Tag Archives: Corning

Where to Park, in the Southern Tier!

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“If I had a dead fish, I’d share the carcass –
If I had a car, I’d parallel parkus.”

Stirring words from the Sherman the shark, sage of Kapupu Lagoon! But seriously, if you (or your guests) are touring the Finger Lakes, where many of our streets were laid out BEFORE the horse and buggy, you’ll sometimes find parking to be a challenge, or at least an annoyance. Here are some ideas, drawn from rich experience.
Parking in downtown Owego can be a challenge, especially since most of the on-street parking has a two-hour limit. There’s a small public lot on Church Street, but it’s often full. Two lots for county employees are available, but open to the public ONLY evenings and weekends. You don’t have to go very far to hit residential neighborhoods, with on-street parking not limited to two hours.
What you may not know is that the large Hyde Lot, off Temple Street behind the village hall, has free three-hour parking. It’s exactly what you need in Owego on a business day. Since the entrance is a block or two away from the business district, we visited Owego for decades before realizing it was there. It certainly simplified our visits!
Corning offers some challenges in the Southside business-government district. Tourists sometimes get caught (and ticked) (and ticketed) because they move from Zone A (for example) when the time limit’s up, and park at another spot. BUT if you find another area marked Zone A, THE SAME LIMIT APPLIES – it’s a TOTAL of two hours a day for ANY Zone A. So you have to move to a differently-lettered zone, or pay for parking… or pay for a ticket. There is a pay garage off Market Street, plus there are pay lots along Denison, next to the library, and elsewhere. The automated kiosk system at these lots is kind of a nuisance. You memorize your space number and go to the kiosk, key in your number, put in the appropriate money, get a slip, go back to your car, and leave it on the dashboard, after which you can finally go about your business.
This is tough on tourists who don’t know the system, the disabled or elderly who have trouble getting around, parents with small children, and anybody who doesn’t like walking or standing in sleet (snow, rain, hail, high wind, lightning). I believe the kiosks now take debit or credit cards, which helps if you’re out of cash. There’s no fee on weekends.
Hammondsport is a small town that gets large crowds. There’s a parking lot at Main and Shethar, and another at Mechanic and Shethar (both on northeast corners). There’s also a strip of head-in spaces at the waterfront, near the Depot, and two or three fringes of spaces at Liberty Square (Mechanic and Lake). Otherwise it’s on-street parking… try getting over to Lake or other away-from-the-center streets, and you may do well. For some events they arrange “remote” parking with free shuttles in and out.
Bath recently took out a few parking meters in the downtown business district, making free parking available for limited periods, helping people who need to step into a store or the post office. Many metered spaces (both parallel and head-in) are available. There’s also a large municipal lot (metered) behind the row of buildings on the east side of Liberty, between East William and East Steuben.
Watkins Glen has a small free lot on Third Street, behind the visitors center. The state park lot charges eight dollars sunrise to sunset. There are also spaces near the marina, and on-street parking… no meters in Watkins.
All of this is subject to change! And none of this is official! But it’s overwhelmingly accurate, and at least gives you a starting point for when you visit. Have fun in our small towns!
(By the way, that “If I had a dead fish” poem is by Jim Toomey, in his “Sherman’s Lagoon” comic strip. Check it out – it’s a great strip!)

Hurricane Agnes: 72 + 50

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In June of 1972, a horrendous flood pulverized our area, when remnants of Hurricane Agnes stalled overhead and poured out torrents.

In Allegany County, just over the line with Steuben, a father and daughter were swept away and lost. Outside Bath, another man was carried off. A Gang Mills firefighter died, looking for the Bath man. Before long another SEVENTEEN were dead in the Gang Mills-Painted Post-Riverside-Corning City-South Corning crescent.

A day or two afterward, three men surveying damage for the Army Corps of Engineers were killed in Hornell, when their helicopter struck utility lines.

The Canisteo, Conhocton, Tuscarora and Tioga all crested at about the same time, just where they were joining (in Painted Post) to form the Chemung. Young Tommy Hilfiger, watching from Harris Hill, saw the wall of water roll down the riverbed, and rushed back to Elmira to save the stock in his store.

