Maple View—Oswego—Rochester—Lewiston—Niagara Falls; US 104. 175.5 m.
Two-lane concrete or macadam.
The New York Central R.R. parallels route between Mexico and Webster and between Lewiston and Niagara Falls.
US 104, paralleling the Lake Ontario shore, bisects the great fruit belt of western New York, a region particularly beautiful in May when apple blossoms perfume the air and cover the landscape with their falling white petals.
The route was originally a line of communication among the Five Nations of the Iroquois. After the Revolutionary War it became a turnpike and towns grew rapidly. But by 1825 the Erie Canal had absorbed the traffic and nearly a century was to pass before the road regained its importance with the coming of the automobile.
Section a. MAPLE VIEW to ROCHESTER; 93.2 m. US 104
From the junction with US 11 in MAPLE VIEW, 0 m. (467 alt., 100 pop.) (see Tour 18), US 104 runs westward through a fruit- and vegetable-raising country. Most of the early settlers came from New England, and many of the houses and fences are built of fieldstone in New England fashion. More recently Italians have arrived to take up truck farming and berry raising. In the fall the villages become kitchens for the stewing, preserving, and canning of the crop.
In MEXICO, 4.3 m. (384 alt., 1,297 pop.), is the junction with State 3 (see Tour 17).
Right from Mexico on a macadam road to SPY ISLAND, 5.5 m., a small State park in the Little Salmon River, named for Silas Towne, an American spy during the Revolution, whose grave on the island is marked by a marble shaft. In 1777 Towne secreted himself on the island to observe the arrival on the mainland of British troops under St. Leger. At night, he paddled down the river and then hurried overland by trail to Fort Stanwix, where his report enabled the garrison to prepare for and repulse the enemy.
OSWEGO, 19.4 m. (295 alt., 22,652 pop.), easternmost port on the Great Lakes, Barge Canal terminal, and seat of Oswego County, lies on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego River. The name, from the Indian, means ‘pouring out of waters.’ Long before settlement, the strategic importance of the site as the western terminus of the Mohawk River-Oneida Lake-Oswego River water route was recognized; and the French and English contended for control. During the Colonial wars the region was an important base of supplies and Oswego was fortified after 1722. In 1756 the fort was captured by Montcalm but was reoccupied by Sir William Johnson in 1759; the British retained control until they surrendered it under the Jay Treaty in 1796.
Soon after military occupation ceased, the place was settled. Its commanding position at the terminus of the inland water route made the settlement a busy port. In 1810, 30,000 barrels of Salina (Syracuse) salt were shipped from the harbor. In 1817 the first steamboat on Lake Ontario, the Ontario, a paddle-wheeler, put into port. The Vandalia, the first steamer operated by Ericsson’s invention, the screw propeller, was built in Oswego shipyards and launched in 1841.
The routing of the Erie Canal across the State to Buffalo destroyed Oswego’s hope of becoming the largest port on the Great Lakes. Construction of the Oswego Canal, connecting with the Erie at Syracuse, and the opening of the Canadian Welland Canal between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario brought a boom period marked by the construction of mills, factories, and iron works. Completion of the outer harbor breakwaters begun in 1869 and the city’s rail and hydroelectric advantages attracted other industries. Today Oswego factories produce matches, insulating board, boilers, pumps and machines, cotton, silk, and rayon goods, paper bags and boxes, confections, and other products. The city is an important depot for transferring coal, grain, cement, pulp, and pulpwood between trains, lake steamers, and barge canal craft.
Mary Edward Walker (1832–1919), physician and advocate of women’s rights, was born in Oswego. She served as a nurse with the Union Army; captured by the enemy, she was exchanged for a Confederate officer. After the war, Congress passed a law permitting her to appear in men’s clothes and she discarded woman’s attire for long, full trousers and a long, flapping coat. She practiced medicine in Washington, where she participated in the agitation for popular election of United States senators and other reforms. In 1897 she founded a colony for women called ‘Adamless Eden.’
