Tag Archives: Keuka Lake

Winter’s Tales — Part 1

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For most of our time as a species, winter has been the time to gather by the fire, and tell stories. So who are we to scorn the tradition of millennia? This time, with stories ABOUT our winters. And there’ll be more to come!

1790s – Weeks Away From Home
Imagine yourself as an early White farmer on Mount Washington, between Bath and Hammondsport. You’d cleared your land, and worked like a dog, and gathered into barns, but now – you had to SELL your crop.
So you’d wait till the snow lay deep, load up your sledge with grain, hitch up the horses or the oxen, and set off for Naples, which had the nearest mill.
And it took you weeks to get there, through the snow in a roadless forest. Once you had your grain ground to flour, you could head on home, moving a little faster with your lighter load. As long as the snow held out.

1816 – The Year Without a Summer
The 1815-1816 winter wasn’t especially bad, but it never ended. Snow fell and frost formed every month of the year. The creeks still froze in April, and started again in September. Fruit died on the trees, and crops in the ground. People despaired that the sun was going out, but 1817 brought a normal summer, for the cloud of volcanic dust, undetectable at the time, had settled back to earth.

1880s
One day Lena Curtiss took her young children, Glenn and Rutha, out to Pleasant Valley Cemetery to lay flowers on the grave of the children’s father. But as Glenn stepped down from the wagon Billy the horse lurched forward, throwing Glenn to the ground and running the wagon over his head. The caretaker’s family patched him up and mother rushed him home to Hammondsport, where Grandma took over. She thought. For Ed Garton, the hired man, had promised to take Glenn skating that afternoon, and Glenn proclaimed that rather then being put to bed, he was still going skating. Grandma Curtiss was not a woman to mess with, but her young grandson was already showing some of the daring and determination that would one day make him a millionaire. She fixed Glenn up with a new poultice, he went skating with Ed, and came home no worse than he’d been when he left.

1905 – The Hornellsville Horror
On February 1, ladies from Hornell’s Universalist Church bundled up and set off in two sleighs for Arkport to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Just after dark they headed homeward.
The first sleigh crossed a railroad track safely, but riders realized that an oncoming train was far nearer than they’d thought. They shouted frantically to their following friends, but the horses spooked on the track. The engineer tried to brake, but the Angelica Express slammed into the stalled sleigh. The animals escaped unscathed, while the driver and three women were injured. The other ten women… including Mrs. Graves, whose birthday it was – were killed.

1900s – Not Really
We often hear that old-time auto owners used to fill their radiators with water from Seneca Lake – because Seneca Lake never froze in the winter.
If anybody really did that, of course, they had a sad disappointment coming – physics being what it is. But they were also bucking, or just ignorant of, history! Given the gigantic mass of the water in Seneca… which has the greatest volume of any of he Finger Lakes – Seneca does not freeze over AS OFTEN as the other lakes do. But it does fact freeze some winters, and photos prove it. As far back as the 1800s.

Natural Landmarks of (or Near) the Finger Lakes

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We live in a marvelous region, replete with sights and wonders. I suppose that just about every place is like that, if you dig deep enough. Another time, we’ll look at “man-made” landmarks in the region. But for this week, I wanted to enjoy compiling a list of NATURAL landmarks, in or around our Finger Lakes.

Each of our lakes is a natural landmark. But Keuka stands out. Because of its two northern branches, true – but even more so because of the arresting Bluff right between them. It dominates the main body of the Lake and both Branches, making a sight that dwells for decades in the memory. (It’s even MORE overwhelming if you’re actually IN the Lake, gazing up at it.)

NOT one of the Finger Lakes, but the last of the GREAT Lakes, is Lake Ontario. As a sight, well, it’s not MUCH of a sight. It’s the realization that this is an inland fresh-water sea, part of chain of such seas, joined by mighty rivers, in all spanning thousands of miles, that takes the breath away.

At Sodus on the southern shore of Ontario lies Chimney Bluff State Park, home to ever shifting geological formations, shaped and reshaped by wind, wave, and gravity.

Just a few rods south of the Conhocton River in Bath, a cliff and slope rise sharply for 500 feet. You can admire this from the village, for it looms like a wall as you drive south on Liberty Street (or just about any other street, for that matter).

