good fit; leather for cheaper gloves is not stretched so carefully. Pairs are matched for texture, weight, and color. ‘Slitters’ cut the entire glove, including the thumb and fourchettes (the small side-pieces for the fingers), out of the one trank with steel dies. In the silking room, men and women sit elbow to elbow over long rows of power-driven sewing machines running the designs on the back of the gloves; specially constructed machines make the more elaborate stitches. In the next step the thumb and fourchettes are sewed on and the glove is ‘closed.’ Then the sewn edges are trimmed, the glove is ‘laid off’—steamed and ironed on hand forms, polished, and packed.
The beginnings of the industry in the county have been traced back to the 1760’s when Sir William Johnson brought over as settlers a group of glovers from Perthshire, Scotland, who made gloves for local sale.
West from Gloversville, State 29A, a concrete road through a rough Adirondack lake district, crosses the Adirondack State Park boundary at 5.9 m. On the lake shores are private camps. PECK LAKE (R), 6.3 m., has good fishing. CAROGA LAKE STATE CAMPSITE (bathing, fishing), 9.3 m., is in the middle of a beautiful stand of hemlocks and hardwoods, one of the few remaining areas of virgin timber in the vicinity. CAROGA LAKE (dancing, dining, boating, swimming) is a favorite summer resort for Fulton County residents.
On the Nick Stoner Golf Course (R), 11.9 m., overlooking the road is the NICK STONER MONUMENT, a bronze statue of a man in a fringed leather coat, leggings, and fur cap, his left hand steadying a flintlock at rest. Major Nicholas Stoner (1762–1850) was a Revolutionary soldier and a pioneer trader and trapper in this southern Adirondack region. He became famous as a game hunter and Indian killer. He himself could not decide at any time whether he was married, and if he was whether to someone named Bessie; but the records credit him with several marriages, the last in 1840, when he was about 78 years old. To the end he was proud of the earrings he had worn since boyhood. His grave is in Prospect Cemetery, Gloversville.
The road continues past a chain of lakes: CANADA LAKE, 12.9 m.; GREEN LAKE, 13.5 m.; PINE LAKE (dancing, dining, swimming, boating), 15.3 m.; WEST LAKE, 16.9 m.; and PLEASANT LAKE, 19.7 m.
DOLGEVILLE, 33.4 m., is at the junction with State 29 (see below).
West of Johnstown State 29 roughly parallels the blue line of the Adirondack State Park. The many streams of this hilly area, all tributaries of the Mohawk, furnished power for sawmills, gristmills, and tanneries during the nineteenth-century lumbering period.
Partly hidden by trees (R), JOHNSON HALL (open 9–5 weekdays; adm. 25¢., children under 16 free), 44.9 m., Sir William Johnson’s last home, was erected in 1761–2; it is owned by the State and managed by the Johnstown Historical Society. This two-story, white clapboard Georgian Colonial house has heavy dentiled corniced window headings and a Palladian window above the small entrance porch. The mahogany stair-rail of the fine Colonial stairway bears tomahawk marks said to have been made by Joseph Brant. After being inherited by Sir John Johnson, the estate was confiscated during the Revolution.
The heavy stone blockhouse close by is one of two built for the protection of the mansion, with which they were connected by tunnels.
The young evergreen forest, 61.7 m. (R), is State-owned and, like much of the land in the adjacent Adirondack Park classed as sub-marginal, has been planted by the State Conservation Department with quick-growing, soil-binding trees.
As the road tops the hill summits there are panoramic views of river, valley, and mountains on the left, and heavy evergreen forests on the right.
DOLGEVILLE, 67.5 m. (800 alt., 3,309 pop.), thriving on the manufacture of lumber and felt slippers, was named in 1881 for Alfred Dolge, a businessman who transformed the village of Brockett’s Bridge into a factory town of several thousand workers. His factory, established here in 1875, was one of the first to manufacture felt in the United States and one of the pioneers in the earning-sharing scheme that provides employees with group insurance, pensions, disability benefits, and a mutual benefit society.
In Dolgeville is the junction with State 29A (see above).
MIDDLEVILLE, 79.7 m. (570 alt., 760 pop.), is at the junction with State 28 (see Tour 15).