The U.S. MILITARY RESERVATION (open 6–6 daily; cameras permitted), E. side of the Oswego River, with main entrance on 7th St., is garrisoned by the Third Battalion of the 28th U.S. Infantry and is the scene of the National Guard artillery maneuvers in the summer.
Within the reservation is old FORT ONTARIO, pentagonal in shape, with fronts facing the lake, the river, and the land. Its long history goes back to 1755. The present battalion post was laid out in 1903–5. During the World War the fort was used as a base hospital.
The U.S. COAST GUARD STATION (open 1–5 weekdays, 8–5 Sun., holidays, and Navy Day), on the lake shore at the foot of E.2d St., is a two-story white frame building housing a captain and a crew of 16. The Coast Guard cutter Forward is used for patrol duty.
The PONTIAC BOULDER, W. 1st and Oneida Sts., marks the site of the council held between Sir William Johnson and Chief Pontiac in 1766, as a result of which Great Britain came into full possession of the Great Lakes basin. Addressing Sir William on the second day, Pontiac said: ‘I speak in the name of all the nations to the westward, of whom I am the master. It is the will of the Great Spirit that we should meet here today; and before him I now take you by the hand. . . . Father, this belt is to cover and strengthen our chain of friendship, and to show you that, if any nation shall lift the hatchet against our English brethren, we shall be the first to feel it and resent it.’
OSWEGO HARBOR, foot of W. 1st St., is the most easterly U.S. lake port with canal and rail connections to the Atlantic seaboard. An arrowhead of two Government-constructed breakwaters allows the largest lake vessels to dock without the aid of tugs. The port facilities include the New York State grain elevator with a storage capacity of 1,000,000 bushels and a freight warehouse with a floor space of 12,000 square feet. In the inner harbor is the northern terminus of the Barge Canal. The terminal lock is the only one on the siphon principle; it was modeled after the terminal lock of the Kiel Canal, Germany.
The COOPER HOUSE (private), 24 W.2d St., a small frame structure, was the home of James Fenimore Cooper in 1808–9 when he was a midshipman stationed in Oswego. The scene of his novel The Pathfinder is laid in the Oswego River Valley.
The OSWEGO STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, George Washington Blvd. near the city line, consists of two Georgian Colonial brick buildings. The student body numbers 500. At the entrance to the campus is a bronze STATUE OF EDWARD AUSTIN SHELDON (1823–97), whose efforts resulted in the opening of the first free school, called the ‘ragged school,’ in Oswego in 1848. In 1861 he founded the Oswego Primary Training School, which became the State Normal School in 1866, and headed it from 1869 until his death.
In Oswego is the junction with State 57.
Left on State 57, along the canalized Oswego River, to (R) BATTLE ISLAND, 6.7 m., a State historical reservation, where on July 3, 1758, Colonel John Bradstreet repulsed an attempted ambuscade by French and Indians. According to legend, PATHFINDER ISLAND (R), 8.1 m., is the locale of the fight between Natty Bumppo, hero of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pathfinder, and the Iroquois.
FULTON, 11.4 m. (400 alt., 13,337 pop.), ships milk and fruit and makes woolen goods, candy, paper containers, food products, ventilators, and linoleum felts. Settlement began because it was necessary to unload cargoes here and haul them in oxcarts around two falls in the river.
In the AMERICAN WOOLEN MILLS (open), W. Broadway and W. First St., giant machines tended by a few operators spin and weave yarn into cloth of intricate patterns.
The SEAL-RIGHT PLANT, 314 S. First Ave., grinds wood into pulp, rolls the pulp into cardboard, and shapes the cardboard into containers.
In Fulton is the junction with State 3 (see Tour 17).
In the 1920’s, water from the natural spring on GREAT BEAR FARM (L), 16 m., was bottled and shipped in large quantities all over the country; it is still bottled, though on a much smaller scale.
