Rochester—Manchester—Waterloo—Ithaca—Owego; State 2.121 m.
Two-lane concrete or macadam.
New York Central R.R. parallels route between Rochester and Victor, Manchester and Phelps; Lehigh Valley R.R. between Victor and Ithaca; Delaware, Lackawanna & Western R.R. between Ithaca and Owego.
Between Rochester and Waterloo State 2 follows the Indian trails that led to Lake Ontario. South of Waterloo it enters the central Finger Lakes area, traversing the high tableland between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes. Between Ithaca and Owego it goes through a dairying region. The farmers along the route trace their descent back to the pioneer settlers from New England.
Section a. ROCHESTER to WATERLOO; 46.7 m. State 2
From ROCHESTER, 0 m., State 2 follows the old Seneca trail to Indian Landing on Irondequoit Bay, trod by French Jesuits until Denonville came down in 1687 with his punitive expedition and destroyed the Indian villages to which the missionaries had carried a message of peace. This expedition was one of a series of warlike acts by the French that drove the Iroquois into the arms of the British.
PITTSFORD, 6.9 m. (500 alt., 1,573 pop.), is at the junction with State 31 (see Tour 32).
At 11.1 m. is the junction with Powder Mills Park Road.
Right on this road 0.5 m. to POWDER MILLS PARK (picnicking, swimming, restricted camping), 576 acres, maintained by Monroe County. The park contains breeding ponds operated in co-operation with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries for the propagation and rearing of brook and rainbow trout. About 200 adult trout are kept for exhibition.
At 15.9 m. is the junction with State 251.
Right on State 251 to MENDON (560 alt., 350 pop.), 4.4 m., set in a hollow astride willow-lined Irondequoit Creek. Conspicuous in the village are a number of cobblestone houses, erected a century ago.
The BRIGHAM YOUNG HOUSE, corner of Cheese Factory Road and Ionia Road, a sturdy two-story white dwelling, was the home of the Mormon Joshua from 1830 to 1832. Brigham Young (1801–77), born in Vermont, was brought to Sherburne, Chenango County, in 1804, where he received a limited schooling and worked on his father’s farm. At the age of 16 he set out to earn his own living as carpenter, painter, and glazier; at 22 he joined the Methodist Church and at 23 was married in Aurelius, Cayuga County. In the spring of 1829 he joined his father in Mendon. Here in 1830 he first saw the Book of Mormon, and on April 14, 1832, after two years of investigation and soul-searching, he was baptized into the church. Later in the same year he met Joseph Smith, and, called upon to pray, ‘spoke in tongues,’ in the language, said Smith, of Adam. ‘It is of God,’ the Prophet added, ‘and the time will come when Brother Brigham will preside over the church.’ After some missionary effort Young followed Smith to Ohio and Missouri, supporting the Prophet against opposition. In 1844, after Joseph Smith and his brother were killed in the Carthage, Missouri, jail, Brigham Young became head of the church and led his flock west to Salt Lake City, where he established a co-operative religious society that built up the State of Utah. At his death he is said to have left an estate of $1,000,000,19 wives, and 57 children.
The SITE OF BRIGHAM YOUNG’S CHAIR FACTORY is about 300 feet east of the house. Most of the chairs that he made have been bought up by Mormons to be cherished as relics; one, however, is in the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences, and another in the Holland Land Office Museum, Batavia.
VICTOR, 17.2 m. (580 alt., 1,107 pop.), occupies the site of a battle, the only one ever fought in Ontario County, between Denonville and a Seneca force in July 1687. On June 10, 1939, a monument was unveiled in the village in memory of Kryn, or Athasata, ‘The Great Shadow,’ the Mohawk chief who led the Christian Indian contingent of the French force against his own people.
Right from Victor on Holcomb Road 1.5 m. to BOUGHTON HILL, the site of Gandagaro, the largest Seneca village destroyed by Denonville’s army in 1687. Father Joseph Chaumonot, Jesuit missionary, came to Boughton Hill in 1658 to preach and baptize among the Indians. Father Jean Pierron came here in November 1673 and a year or two later built St. Joseph’s Chapel, the fourth in Seneca territory.