But this view is especially remarkable because it works both ways. Head on up to Mossy Bank Park, drive or walk down to the Lookout, and the whole village, including Lake Salubria, spreads out below you like a playset. You can’t see Keuka Lake, but you can see the vale that wends toward it through the high hills. You can look westward along the course of I-99 toward Kanona. If the air is clear enough you can spot the wind turbines near Prattsburgh, and the set in Howard. If the season is right, monarch butterflies may rise up from the flat. If the stars are right, bald eagles may pass by.

The gorges of Stony Brook State Park and Watkins Glen State Park are natural landmarks, with the streams that rush through them continuing their millennia-long shaping and reshaping of their glens. The cleft of Letchworth Gorge is staggering to see, as is the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania.

We’re blest with many waterfalls, each possessing its own beauty. Montour Falls and Taughannock Falls are two of the best, and it’s fun to stand in their spray on a summer’s day. And talking of falls, how could we omit Niagara? What must that have been like, for the first men and women to see it, ten-thousand years ago or more? First the roar… then the mist… and then a sight which they never could have imagined. And nobody else could either, so reports must have been scorned as travelers’ tales, until so many people had seen it that they had to be believed.

Being from Rhode Island, I long for salt marshes. None nearby, of course. But the Queen Catharine Marsh, between Watkins Glen and Montour Falls, is a huge beautiful flatland, girdled with a foot path created by the Finger Lakes Trail Conference. Harriers, redwings, waterfowl and wading birds abound. If you like marshes – don’t miss it!

“Lost Steuben”

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When Steuben County was formed in 1796, it was a LOT bigger than it is today. It even stretched all the way over from Keuka Lake to Seneca Lake, taking in Lamoka and Waneta along the way.
Over the years portions of Steuben have been sheared off to create new counties, or to augment existing counties.
The first cession came in 1808, when the “seventh range of townships” was transferred to enlarge two-year-old Allegany County. Roughly speaking this is the “stack” of towns that runs north and south on the west side of the Steuben-Allegany line: Ossian (now in Livingston County), Burns (including the Village of Canaseraga), Almond (including most of the Village of Almond), Alfred (including Village), Andover (including Village), and Independence.
Steuben was originally set off from Ontario County, and in 1814 “the part in the fork of Keuka Lake” was donated back to Ontario. This is the southern half of Keuka Bluff, in the Town of Jerusalem. A look at the map confirms that this was a very sensible arrangement – otherwise the Bluff dwellers would have been “islanded,” nowhere in direct contact with their own county. After cession the Bluff and its hinterland were politically, as well as organically, connected. (Although this transfer was to Ontario, the territory went to Yates when that county was created in 1823.)
An 1822 cession transferred what is roughly the Town of North Dansville (including the Village of Dansville) to the year-old Livingston County. This has led to two centuries of confusion over the Town of Dansville (in Steuben), the Village of Dansville (in Livingston), the Town of North Dansville (also in Livingston), and the unincorporated settlement of South Dansville (back in Steuben again).
The 1824 cession gave roughly the Towns of Barrington and Starkey (including the Village of Dundee) to Yates, along with the Towns of Tyrone and Reading (later transferred to help form Schuyler).
The 1854 cession of the Towns of Orange and Dix (including the canal port of Watkins Glen, but not Montour Falls) was also part of the foundation of Schuyler County.
The new County of Schuyler in the east spawned confusion like the confusion of Dansvilles in the west. The Town of Wayne remained in Steuben County, but the settlement of Wayne lies mostly in Schuyler. (Just to mix it up a little more, this settlement is often called Wayne Village, even though it’s not a village legally. There’s also Wayne Four Corners, in Steuben.)
This might also be a good place to note the boundaries in Keuka Lake. The Pulteney-Jerusalem line is extended eastward into the West Branch, until it’s half-way across. It then undulates southward, keeping to the moving centerline; swings around the point of the Bluff at the same distance; and continues northward along the centerline of the East Branch until it reaches a point a little northwest of Wayne’s northern tip, then connects those two points. So Steuben no longer touches the Bluff anywhere, but it does include almost half of the west Branch, and a little bit of the East Branch.
If all of that country were still in Steuben, it would make a big addition to our agriculture. We would have considerably more grape country in the east and on the Bluff, plus somewhat more muckland in the northwest. Educationally, we’d have Alfred University, Alfred State College, and The New York State College of Ceramics.
Our tourism would also be beefed up, with a good stretch of Seneca shoreline, and a lot more on Keuka, not to mention the “Little Lakes.” We’d have a pleasant waterfront town at the head of each major lake, and we would be anchored by a major state park in the east (Watkins Glen) to match our park in the west (Stony Brook). Watkins Glen International would be in Steuben, and much of the Catharine Valley Trail, plus more of the Finger Lakes Trail.
We’d have Camp Gorton, and Camp Lamoka, and a nice airport in Dansville, along with the New York State Festival of Balloons. And in the stakes for most famous Steubener, Clara Barton would be giving Glenn Curtiss a run for his money!