This was America’s most expensive hurricane to that date. The Painted Post Methodist and Presbyterian Churches were condemned, and replaced by one United Church. Whole blocks were condemned nearby, replaced by a new shopping center. Much of the east Market Street area in Corning had to go. The Corning and Elmira library buildings survived, and so did Corning city hall, but the institutions all moved to new construction.

Corning and St. Joseph hospitals survived. St. Joseph’s sent its patients to Arnot, which pushed its “walking wounded” out and told them to make their own way home… often on foot. Corning Hospital, knee-deep in frigid muddy water, shipped their patients to the hospital in Montour Falls, stretched out in the back decks of station wagons driven by community volunteers. The Penn Central railroad bridge in Corning crashed into the Chemung, taking a line of fully-loaded coal cars with it. Railroads across the northeast went broke.

Houses and businesses were washed away, and some never found. Thousands of cars were under water, and though many of them were put back into useable condition, none of them ever worked quite right again.

Keuka, Lamoka, and Waneta Lakes all burst their banks. Parts of Bath and Penn Yan flooded, as did some or all of many other towns. Owego, Binghamton, and Wellsville were all badly hit. Corning Museum of Glass flooded, and so did Corning Glass Works, and most of “the flat” in Corning, and lots of Horseheads, and most of Elmira. Two radio stations cobbled together resources to get one transmitter on the air. The Corning Leader and Elmira Star-Gazette cranked out joint daily issues on a mimeograph.

People lost precious family treasures, and much disappeared from the records. A few years ago, at Steuben County Historical Society, we were called on to help a family find the grave of an infant sister. The funeral home in Horseheads lost all its records in 1972. Happily, we were able to help.

And then people shoveled out. Glass Museum professionals invented new ways to restore documents and artifacts, and their methods are still used worldwide. Amo Houghton announced that the Glass Works was staying put. Volunteers arrived from across the nation. Visionaries created new plans for downtown Corning, Elmira, and Painted Post. People started dividing time into two epochs: BEFORE the flood, and AFTER the flood.

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of “The Flood,” and memories are slipping away. At Steuben County Historical Society we are mounting a “72 + 50” campaign to gather copies of memoirs, diaries, documents, photographs… whatever (other than newspapers, which we already have) tells the tale of the flood as Steuben suffered it. We’re collecting county-wide, OR donate to your local historical society – and if you’re in other counties, reach out to your own societies and agencies there.

It’s often easy to overlook that Hurricane Agnes was a major national (another 100 dead) and international (Mexico and Cuba) disaster. But it’s also OUR story, right here. And we don’t want it to be forgotten.

We’re Still Using New Deal Construction

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A couple of weeks ago, we looked a little at how local folks experienced the Great Depression of roughly 1929-1941. It was a nightmare, but all our efforts to get OUT of the Depression left a very positive mark on our country, and on us locally.

When New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, he threw himself into “the New Deal,” hoping to soften the Depression and build a better future. Social Security was a New Deal program. So was repeal of Prohibition, which put Keuka Lake grapegrowers, shippers, and winemakers back into business.

Putting people to work on construction became a hallmark of the New Deal – the government paid to have the old unused trolley tracks pulled up in Penn Yan.

More visible was work done right in the heart of our coverage area. Painted Post got a new post office, still in use today, with a mural in the lobby (artists need to eat, too). And we’re still crossing the Chemung River on Bridge Street… that bridge was the biggest New Deal project in Corning.

At Bath V.A., which the U.S. had only recently taken over from the state, many of the facilities went back to the 1870s. So one day in 1936 the last surviving Civil War resident wielded a shovel from his wheelchair to ceremonially begin construction of a new modern hospital, which is still in use today.

Roosevelt was a Democrat, but Republican U. S. Representative W. Sterling Cole made sure to secure the funds for the new hospital… AND a new nursing home care unit, AND a new entry bridge… all of them still in use. The V.A. also got reforesting, to the tune of a quarter million seedlings.

Sterling further arranged to vastly expand the Bath Memorial Hospital, now the Pro Action building on Steuben Street, with a new wing joining the two original buildings.

Hammondsport got a brand new school to replace the old Academy, much of which went back before the Civil War. The Glenn H. Curtiss Memorial School, built partly on the old Curtiss home grounds donated by Glenn’s widow, was a K-12 school. It was so cutting-edge that it actually had television when it opened in 1936. Curtiss School was used into the 21st century, and is now privately owned.