At THREE RIVER POINT, 22.6 m. (380 alt., 50 pop.), the Oneida and Seneca Rivers unite to form the Oswego River. The Jesuits; Champlain, Frontenac, and Montcalm; the British redcoats marching between the forts at Oswego and Stanwix; Walter Butler and Joseph Brant—all followed this natural water route, as well as many early settlers of western New York. Today the Barge Canal uses the dredged and locked river to Lake Ontario, to complete the shortest all-water route between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes.
At 24.4 m. is the junction with State 31 (see Tour 32).
LIVERPOOL, 31.6 m. (380 alt., 2,244 pop.), makes airplane and small delivery truck motors. Proximity of the famous Onondaga salt springs made it a nineteenth-century salt-producing center. About 1850 John Fischer, a German basket weaver, imported willow shoots and started the willow-weaving industry that was identified with Liverpool for 70 years. In its heyday 1,500,000 pieces of basketware and willow furniture were produced annually and tons of green willow were shipped to distant factories. As furniture styles changed and commercial laundries eliminated the clothes basket, the market waned. Much of the furniture made 25 years ago is still in use; ‘I guess,’ says an old German weaver, ‘we made that willow furniture so good we worked ourselves out of a job.’ Today about 20 old craftsmen eke out an existence at the trade.
The ONONDAGA PARKWAY DEVELOPMENT, 31.7 m., follows the bed of the old Oswego Canal along the eastern shore of Onondaga Lake to Syracuse.
At 31.8 m. is the junction with Lakeshore Drive; right here through the Parkway 0.2 m. to the SALT MUSEUM (open 9–7 daily), built around the last remaining vat house and chimney of the State-owned salt reservation, and containing more than 100 items illustrating old salt-making machinery and several hundred photographs of the salt fields in their boom days. At 1.3 m. is (R) the reputed site of the founding of the Iroquois Confederacy under the leadership of Hiawatha and Dekanawidah.
On State 57 (L), FORT SAINTE MARIE DE GENNENTAH (open 9–7 daily), 32.3 m., is a reproduction of the stockade erected to protect the 50 French colonists who attempted a settlement here in 1656. The exterior is of unfinished logs, the interior of rough-hewn boards; the furniture is reproduced. The exhibits include French, Indian, and Colonial relics.
The JESUIT WELL (L), 32.6 m., is the traditional site of the salt spring visited in 1654 by Father Simon Le Moyne, Jesuit missionary to the Onondaga. He boiled some of the water down and took samples back to Quebec with him. Out of this beginning grew the salt industry that gave the city of Syracuse its start.
The DANFORTH SALT POOL (R), 33.3 m., 700 feet long, is fed by natural springs. Stone for the adjoining bathhouse (lockers 10¢) was taken from the Geddes salt pump-house, built more than 75 years ago at the height of the salt industry.
The southern entrance to the parkway development, 33.8 m., at the northern Syracuse city line, is marked by two stone piers ornamented by illuminated panels depicting in silhouette scenes of the old Erie Canal and the salt manufacturing era of the Onondaga region.
SYRACUSE, 36.5 m. (400 alt., 205, 637 pop.) (see Syracuse), is at the junction with State 5 (see Tour 11) and US 11 (see Tour 18).
HANNIBAL, 31.1 m. (330 alt., 410 pop.), a fruit-growing and dairy hamlet, is at the junction with State 3 (see Tour 17).
At 41.1 m., is the junction with State 104A.
Right on State 104A to a junction with an unmarked road, 5.6 m.; left here to FAIRHAVEN BEACH STATE PARK, 1.8 m. (picnicking, bathing), 600 acres with large pine groves. Just west of the park property is a Federal lighthouse and pier.
West of WOLCOTT, 47.3 m. (378 alt., 1,324 pop.), US 104 enters the great Ontario fruit belt. Apples are the most important crop, but here and there is an orchard of pear, peach, or cherry trees. The sour cherries are picked early in July. Men, women, and children work in the orchards, living during the picking season in barns or any makeshift shelter they can find or erect. An adult worker averages between 300 and 400 pounds a day, for which he is paid about ¾¢ a pound. Cherries are picked stemless for the canneries, and workers must be careful not to break off the fruit spurs, from which next season’s crop will grow.