MANCHESTER, 26.6 m. (590 alt., 1,329 pop.), bustles with its Lehigh Valley freight transfer yard, in which some 500 Syrians, Ukrainians, and Italians load and unload 100 and more freight cars a day. Early residents named the settlement for Manchester, England.
In an old town cemetery is the grave of one Timothy Ryan, who was stung to death on May 14, 1814, by his own bees; the epitaph on his tombstone reads:
A thousand ways cut short our days—none are exempt from death.
A honey bee—by stinging me—did stop my mortal breath.
This grave contains the last remains of my frail house of clay;
My soul is gone, not to return, to our eternal day.
A neighborhood character until about 1860 was Ebenezer Horton, the Ontario Hermit, who lived and died alone in his hut near Cedar Swamp; he attended corn husking bees, and when the fiddles were brought out no one could ‘cut it down’ like Eb Horton: an original jitterbug, he put in somersaults and other improvisations, all in perfect time. Invited to join a sleigh ride party, when the sleigh arrived he climbed a tree; no amount of coaxing could bring him down, and since he was in danger of freezing to death, the tree was chopped down. He scrambled to a larger tree and perched himself on a branch. This time a fire was built under the tree and he suddenly jumped, breaking several bones; but he recovered under a doctor’s care.
At 31.2 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
Right on this road 0.6 m. to CLIFTON SPRINGS (500 alt., 1,409 pop.), tree-shaded and landscaped like a park. The CLIFTON SPRINGS SANITARIUM, in the center of the village, occupies a 75-acre estate and gives treatment for all but mental and contagious diseases.
The trim industrial village of PHELPS, 35.6 m. (542 alt., 1,397 pop.), quarries stone and sand and produces grain drills, tinware, electric platform motor trucks, paint, fertilizers, and millwork; but principally it makes sauerkraut. Phelps is the scene of Bellamy Partridge’s Country Lawyer.
The EMPIRE STATE PICKLING PLANT, Eagle St. off Main St., with its tile-roofed stucco office building and its gleaming tile block factory with row upon row of skylight windows, is the largest sauerkraut factory in the world; and the same company runs five additional plants within a radius of 15 miles.
As the cabbages move along on endless belt conveyors, batteries of machines extract the cores in split-second time without bruising the vegetable flesh, and uniformed women deftly pluck off the outer leaves; next huge circular slicers shred the white-green heads into long crisp fibers, which are carried in small trucks to 77 tanks, each 16 feet in diameter and 12 feet deep and with a capacity of three or four freight-car loads; the cabbage emerges in about three weeks as tangy, full-flavored sauerkraut.
The small QUAKER CEMETERY (L), 39.3 m., is all that remains of what was once a Quaker village. A group of Quakers settled here in the early 1800’s, and in 1860 purchased the cemetery land for $12.
FIVE POINTS (West Junius), 39.9 m. (490 alt., 30 pop.), is at the junction with State 14 (see Tour 28).
WATERLOO, 46.7 m. (450 alt., 3,992 pop.) (see Tour 8), is at the junction with US 20 (see Tour 8).
Section b. WATERLOO to OWEGO; 74.3 m. State 2
Between Waterloo and Ithaca the route follows the ridge between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes, the largest of the Finger Lakes group. The lakes are too far away to be seen, but side roads lead to their wooded shores broken by jutting points and deep ravines cut into the rock by short, turbulent streams.
Abundant game and fish made this a favorite Indian hunting ground. After the Revolution the State purchased the Indian titles to the land and set aside 1,500,000 acres, known as the Military Tract, to be distributed among the war veterans as a bounty. But when distribution began in 1791, confusion resulted: fraudulent claims were honored and rightful claims rejected; veterans who, tired of waiting, had sold their rights for a pittance nevertheless claimed their reward; legal owners found their titles challenged by squatters. For many years westward-moving pioneers passed by this land of uncertain titles, preferring to settle on the Phelps and Gorham Purchase west of Seneca Lake. The townships in the Military Tract, laid out in 1789 and 1790, were almost all given classical names—Lysander, Cato, Brutus, Cicero, Manlius, Sempronius, Fabius, Cincinnatus, and so on. It has never been determined who was responsible for this choice, but the action represented not merely an individual interest but the larger prejudices of the young Nation: English and Indian names were anathema because of the fresh memories of the Revolution, and the heroic spirit of the Roman republic had inspired many a patriot leader.