Franklin Academy in Prattsburgh also got a hand up. The original 19th-century building burned in 1923 and was replaced the following year. By 1935 it already needed updating, so Prattsburgh got a thorough renovation AND a substantial addition, giving birth to Prattsburgh Central School.

Prattsburgh found that the project was going to run way over the promised funding, so two men went to New York City to plead for more. The official there said he couldn’t do anything, but urged them to go to Washington. Their story of the needs of Prattsburgh’s people had brought tears to his eyes, he said, and a higher authority might be convinced to release more funds. Down they went, sharing a railroad berth to save expenses, and got the funds they needed. Another agency went even further, putting in a ball diamond and athletic fields. The 1935-36 work is still the heart of the school.

Kanona was home to a camp of Civilian Conservation Corps (C.C.C.) lads… older teens hired for a year of conservation-related work. C.C.C. created much of the infrastructure for Stony Brook State Park and Watkins Glen State Park, and after catastrophic flooding in 1935 the boys worked mightily on flood-control and soil-conservation projects. The Army Corps of Engineers built dams and Arkport and Almond, while Avoca, Corning, and Addison got improved flood barriers. Believe it or not, the 1972 flood could have been much worse than it was. Some of the thanks should go to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“From the Bed to the Wall:” Quilts at the Rockwell

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Rockwell Museum currently has a special exhibit, “From the Bed to the Wall: Quilts from a Private New York Collection.”

Quilts are… what? Prosaic utilitarian objects… interesting folk craft artifacts… revelatory data of history, society, culture, and ethnicity… creations of high art.

The answer is, any of the above… and sometimes more than one at once.

Curiously, it seems that from the 1700s to today, quilts have made a journey from high craft, to common furnishing, to high art.

When cloth was an expensive, hand-made material, quilters were upper-class women, well-skilled in decorative arts. The new “dark, satanic mills” of the industrial revolution flooded the world with millions of acres of cloth, for which price suddenly became almost inconsequential.

Now ordinary women… and it was overwhelmingly women… became quilters. Design and technique became folkways. Since it was women’s work, and since the end result was a domestic product, and since hardly anybody paid money for it, scholarly and cultural types paid it no attention at all.

The exhibition in Rockwell’s mezzanine carries us from the end of the 18th century to the dawn of the 21st. Technique is not much touched upon. Part of the emphasis is on design, and part is on the cultural or personal settings of the creators.

“Crows Quilt,” a creation by African American artist Sarah May Taylor (1916-2000) was one of my favorites. Three crows adorn each block, but no two blocks are alike, each varying the color and position of the birds.

My other favorite was “Center Diamond,” made about 1910 by a Pennsylvania Amishwoman. The geometric design fits with traditional Amish wariness about figural art, but it also makes a bold, dramatic assertion that seizes your attention from across the room. It opens the “Amish and Modernism” section of the exhibit, an apt if counterintuitive observation – Amish design… so conservative and traditional… anticipates, and even guides, modern design.

Joyce’s favorite was a highly personal sampler quilt, where many blocks include prayers or meditations, almost as though the whole thing forms a personal or religious journal.

We examined an 1891 redwork pattern quilt, trying in vain to discern whether the artist embroidered her figures freehand, or whether she stitched over a printed pattern. (If she did it freehand, she was DARN good.) We also looked closely at a midwestern Amish Bow Tie quilt (c. 1920), finished with several eye-catching errors – such as one block incomplete, one block rotated 90 degrees, and one block off-color. It’s been a traditional practice in some Amish circles to deliberately make a quilt with visible errors, to emphasize that only God achieves perfection.

There were a couple of doll quilts and a couple of crazy quilts, plus a few “friendship” or “signature” quilts, on which the names of makers, friends, or supporters are embroidered. This included a “tithing quilt” from Brewerton Methodist Episcopal Church (New York, 1924). The term was utterly new to us, despite a couple of decades of living in southeastern Pennsylvania… it seems it’s a signature quilt, but what it has to do with tithing is beyond us!

(The quilt exhibit runs through January 10. Also on just now are are “Antigravity: Elaine K. Ng,” through February 2022; “Three Generations: Pablita Velarde, Helen Hardin and Margrete Bagshaw,” through January; the Gingerbread Invitational, through December 31; and “Martine Gutierrez: Takeover,” through December 13.)