Larger orchard fruits—pears, peaches, and apples—requiring the use of heavy ladders and greater skill in picking, are harvested exclusively by men. Peaches are picked in early August and apples in October. Expert pickers follow the harvest, earning from $3 to $4.50 a day. Usually a large part of the earnings is held up until the job is finished to prevent the workers from moving on.
Canneries, large and small, are in the villages along the route. Apples are peeled and cored by machine, cut by white-uniformed women into eighths or quarters, and steamed five to seven minutes. They are canned and the sealed can is left in boiling water 20 to 25 minutes. Pears are prepared by hand, since peeling and coring machines for this fruit have yet to be invented. Peaches are left in a lye solution a few seconds to loosen the skin. They are split in half and the pit is removed with a special spoon.
RESORT, 53.4 m. (260 alt., 87 pop.), is a summer colony at the head of the east shore of Sodus Bay and the starting point for fishing expeditions on Lake Ontario. In August and September the bay is covered by large beds of American lotus, whose huge waxy white blossoms, almost six inches in diameter, rise two feet above the broad green pads on the surface of the water. The bed, one of the few of its kind in the country, is under the protection of the State Conservation Department. It is not known how the plants came here.
ALTON, 56.3 m. (380 alt., 350 pop.), is at the junction with State 14 (see Tour 27).
SODUS, 61.2 m. (475 alt., 1,513 pop.), is a pleasant village with comfortable old homes. Here as in several other places in western New York, the raising of silkworms was attempted in the 1830’s. Large buildings were erected to house the worms and mulberry trees were planted to supply their food. In 1838 a newspaper declared that the manufacture of silk was ‘as simple as feeding pigs and very easy to perform: one in which small children could be made useful, and also decayed widows and decrepit females. . . .’ The attempt failed because the mulberry trees could not withstand the severe winters.
WILLIAMSON, 64.8 m. (452 alt., 1,000 pop.), is at the junction with State 21 (see Tour 29).
Reeds which flourish in the marshes of IRONDEQUOIT BAY, 88.2 m., are harvested from early fall to early spring. Butt cutters ride in flat-bottomed boats and cut the reeds with sharp butt knives. The glue which forms within the stalks of the reeds is used to seal hogsheads against moisture leaks.
ROCHESTER, 93.2 m. (500 alt., 324, 694 pop.) (see Rochester), is at the junction with State 2 (see Tour 30), US 15 (see Tour 31), and State 33 (see Tour 33).
Section b. ROCHESTER to NIAGARA FALLS; 82.3 m. US 104
West of ROCHESTER, 0 m., US 104 continues through the fruit belt of western New York. This section of the road is called the Honeymoon Trail, because of the many honeymooners that travel it to Niagara Falls.
In CLARKSON, 15.8 m. (427 alt., 307 pop.), is the two-story brick SELDEN HOME (private), the birthplace of George B. Selden (1846–1922), called the ‘father of the automobile.’ In 1872, possessed with the idea of a ‘horseless carriage,’ Selden gave up the practice of law and constructed small engines to be propelled by steam, by ammonia gas, and by bisulphite of carbon. The following year he discarded the idea of steam for power, devoting his experiments to an internal combustion engine. In 1877 he made his first successful experiment with a ‘lightweight, high-speed, three-cylinder gasoline compression engine.’ Granted a patent in 1895, Selden received a royalty on all automobiles made until Henry Ford broke his monopoly in 1903.
In the center of CHILDS, 30.1 m. (425 alt., 75 pop.), is the COBBLESTONE CHURCH, erected by the First Universalist Society in 1834. Three of the houses are also made of cobblestones. The principal cost in cobblestone construction was labor; the water-worn stone were found in glacial drift, remnants of the Ice Age. The stones were graded for size through holes bored in a plank. The builder laid one row of cobblestones, and while it dried went on to work on another house; sometimes the stones were laid in alternate rows of large and small, sometimes in herringbone pattern.
