Rochester—Bath—Painted Post—(Mansfield, Pa.); US 15. Rochester to Pennsylvania Line, 102.5 m.
Two-lane concrete, with stretches of macadam.
Delaware, Lackawanna & Western and Erie R.R.s parallel route between Cohocton and Painted Post; New York Central R.R. between Painted Post and Pennsylvania line.
US 15 crosses deep rural New York. In the northern part of the route the influence of Rochester is seen in the suburban cottages and truck gardens; but along most of the way are broad fields of potatoes, peas, beans, and forage crops.
South from ROCHESTER, 0 m., US 15 runs in a straight line for some 20 miles. In WEST HENRIETTA, 8.6 m. (600 alt., 125 pop.), the village garage (R) with its cobblestone walls occupies an old carriage factory; the forges, workbenches, and bellows of a hundred years ago are intact.
EAST AVON, 18.2 m. (821 alt., 250 pop.), is at the junction with US 20 (see Tour 8).
LAKEVILLE, 23.6 m. (825 alt., 476 pop.), is at the junction with US 20A (see Tour 8A), which runs in common with US 15 to LIVONIA, 25.8 m. (1,044 alt., 747 pop.) (see Tour 8A).
SPRINGWATER, 40.3 m. (970 alt., 600 pop.), farm trading center, was the scene of a battle in 1866 between landowners and evicted squatters. The latter were defeated.
In the early days of settlement, when transportation costs were high, grain was too bulky to be shipped to market and was therefore turned into whisky, much of which was consumed on the spot. There is a local story about a farmer’s wife who tried to cure her husband of excessive drinking by accosting him one night wrapped in a sheet; but he met the situation with a drunken calm, addressing the ghost thus: ‘If you’re a good spirit you’ll do me no harm; if you’re the devil, as I suspect, I’ve married into your family, and as you’re much too much of a gentleman to injure a relative, I fear no danger from that quarter; so I pass.’
WAYLAND, 45.5 m. (1,372 alt., 1,790 pop.), was a stopping place for the stage between Elmira and Buffalo; the last ‘coach,’ a buckboard wagon, made its final trip on July 20, 1889. After the Erie Railroad was built in the fifties, German immigrants settled here and gave the place a reputation for hard work and thrift.
Wayland is in the northwest corner of Steuben County, one of the greatest potato-growing counties in the country; in recent years the canneries in the village have encouraged the growing of peas, beans, and corn. The village also has chair and silk factories.
Right from Wayland on State 39 to DANSVILLE, 6.4 m. (725 alt., 4,967 pop.), a nursery center and manufacturing village producing heating equipment, textbooks and magazines, tissue paper, and shoes. Here on August 22, 1881, Clara Barton, while recuperating from an illness at the Jackson Sanitarium, founded the first local chapter of the American Red Cross.
The MACFADDEN-DANSVILLE HEALTH RESORT, Health St., is a large Victorian hotel established as a sanitarium in 1858 by Dr.Caleb A. Jackson and reopened in 1929 by Bernarr Macfadden, publisher and physical culturist, as a health resort.
The hotel has won wide publicity as the terminus of the Bunion, or Cracked Wheat, Derby, as the newspapers call it, an annual hike by Bernarr Macfadden and enthusiastic disciples, who during the two-week trek live on cracked wheat, raisins, brown sugar, and honey.
In the first derby in May 1935, of the 100 crusaders who left New York City only 38 arrived in Dansville, 325 miles away, sunburnt, blistered, and weary. The fourth derby, in 1938, started from Cleveland, Ohio; of the 110 starters, 100 were in at the finish, the good showing probably due to the addition of grapefruit and raw vegetables to the diet. Through cities the hike becomes a triumphal procession with police escort, band serenaders, welcoming speeches, and appearances in local theatres; in Dansville the survivors are rewarded with a sumptuous banquet and a week-end at Macfadden’s health resort, topped off by hikes into the countryside.
South from Dansville on State 36 to STONY BROOK STATE PARK, 9.4 m. (parking 25¢), which covers 560 acres of rough, rocky country. Stony Brook has here carved a deep gorge through the sheer rock, creating a number of waterfalls. Accommodations are being improved by a Federal work relief project.
In Wayland is the junction with State 21 (see Tour 29), which runs in common with US 15 for 1.4 miles.
At 48.7 m. the road crosses the site of a flood control project of the United States Soil Erosion Service; after the destructive flood of July 1935 in southern New York, Federal agencies co-operated to repair damage and prevent recurrence by building gradient dams in incipient gullies, straightening streams and deepening their beds to permit faster runoff, and building earthen dikes to keep streams within their courses.
At 61.6 m. the straightened highway skirts AVOCA (1,191 alt., 1,084 pop.), which manufactures brooms, hockey sticks, spools and reels, and potato graders. A local story tells of an early settler who, to teach a lesson to the Indians who stole his firewood, stuffed his wood with gunpowder; when the burning sticks exploded in the fire, the Indians thought the wood bewitched and never again stole wood from the white man.
BATH, 69.8 m. (1,104 alt., 4,656 pop.), is in a rich farming area and makes ladders, saddlery, and knit goods. Pulteney Square, lined with business blocks and the buff-colored brick Steuben County buildings, is the site of the first clearing in Steuben County made in 1793 by Colonel Charles Williamson (1757–1808), agent for the Pulteney Estate. Believing that the settlement and trade of central New York would follow the Susquehanna to Baltimore, Williamson chose the site of Bath on the Cohocton River as the location of the future metropolis that was to be the trading, industrial, and distribution center for the entire region. But he was too energetic to wait for the normal processes of settlement; his plan was to build the city first, which would then attract settlers. He set out to induce wealthy and socially prominent country gentlemen from Virginia and Maryland to buy land for either speculation or development; and to attract them he built roads, hotels, mills, and schoolhouses, started a newspaper, erected a theater which in 1799 advertised the performance of The Mock Doctor or The Dumb Lady Cured and A Peep into the Seraglio, and laid out a race track in the wilderness where he held annual racing meets and cattle fairs. Williamson’s overhasty promotions cost his principals more than $1,000,000 and he was dismissed from his position in 1801.
In Bath is the junction with State 54 (see Tour 28).
PAINTED POST, 89.7 m. (950 alt., 2,332 pop.), is at the junction with State 17 (see Tour 3), with which US 15 runs in common for 4.4 miles.
At 102.5 m., in LAWRENCEVILLE (1,000 alt., 300 pop.), US 15 crosses the Pennsylvania line 15 miles north of Mansfield, Pennsylvania.