Time-Traveling Through the 1920s — Part One!

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A few weeks ago we looked at things that were happening exactly a hundred years ago, in 1920. Today let’s take a time machine back, and tour our area to see what was new and fresh then, and old friends to us now.
To begin our trip, we can sit in on foundational meetings for the brand-new incorporated Village of South Corning – home to St. Mary’s Cemetery, St. Mary’s Orthodox Cemetery, most of Hope Cemetery, a massive memorial arch for glass workers killed in a train crash, and the Town of Corning offices.
We can start 1921 in Wayland, at the Bennett’s Motors building on Route 15. Sad to say the family business closed at the end of last year, but the building will now be used by the ambulance corps.
Since we have a time machine, zipping over to Painted Post takes no time at all. Here we can see the foursquare old Erwin Muncipal Building, “built like a fortress” according to new owners, which allowed it to survive floods in 1935 and 1972. Keep your eye on it – the owners have great plans.
Just a few blocks down, but a year forward, we enter Riverside, incorporated as a village in 1922. It was formerly named Centerville, and also got hammered by those floods.
Continue on down Pulteney Street, once again jogging a year ahead, and we can look at the still-impressive Hotel Stanton on Bridge Street. In Bath the municipal building (which looks a lot like the Erwin building) was dedicated as a Great War memorial in 1923. That same year the new K-12 Haverling School opened at Liberty and Washington… most people know it nowadays as the old Dana Lyon school.
Up in Prattsburgh the Air-Flo building has been substantially altered, but it also first saw the light of day in 1923. And back at Wayland we can admire the 1923 American Legion hall, which was built to include a movie theater, and operated as such for decades.
Head south on Route 21, smoothly transitioning to 1924 as we go, and we’ll arrive at the Village of North Hornell – the last municipality to be created in Steuben County, and home to the new St. James Mercy Center. Driving on into the City of Hornell we can admire the neoclassical Lincoln School, now on the National Register of Historic Places after providing a neighborhood school for generations of families.
Back in Prattsburgh we’re bound to be impressed by the Franklin Academy (Prattsbugh Central School) and the ornate Presbyterian Church. The side-by-side structures went up in 1924, after their historic side-by-side predecessors burned down together on a memorable winter’s night in 1923. (The school’s been added to considerably in the last century, of course.)
On a less-dramatic note we can stop at the Babcock building on Bath’s Liberty Street, opened as a new-fangled movie theater (silents only) in 1924. The auditorium itself is gone, but many, many folks still fondly remember Friday nights or Saturday afternoons at the Babcock. But the street level later become part of Bath National Bank, now Five Star Bank. Unfortunately that branch has just been closed, so who knows what the Babcock faces as its second century approaches?

The OTHER Corning

Have you ever been to Corning? No, not THAT Corning. The OTHER Corning. The ORIGINAL Corning.
Once upon a time, Europeans called this the Painted Post Country. When Steuben County was created in 1796, Painted Post got official standing as one of six “supertowns” created at the same time. From these six Towns came the 32 Towns and two Cities of today’s Steuben, plus parts of five newer counties.
In 1836 a much-reduced Painted Post changed its name to Corning, after giving birth to Campbell, Hornby, Erwin, Lindley, and Caton. (Just to cloud matters a little more, a new Village in Erwin took the name Painted Post when it was incorporated in 1860.)
When the CITY of Corning was created in 1890, it was legally separated from the Town (taking almost 80% of the population) and immediately began to overshine its namesake parent.
Which is a shame, because the Town of Corning has a lot to offer on its own.
The Town of Corning completely surrounds the City. This can be a little had to see sometimes because of the Corning “megalopolis” – the urban sprawl that starts with unincorporated Gang Mills, then through the official Villages of Painted Post and Riverside, through the City itself, and culminates in the Village of South Corning.
In New York, incoporated Villages remain a part of their Town, so Riverside and South Corning, both incorporated in the 1920s, are in Corning Town. Much of what we think of as the City of Corning is actually in the Town, or even in the Town of Erwin.
Many of the Town offices are in South Corning, which was formed from the communities of Brown’s Crossing and Mossy Glen. The Village is also home to most of Hope Cemetery, and to St. Mary’s Cemetery and St. Mary’s Orthodox Cemetery. Where the Catholic and Orthodox Cemeteries come together is a monument to some 20 glassworkers killed in an 1891 train wreck in Ravenna, Ohio, on their way back to the Corning area.
Besides the two Villages, Gibson, Denmark, and East Corning are part of the Town. The stretch along the Chemung River was once known as Little Flats, with Big Flats farther downstream.
Corning Community College is in the Town of Corning, as are Spencer Crest Nature Center and the Houghton Land Preserve, not to mention the new Corning Hospital.
Post Creek, Narrows Creek, and Cutler Creek all flow down through the Town from the north to empty into the Chemung River, while Bailey Creek runs through the Town from the south. I’m open to correction, but I believe that the “Christ is the Answer” sign is in the Town of Corning.
A boulder in the Town of Corning designates the Pre-Emption Line, from which much of western New York was surveyed back in the early days of the republic.
Corning Town has always been a vital link in the chain of transportation. The Chemung River, Chemung Feeder Canal, Erie Railroad, DL&W Railroad, and an interurban trolley line followed the natural lay of the land, as did what we now call Routes 352 and 415, which follow the tracks of Indian trails. More modern times have also brought in I-86.
Of course, those rivers and creeks also wrought devastation in the floods of 1935, 1946, and 1972.
The Imperial Club of distant memory was in the Town of Corning, and so is Corning Country Club, which hosted the L.P.G.A. Corning Classic for many years. Tobacco was once an important product, but the Town has no state forests or state game lands. Over 6000 people call it home. Don’t overlook it.

