Sodus Point—Geneva—Watkins Glen—Elmira—(Troy, Pa.); State 14.
Sodus Point to Pennsylvania Line, 96.4 m.
Two-lane concrete with stretches of macadam.
The New York Central R.R. parallels route between Lyons and Watkins Glen; Pennsylvania R.R. between Starkey and Pennsylvania line.
A north-south route, State 14 crosses the Ontario fruit belt, runs up the west shore of 36-mile-long Seneca Lake, passes through Watkins Glen with its salt mines and scenic attractions and Montour Falls with its story of ‘Queen’ Catherine, and traverses a rolling countryside of dairy farms to Elmira and the Pennsylvania line.
Section a. SODUS POINT to GENEVA; 30.4 m. State 14
The Lake Ontario plain is an important fruit-growing area; rows of cherry and peach trees dip into the valleys and run over the rounded drumlins. Through this region the route cuts across the closely parallel main east-west routes across the State.
SODUS POINT (bathing, boating, picnicking) 0 m. (224 alt., 525 pop.), is a popular summer resort on Sodus Bay. On June 19, 1813, Sir James Yeo, War of 1812 commander of the British fleet on Lake Ontario, descended upon Sodus Point and landed a looting party, which overcame the defenders and burned every building but one.
The ALASA FARM (open), 3.7 m., specializes in breeding shorthorn cattle. Its 1,600 acres were settled in 1823 by a colony of Shakers who erected large buildings and cultivated broad orchards and gardens; after 13 years they sold the land to a company interested in a proposed Sodus Canal to join Lake Ontario and the Erie Canal. The project fell through, and about 1844 the land was taken over by a group of Fourierists who pooled their property and joined together for pleasure and action in the harmony of a phalanx. But complaints against individual members and demands for the return of private property raised dissension and disrupted the phalanx within two years.
ALTON, 5.3 m. (380 alt., 350 pop.) (see Tour 26), is at the junction with US 104 (see Tour 26).
LYONS, 15.7 m. (420 alt., 3,838 pop.) (see Tour 32), is at the junction with State 31 (see Tour 32).
WEST JUNIUS (Five Points), 24.2 m. (490 alt., 170 pop.) (see Tour 30), is at the junction with State 2 (see Tour 30).
GENEVA, 30.4 m. (460 alt., 15,543 pop.) (see Tour 8), is at the junction with US 20 (see Tour 8).
Section b. GENEVA to The PENNSYLVANIA LINE; 66 m. State 14
For 36 miles the route runs along the western shore of Seneca Lake, touching the fringes of the few shore villages. The scenery is typical of the Finger Lakes region: a long, gently curving body of water—normally placid but whipping up into whitecaps under rising winds—banked by low, sweeping hills, the unbroken slopes patched with vineyards, orchards, and hay fields rising to woodlots against the horizon. Toward the head of the lake rushing streams have cut narrow gorges in the rock that reach a climax of size and beauty in Watkins Glen.
South of GENEVA, 0 m., State 14 follows the shore line of SENECA LAKE (L); its deep waters, fed by springs, have frozen over but four times in the memory of man. On summer nights the submarine rumbles of the mysterious ‘lake guns’ echo along the shores; to the Indians they were supernatural war drums calling them to the warpath; geologists believe them to be the poppings of natural gas released from rock rifts on the lake bottom. The largest outboard regatta in the East is held off Geneva every summer.
At 13.2 m. is the junction with State 54 (see Tour 28).
In LAKEMONT, 25.6 m. (840 alt., 200 pop.), is the LAKEMONT ACADEMY. Founded in 1842 as Starkey Seminary, it was reopened in 1939, after three years of inactivity, as a college preparatory school for boys, modeled after the English public schools.
At 33.2 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
Left on this road 0.5 m. to the INTERNATIONAL SALT PLANT (open 9–12, 1–4 Mon.–Fri.), an interconnected group of one- to four-story structures at the water’s edge, with derricks rising up the hillsides marking the salt wells that average 1,800 feet in depth. Water is pumped into the wells, where it is saturated with salt; this brine is raised to the surface and the salt is extracted by evaporation.