Keuka Lake Legends

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As the story goes…

A Seneca man watched helpless and horrified as a freak storm sprang up on Keuka Lake, capsizing a canoe and killing his enture family. Filled with anger he cursed the lake, saying that though it might take people’s lives, it would never take their bodies. And from that day to this, those who are lost always rise before long to the surface of Keuka.

So the old tale goes, anyway. All communities have myths and legends that have grown up over the years… some amusing, some inspiring, some a little frightening. On Keuka Lake, legends abound.

One is the story that Red Jacket, the Seneca leader and orator, was born on Keuka Lake. There was certainly a Keuka connection – Red Jacket’s mother lived in the Branchport area, at least in her later years, and he used to visit her there. Red Jacket Park in Penn Yan honors his memory.

I checked four sources, and found three birthplaces. We understand that Red Jacket said he’d been born on Keuka — but at other times, he said he’d been born in other places. He was a supreme politician, of course; perhaps at times he tailored his tale to fit his audience.

This leads to a similar legend that Henry Flagler was born, or at least lived, in Hammondsport. Flagler was the driving force behind the development of Florida – notably the Florida East Coast Railroad, Miami, and Miami Beach. Flagler’s father was a Presbyterian minister, and Hammondsport Presbyterian Church had a Flagler as minister in the mid-1800s. But it was a different Flagler, not Henry’s father.

Then there’s the tale of Viking fortifications. A line of large stones stretches along one section of Keuka Bluff. An old local story is that they’re ruins of a fort, built by exploring Vikings.

This always seemed a little unlikely to me. But just for fun, I asked regional historian J. Sheldon Fisher (then in his nineties, but still as busy as I was, half a century younger) for his opinion. Shel was never shy about interpretations that other people considered a stretch, but his take on the Viking ruins was swift and sure: “It looked to me like somebody rolled the big rocks down the slope to get rid of them.”

Jerusalem’s pioneer prophetess Jemima Wilkinson supposedly once told her flock that she would demonstrate miraculous powers by walking on the water of Keuka Lake. At the appointed time and place she asked the gathered enthusiasts if they had faith that she could do as she proposed. When they shouted that they did, she said that since they had faith, they didn’t need proof, and went on home dry-shod.

So the story goes, anyhow. But other versions place the event on half a dozen other bodies of water, including Waneta Lake and Seneca Lake. So it’s probably a fairy tale told by unbelievers to poke fun at Jemima and her followers.

Another legend concerns the old Hammondsport Academy building, currently apartments. On the lower level along the Main Street side a set of built-in bleacher-like seats leads down toward a high-sided rectangular “well.” The legend is that this space was a swimming pool. The reality is that it was an awkwardly-placed gym and basketball court.

A set of linked stories claims that young Glenn Curtiss, overexcited on creating his first motorcycle, ran out of gas far from town and had to push the machine back (having forgotten fuel consumption), or that he had to stop by driving it into the lake (alternatively, a tree), having forgotten brakes.
These stories are told affectionately, but they royally annoyed Curtiss, who firmly, if not forcefully, denied them. Curtiss even as a child was famed for meticulous planning — they said he’d think for half an hour before doing fifteen minutes of work — so it seems pretty unlikely that he would be so spectacularly dense. But those stories are now on their second century of making their rounds, and they’ll probably continue to be told. It’s Keuka Lake, after all. Legends abound.

Finding the Foliage

As a former resident of Vermont, I know a thing or two about fall foliage.

*And one of the things I know is that the foliage here in the Finger Lakes and Soutnern Tier is JUST AS GOOD as it is in Vermont, even if the hills are not as high.

*So where, around here, do you go to enjoy good foliage? The season’s not quite upon us, but it settles in a little more every day.

*Well, there are several places where you can get up high, and see for miles and miles around, as the countryside is splattered with color like a well-loved artist’s palette.

*One of those places is HARRIS HILL, above Big Flats and outside Elmira. You can enjoy Harris Hill Park and the foliage there, but in particular there’s a lookout right below the glider port. You can look down onto the Chemung River, enjoying the flats and the heights beyond… if you’re lucky, sailplanes will take off right over your head.