Hurricane Agnes: Reality Was Bad Enough

Makeshift morgues were set up in Corning and Painted Post. Outside, people whispered. “There are fifty bodies in there… sixty… a hundred….”

*Nothing even close. But the reality was bad enough.

*The first local death in the 1972 flood took place when a man was swept away in Bath. The second death came downstream in Gang Mills, where a firefighter was searching for the body.

*Hurricane Agnes had already caused a hundred deaths from Cuba to Pennsylvania, and two more would die in Canada. The official New York state death toll was 24.

*The firefighter was the first of 18 in the Gang Mills-Painted Post-Riverside-Corning-South Corning stretch. A father and daughter died in Allegany County, right on the line with Steuben. Add in the single Bath death, and 21 of the 24 New York fatalities came in (or on the edge of) Steuben County.

*And the count of 24 does NOT include three men killed a day or two later in Hornell, when their helicopter crashed as they conducted a damage survey for the Army Corps of Engineers.

*It’s a wonder the toll wasn’t higher, given the fact that in the Corning area, the rivers burst their banks unexpectedly, in the early morning hours, meaning that many residents were taken by surprise.

*Then there were those who were already in distress. A doctor in Corning Hospital performed emergency surgery by flashlight while standing knee-deep in cold, filthy water. The hospital telephoned people with station wagons and begged them to come in. Each one laid a patient out in the car’s flatbed and drove them to another hospital – often, the one in Montour Falls. Amazingly, they didn’t lose a single patient, but in some cases families couldn’t find them for days.

*St. Joseph’s Hospital in Elmira, although flooded, was able to rush patients to nearby Arnot, where they lined the halls on gurneys. One young woman, who had had surgery in Arnot the day after her high school graduation, was bustled out of the hospital by a nurse who told her she had to get out, so they could use the space. With no one expecting her, and no phones working, she struggled several miles home on foot, then collapsed.

*Although this was certainly Steuben County’s worst flood in terms of deaths, the overall death toll was far worse in the flood of 1935, when 44 were killed, mostly in the Finger Lakes. (More about that in a couple of weeks.)

*President Roosevelt’s New Deal administration got very busy after 1935, putting in dikes and other flood control measures, such as the Arkport Dam. Believe it or not, without those improvements 1972 would have been far, far worse. But, as we said back at the beginning of this blog, the reality was bad enough.

John James Audubon Comes to the Rockwell

We are very fortunate to have, now on exhibit in Corning’s Rockwell Museum, the work of one of the most significant artists ever to work in America.

*John James Audubon spent decades tramping, riding, or boating across the United States, determined to document his adopted country’s native birds in paint. He hunted with Daniel Boone, and lived among the Indians. He probably knew America better than any man had before… and we can wonder whether anyone has known it so well since.