South of WATERLOO, 0 m., is the junction, 2.8 m., with a dirt road.
Right on this road 0.7 m. to the PETER WHITMER FARM, owned by the Mormon Church. Here in a log cabin, on Tuesday, April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith (see Tour 29) and his two brothers, David Whitmer and his brother Joseph Jr., and Oliver Cowdery, the Prophet’s collaborator in writing the Book of Mormon, organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. From this farm Joseph Smith directed the missionary work of his followers for more than a year.
State 2 runs in common with State 414 between ROMULUS, 11.6 m. (330 alt., 79 pop.), and OVID, 17.6 m. (717 alt., 537 pop.). At Ovid, State 414 continues right (straight ahead) and State 2 branches left.
Right (straight ahead) on State 414 to HECTOR, 13.5 m. (860 alt., 60 pop.), a hamlet overlooking the lake. A temperance society was formed here in 1818; the founders aimed at total abstinence as the cure for the evils of drink, but they omitted wine and beer from the pledge lest they defeat their purpose. In the 1820’s other New York State societies incorporated the ideal of total abstinence in their constitutions. In 1826 the Hector society voted to offer its members the choice of two pledges, one for abstinence from distilled spirits and the other for total abstinence; in recording the choices the secretary placed a ‘T’ before the names of those who had signed the total pledge, and they were called ‘T-Totalers.’ Teetotalism spelled the temporary decline of the local temperance organizations; many who would have subscribed to abstinence from hard liquor would not relinquish a glass of wine or a scuttle of suds. But Hector remained a desert for many years.
WATKINS GLEN, 22.7 m. (477 alt., 2,906 pop.) (see Tour 27), is at the junction with State 14 (see Tour 27).
From several high points on the road south of Ovid, Cayuga Lake is visible in a panorama of blue-green water sweeping to the eastern hills.
The name of TRUMANSBURG, 31.9 m. (1,000 alt., 1,128 pop.), was misspelled for that of its first settler, Abner Treman, a Revolutionary veteran who came here in 1792. At the southern village line (R) are the TRUMANSBURG FAIR GROUNDS, dull green exhibit buildings grouped around a dirt race track, annual scene of one of the fourteen blue ribbon fairs of the State.
At 33.5 m. is the official entrance to TAUGHANNOCK STATE PARK (camping, picnicking, bathing, baseball, bowling), comprising 400 acres with a long lake front. TAUGHANNOCK FALLS, more than a mile from the entrance, have a drop of 215 feet, 50 feet higher than Niagara. Except in the spring the volume of falling water is small, but the fall captivates by its quietness and by the dense spray which, rising from the bottom of the gorge, shrouds the lower half of the cliff in mist.
ITHACA, 43.5 m. (400 alt., 19,647 pop.) (see Ithaca).
Right from Ithaca on State 13 to BUTTERMILK FALLS STATE PARK (parking 25¢; camping, hiking, swimming), 2.3 m., an area of 510 acres along Buttermilk Creek, which drops more than 500 feet in a series of rapids and cascades; a steep footpath follows the stream to the head of the rapids.
The ROBERT H. TREMAN (ENFIELD GLEN) STATE PARK (picnicking, camping, hiking, fishing, bathing), 4.7 m., 823 acres, one of the most beautiful of the Finger Lakes parks, includes glacial potholes, rock formations, and a deep gorge boring 2.5 miles into a hillside. In the glen is a series of 12 waterfalls.
South of Ithaca, State 2 follows the route of the early Ithaca-Owego Turnpike, on which pioneer settlers hauled lumber and wheat to Owego. The road parallels stretches of the Ithaca & Owego Railroad, incorporated in 1828, which received the second railroad charter in the State; for the first six years the trains were horse-drawn.
At 72.5 m., where Catatonk Creek joins Owego Creek, is the junction (L) with State 38 (see Tour 8). OWEGO, 74.3 m. (818 alt., 4,742 pop.) (see Tour 3), is at the junction with State 17 (see Tour 3).