The apple-growing hamlet of GAINES, 31.3 m. (426 alt., 130 pop.), is named for General E.P. Gaines, who during the War of 1812 held Fort Erie for nine days against the siege of Drummond’s British troops.
It is related that one of the pioneer settlers hired an old sailor, whose first assignment was to ‘hitch up that span of oxen and the horse and go out and snake some logs.’ Unaccustomed to land navigation, the elderly gob soon returned to the farmhouse, waving his arms and yelling: ‘Pipe all hands! The larboard ox is on the starboard side, old Jan’s in the riggin’, an’ the hull things goin’ to hell starn foremost!’
At 56.7 m. is the junction with State 78 (see Tour 36).
At 74.2 m. the road skirts the northwestern edge of the TUSCARORA INDIAN RESERVATION, where about 400 members of the tribe till the the soil. The reservation contains 6,294 acres, acquired partly by treaty and partly by gift from the Holland Land Company and from the Seneca Nation. Two creeks and extensive woodland provide fishing and small game hunting.
None but Indians can buy or lease the land; among themselves, however, land sales are made. As a result, some of the more industrious and thrifty have acquired farms of from 200 to 300 acres, while the poorer ones have little or no land. The annual allotment by the Federal Government of a few yards of cotton cloth is the birthright of every Tuscaroran, secured by an early treaty. The Indians value highly their little red tickets which enable them to cross the United States-Canadian border as often as they wish without being molested by customs and immigration officials. This right also is based on an old treaty.
The reservation contains a community house, a church, and a school; the State furnishes hospital care and the services of a visiting supervisor. In all ordinary matters on the reservation the Indians are governed by their own councils, in accordance with old tribal laws.
LEWISTON, 75.6 m. (363 alt., 1,282 pop.), straggles along the Niagara River at the foot of a steep bluff. According to geologists, this was the site of Niagara Falls some 35,000 years ago. From a hill at the southern extremity is a view of the village, the lake plains, and the river to the point where it empties into Lake Ontario.
In 1626 a Franciscan missionary found here a settlement of the Attawandaronk or Neuter Indians. Twenty-five years later the village was destroyed by the Seneca. In 1678 René Robert Cavelier de La Salle and his men built a storehouse here and completed to the upper Niagara a portage trail which was used for a century and a half. Settlement did not begin until after the English troops surrendered Fort Niagara (see below) in 1796. The frontier village, named after Governor Morgan Lewis, was captured and burned by the British in 1813, but was rebuilt immediately.
The FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, two blocks S. of Center St., a stuccoed stone structure with pointed arch windows and doors, was begun in 1817. The portico with its four Doric columns and the belfry are later Greek Revival additions.
The FRONTIER HOUSE, Center St., a large, gray stone three-story building, was erected in 1824; the porch was added in the late 1830’s. Here, according to tradition, James Fenimore Cooper wrote The Spy. William Morgan (see Tour 11), who planned to publish secrets of the Masonic order, was seen by non-Masons for the last time at this inn on September 13, 1826.
In Lewiston is the junction with State 18.
Right on State 18 through YOUNGSTOWN, 6 m. (290 alt., 794 pop.), to FORT NIAGARA, 7 m. (open 9–9 daily in summer, 9–5 other seasons; 25¢). This ‘patriotic shrine of four nations’ overlooks Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River. Its situation at the mouth of the Niagara River, commanding the Great Lakes route, made the fort of strategic value during the entire Colonial period and on through the Revolution and the War of 1812. The first fort on the site was built by La Salle in 1678 and called by him Fort Conti. It was rebuilt as Fort Denonville by the French governor general of that name. Again rebuilt in 1725–6 by Chaussagras de Lery and named Fort Niagara, it was enlarged in 1756–7 by Captain François Pouchot; much of Pouchot’s work still remains. In 1759 it was captured for the British by Sir William Johnson and held by them until it was taken over by the United States in 1796. During the War of 1812 the British recaptured the fort, but it was restored to the United States by the Treaty of Ghent in 1815.