*Although greeted with considerable skepticism, “Birds of America” was quickly recognized as a staggering achievement in art and in nature study (and in printing techniques, too).

*Audubon then launched upon “Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America” – in other words, mammals. It’s from this work that our exhibit comes, in the form of highest quality hand-colored lithographic plates.

*Look at the Canada Otter… look, and keep looking. Look deeper, and deeper again. Notice how much of the fur is painted in as individual hairs, perhaps with a single-bristle brush.

*Many of the names are unfamiliar to us… some have changed names, some have gone extinct, some have been reclassified. Audubon presents us with the black squirrel, which we now consider just an uncommon color morph of the gray squirrel.

*Likewise in his artistic menagerie we find the polar bear, black bear, grizzly bear, and cinnamon bear. We now see the cinnamon as a subspecies of our own black bear.

*Audubon sometime staged his scenes in unlikely or even impossible ways. Five Common Flying Squirrels burst from a single tree, at various stages of age and occupation (resting, coiling, “flying,” etc.). They look like a Tasha Tudor picture.

*The Long-Haired Squirrel skips up and down a maple tree, as we can see from the leaves. The soft-haired squirrel makes its home in an oak.

*Audubon died before the project was finished; one son finished up the figures, while another finished the backgrounds. I don’t know who made the artistic decision, but the “Birds” and the “Quadrupeds” seem to have a telling difference.

*In the bird paintings, as far as I know, all of the backgrounds are natural settings. But the quadrupeds book shows a background filled with fences, farms, and towns. In some cases, the human presence intrudes still farther. The Tawny Weasel seizes a chicken in the yard of a large, well-kept barn. The Red Fox and the Canada Otter each snarl at the viewer, one paw caught in a trap. The Black-Tailed Deer staggers away, streaming blood, after being shot by a hunter at port arms in the background. Anerica had changed dramatically… more than dramatically… in Audubon’s adult lifetime.

*The book was originally issued in two oversize editions, one of them huge, and three subjects are on oversize sheets, pushing a yard in width. The Canada Otter, the Little American Brown Weasel, and the Caribou, or American Rein Deer are here in that detailed glory.

*The exhibit runs through January 6, and you may never get a chance to see another such gathering. Also of interest right now: the invitational gingerbread house competition, and “Your Place, Your Space,” an exhibition from Mrs. Marla Goldwyn’s 8th-grade digital art class at Corning-Painted Post Middle School. Take them in, and enjoy the permanent galleries. But don’t miss Audubon.

Take a One-Mile Walk — on Sidewalk

A couple of weeks ago, both for business and for pleasure, I made several stops in Corning that required walking from one end of Market Street to the other, and back again. Since Market is half a mile long, I did a mile walk.

*If you’re doing that walk for exercise or pleasure, you can enjoy yourself checking out all the varied architectural facades. You can take in the clock tower at the Centerway Square, and stop in next door at the visitors center in the Baron Steuben Building to use the rest rooms.

*You can get a Texas hot across the street, or smoothies down at the Soulful Cup coffeehouse. You can study the art at West End Gallery, or at the ARTS of the Southern Finger Lakes. You should check out the “blade signs.” Corning is famed for these creative signs coming out at right angles to their buldings.

*There are quite a few other places around our region where you can walk a mile without having to leave the sidewalks – which can be a fun way to keep fit when the woods and fields are icy, soaked or snowcovered.

*Stand by the bandstand in BATH’s Pulteney Square, look up Liberty Street, then walk out of the park onto the Liberty sidewalk at your left (the west side). Keep walking up Liberty (crossing Washington) until you get to the Civil War statue. Walk back to the bandstand, and you’ve done a mile.

*Besides the bandstand and the statue, you’ll see the “three sisters” near the statue – three elaborate matching 19th-century homes, created in part to promote a lumber business. You pass the monumental 19th-century St. Thomas Church, across from the delightful contemporary Centenary Methodist Church.

*As on Market Street, enjoy the business facades, but recognize that many of Bath’s buildings are older, such as the 1860 county courthouse and the 1835 Bank of Steuben, almost directly across the Square. The green space in the Square has several monuments, and the dramatic First Presbyterian Church is on the south.

*In CANANDAIGUA if you use the courthouse as one anchor, the pier a mile away is the other.