This plant and the Watkins Salt Plant about 1.5 miles east of Watkins Glen, with a combined output of 170,000 tons a year, most of it table salt, make this area one of the State’s leading salt producers.
Salt works, health springs, a lake front, a picturesque glen, and a rich agricultural back country make WATKINS GLEN, 36.1 m. (477 alt., 2,906 pop.), at the head of Seneca Lake, a combination farm shopping, industrial, and tourist center and spa.
WATKINS GLEN STATE PARK (swimming, picnicking), entrances on Franklin St. and county road at head of glen (parking 25¢ for longer than 10 min., taxi between lower and upper entrances 35¢), is the leading tourist attraction of the village. The Gorge Trail, with 700 steps and numerous bridges, enters the glen beyond the parking space through a tunnel, crosses and recrosses the twisted formations made by the stream in the rock, and reaches the head of the gorge 1.5 miles from the start and 600 feet higher.
The glen made the headlines in August 1934 when a newspaper correspondent discovered a deer marooned on an inaccessible ledge. During the Labor Day week-end 350,000 people came to see the stranded deer. A bridge was built across the gorge, but the deer refused to budge; a reservation Indian tried his deer lore on it for three days but with no avail; an elk head, borrowed from the local Elks, was set up near by, but again without result. One night the deer somehow scrambled down the sheer rock and escaped over the top of the gorge.
The nationally-known GLEN SPRINGS HEALTH RESORT HOTEL, Glen Ave., stands 300 feet above the lake with a view of a 30-mile sweep of water and hillsides. The water of the mineral springs, used on a wide scale in the treatment of disease, is similar in analysis to the waters of Bad Nauheim, Germany, but about five times as strong.
South of Seneca Lake State 14 follows Catherine Creek through narrow, winding Pine Valley. Markers trace the route of the Sullivan-Clinton expedition of 1779.
Within a short walk of MONTOUR FALLS, 39.5 m. (480 alt., 1,341 pop.), are seven glens, each with a distinctive claim to beauty in cascades, caverns, waterfalls, amphitheaters, and high and angular cliffs. The chief industry in the village is the Shepard-Niles Crane and Hoist Company, established in 1880, manufacturing electric hoists with lifting capacities ranging from a ton to 250 tons. David B. Hill (1843–1910), State governor, 1885–92, was born here.
The village occupies the site of Catherine’s Town, a Seneca village of about 40 well-built houses, some of them with chimneys and glazed windows, which was destroyed by Sullivan’s expedition. The white settlement on the site was named Havana in 1829; in the 1890’s the name was changed to Montour Falls in honor of Queen Catherine Montour, said to have been the granddaughter of Count Frontenac, French governor of Canada, by an Indian woman. Catherine, ‘a handsome woman of polite address who spoke French fluently,’ married a Seneca chief, and after her husband’s death ruled the village wisely.
Conspicuous in the village is SHEQUAGA (Ind., tumbling waters) FALLS, a 156-foot waterfall of exceptional beauty, which at first sight seems to drop right into the main street; the water plunges into a rip-rapped pool and flows off into Catherine Creek. On a visit to the place Louis Philippe, later Louis XVII of France, was so struck by the grandeur of the scene that he made a sketch of it which now hangs in the Louvre.
HORSEHEADS, 53.3 m. (903 alt., 2,430 pop.), within the metropolitan area of Elmira, manufactures bricks and optical goods. Known earlier as Fairport, in 1845 the place was named Horseheads, commemorating an incident in the Revolution that occurred here; General Sullivan’s men slew their worn-out and starving horses for food and left the heads for carrion.
At 54.3 m. is the junction with State 17 (see Tour 3), with which State 14 runs in common to ELMIRA, 58.8 m. (860 alt., 45,046 pop.) (see Elmira).
At 66 m. State 14 crosses the PENNSYLVANIA LINE, 17 miles north of Troy, Pennsylvania.