Restoration was completed in 1934 at a cost of about $600,000, contributed by the Federal Government, the State of New York, Erie County, and the Old Fort Niagara Association. Plans in the Colonial archives of the French War Department were followed. A drawbridge, hoisted with the weight of large rocks, leads to the gatehouse with the French coat-of-arms. Immediately inside the entrance is a massive stone blockhouse with the English coat-of-arms. An underground passage of arched masonry, lighted with the original lanterns, leads to another blockhouse at the outer barrier of the fort.
In the center of the parade ground fly three flags: the American flag of 1796, with 15 stars and bars; the English Union Jack; and French fleur-de-lis of 1759. To the right stands a wooden cross, emblematic of the cross erected in 1688 by Father Jean Millet, Jesuit missionary. Here also is a Lombardy poplar planted by the French perhaps as early as 1669. Near by is a monument commemorating the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817, which defined the boundary between the United States and Canada and provided that the boundary remain forever unfortified.
The CASTLE, in the northwest corner of the fort, is an imposing two-story structure erected by the French in 1725–6 in the guise of a provincial manor house to deceive the Indians as to its real purpose. The walls were built four feet thick to absorb the material sway caused by the firing of cannon. The original building was enlarged by the British. The massive oak doors at the entrance, weighing 1,500 pounds, are so well balanced that a child can open them. The chapel, on the first floor, with altar, font, and statues, was restored in 1931. On the second floor are the gun ports with heavy shutters and the officers’ quarters. The great hall was the council room in which Sir William Johnson signed the treaty of 1764 with the Indians. During the Revolution the building served as headquarters of Butler’s Rangers and Britain’s Indian allies; and the hall is said to have been piled with American scalps, for which the British offered a bounty of $8 apiece.
Thirty feet from the Castle is the Poisoned Well, ‘whose water was poisoned by some demon in human form.’ It was a story with the soldiers, believed by many, that at midnight the headless trunk of a French general was often seen sitting on the curb of the old well where he had been murdered and his body thrown into it. Credence was given the legend when the Americans, after taking possession of the fort, found the bones of a large-framed man and some military ornaments at the bottom of the well.
Adjoining the Castle is the Bake Shop, originally built by the French, and reconstructed by the British in 1759. The kitchen still contains the old wooden trough in which the dough was mixed.
NIAGARA UNIVERSITY (L), 79.8 m. comprises a group of tall, gray, rough stone buildings. It was founded in 1856 as Our Lady of Angels Seminary and was chartered as a liberal arts institution in 1883. One of the best known Roman Catholic colleges in the East, it has an average enrollment of more than 1,000; the faculty numbers 75. Women are admitted only for graduate work. The university maintains a center in Rochester where extramural courses are given, mainly in finance and accounting.
DEVIL’S HOLE STATE PARK (R), 80.2 m., encompasses the area adjoining the Niagara Gorge and the cavern gouged in the soft layers of rock at the water level of the river. The State has constructed picnic sites and lookout spots, which offer views of the lower rapids and of the gorge up the river toward the Whirlpool and down toward Queenston Heights.
One Indian legend has it that the cavern was the home of the Evil Spirit. According to another legend, the French explorer La Salle entered the cavern in 1679 and heard a mysterious Indian voice prophesy his death years later on the Mississippi. On September 14, 1763, John Stedman, the keeper of the portage, with 24 men and a wagon train was ambushed at Devil’s Hole by a band of Seneca Indians. From the massacre which followed, only Stedman and one or two of his men escaped. Two companies of British soldiers stationed at Lewiston hastened to Stedman’s relief only to fall into another ambush. Sixty-five soldiers were killed and eight or nine wounded.
NIAGARA FALLS, 82.3 m. (575 alt., 77,374 pop.) (see Niagara Falls), is at the junction with State 31 (see Tour 32) and US 62 (see Tour 37).