*Susan B. Anthony was tried in that courthouse for the crime of voting, and fined a hundred dollars. She said she would never pay one penny of that unjust fine, and she never did.

*On your Canandaigua walk you’ll cross active railroad tracks (watch your steps), besides passing art galleries, a paperback book store, an embroidery shop, and even a comic book store. All of this depends on which side of the street you’re on, and Canadaigua’s Main Street has four lanes, plus a grassy median… so once again, watch your step!

*Also watch the “green” sidewalk features that Canandaigua has created to capture rainwater and naturally process it… a marvelous addition to the city. And, of course, if you walk north to south you just improve your view of the lake with every step.

*Start on Main Street in CANISTEO, walk up Greenwood (the old trolley route) to the elementary school and back, and you’ve got a mile. This also gives you a chance to see the famed “living sign” tree plantation spelling out the name of the village up on a hillside near the school.

*Also by the school is the very pleasant cemetery, including two 1920s gravestones appallingly inscribed with “K.K.K.” On a less horrifying note, there are also historic homes and churches on Greenwood Street, plus the businesses and churches down on Main Street and the village green area.

*So – want a little exercise, but at your own rate, with frequent breaks allowed and a good surface underfoot? There are plenty of one-mile walks available in our communities. We’ll look at some more, another time.

A Tour Through the Counties: Sprawling Steuben

STEUBEN was formed in 1796, and named for hero of the Revolution Baron Steuben. He never visited, but the name continually confuses researchers who mix it up with the Town of Steuben, near the Baron’s home in Herkimer County… not to mention those who mix it up with Steuben County, Indiana (where several place names are duplicated, just to muddy the waters even more).
*Steuben County is bigger than Rhode Island… in fact, it’s almost the size of Delaware. Its terrain varies considerably. Roughly south of the line of the Conhocton and Chemung Rivers, the highlands of the Appalachian Plateau rise. In the northwest corner, western New York’s rich muckland begins.
*The county’s so big that folks from its various components scarcely know the rest of the place. Corning, of course, is dominated by Corning Incorporated. Formerly an industrial town where the Glass Works pumped out soot, and trains ran down the main streets, Corning is now world headquarters for the company, and the center of research. Market Street, once crammed with saloons, is a lovely tourist marketplace. The Glass Museum is a major tourist attractor, and Corning Community College perches up on the peak of Spencer Hill.
*Hornell once boomed with railroad work – nowadays it hums, but the “Maple City” still earns much of its bread from the trains. Hornell has one of two Carnegie libraries in the five-county region. For decades Hornell was home to farm teams for Major League Baseball… alumni include Don Zimmer and Charlie Neal.
*Bath bustles as the county seat, and home for a V.A. Medical Center, which began life as a place to care for New York veterans of the Civil War. Arbor Development, the ARC, Pro-Action, Catholic Charities and other service agencies complement the work of the County and the V.A. Bath also has the county prison, and what used to be called “the infirmary.”
*Hammondsport, like Corning, is a tourism magnet (though many of the tourists bed down in Bath). The attractors here are Keuka Lake, the wineries, and Glenn Curtiss. Swimming and boating are big on the lake, and the scenery’s spectacular. Vine-covered hillsides and 19th-century stone vaults complement modern winery operations, and many of them welcome visitors.
*The Finger Lakes Trail wends through Steuben – so do the Bristol Hills Trail, and the Crystal Hills Trail. It’s New York’s top county for deer harvest, and in the top five for turkey.
*There are hospitals in or near Bath, Corning, and Hornell, and state parks in opposite corners. Robert Moses selected the “gorge-eous” site for Stony Brook State Park, and Governor Al Smith bought it.
*Addison, Prattsburgh, Hammondsport, and Bath have lovely green town squares (some have more than one). Savona, Bath, Hornell, and Corning have breathtaking historic churches. Parts of the central and southern portions of the county are horse-and-buggy country, with substantial populations of Amish and/or Old Order Mennonites.
*A staggering view overlooks Bath from Mossy Bank Park. On the flats below the lookout, eagles frequently nest… the corridors of the Conhocton and Canisteo Rivers have been growth regions for them, and also for osprey. Bobcat, beaver, fisher, and bear have recently returned to their historic ranges here.
*Besides the wildlife, Steuben has a little over a hundred thousand people. As far as I can tell, most of them like it here.