*MOSSY BANK PARK has a lookout overviewing historic Bath, the “grande dame of the Southern Tier.” You look right down into the village, the Conhocton River, and Lake Salubria. On a clear day, you can glimpse wind turbines in Prattsburgh and in Howard. The vale of Pleasant Valley stretches toward Keuka Lake, and Mount Washington shoulders its way onto the plain. Now and then eagles and osprey soar by.

*The JUMP-OFF POINT in Ontario County Park north of Naples serves up a delicious view to the west… like Harris Hill and Mossy Bank, it has a precipitous drop to the valley below, and hundreds of acres of foliage to see. (Despite the name, on the whole it’s best if you don’t jump.) This is also the northern terminus of the Bristol Hills Trail, which stretches away southward to meet the Finger Lakes Trail west of Mitchellsville.

*Park on Mitchellville Road (Steuben County Route 13) where the FINGER LAKES TRAIL crosses, and you can hike eastward through the forest along a gorgeous gorge until you come out in a vineyard. Once you exit the vineyard you can stop outside the Urbana town building and soak in the sight of PLEASANT VALLEY in the fall, with the vineyard, cemetery, and high-walled hills all bursting with color. The name of Pleasant Valley goes back to the 1700s, and it still fits perfectly.

*There are multiple points where you can take in the view on KEUKA LAKE: Hammondsport waterfront; Champlin Beach; two scenic pulloffs on Route 54; Red Jacket Park in Penn Yan; Modeste Bedient Library in Branchport; the west-side wineries (Bully Hill, Dr. Frank, Heron Hill, Hunt Country); and a little lookout platform on the Middle Road, by a vineyard.

*STEUBEN COUNTY ROUTE 10, from Bath down to Cameron, makes a great drive through the uplands (Conhocton River through Canisteo River), but it’s undergoing construction just now, so either check beforehand or bookmark the trip for next year.

*I created the tern FOLIAGE VILLAGE, and designated three of them; HAMMONDSPORT, NAPLES, and HONEOYE FALLS. In each case you can stroll and wander the village at whatever pace you like, stopping to take in the color-bursting shade trees and all the other village pleasures.

*Hammondsport has the lake, surrounding hills, and two green squares. Naples has vineyards, surrounding hills, and a mile-long Main Street. Honeoye Falls has the falls themselves, and the Honeoye Creek wending through. Every one is a pleasure, and you set the pace yourself.

The Keuka Story — in 600 Words

Native peoples in small numbers lived around Keuka Lake for centuries before the Seneca took control, around 1500. But their main towns were at the north end of the lakes, and Keuka’s population remained small.

*White people started muscling in around 1790, after forced sales and unjust treaties. Jemima Wilkinson, the imperious frontier prophetess, ordered mills established along Keuka Outlet and settled her flock nearby. Jemima claimed to have died and come back to life, but she finally got it right in 1819, after which her following dwindled away.

*By the early 1800s a schooner plied the lake, and shipping ran southward to Bath and the Conhocton River. When the Erie Canal changed traffic patterns in 1825 the entire economy of our region collapsed until the Crooked Lake Canal (Penn Yan to Dresden, on Seneca Lake) opened in 1833, joining us with the Erie system. Now freight flowed northward, Hammondsport became a true port, and the economy revived.

*About then steamboats appeared, beginning with “Keuka,” a double-hulled centerwheeler that ran right up onto the beach.

*In the 1850s grape cultivation got under way… the first thing Pulteney people had ever found to justify the taxes on their land, according to one contemporary. Penn Yan and Hammondsport had academies offering high school education. Pleasant Valley Wine Company opened just before the Civil War. Hundreds of men from Yates and Steuben Counties died, while many more suffered life-long effects from their wounds.

*Railroads found their way to Penn Yan and Hammondsport, which helped the grape growers and wine makers, but also stimulated tourism. Families traveled by train and steamboat to lakeside resorts, there to spend a month or even a whole season enjoying the water and the scenery, with tasting tours laid on.

*An electric railway (or trolley) connected Penn Yan with Branchport, and Keuka College got under way by fits and starts, beginning as a ground for revival meetings.

*With a new century Glenn Curtiss opened the age of internal combustion, first on motorcycles and then in blimps and airplanes. Hammondsport became a dirty, smelly, smokey industrial town, until the Great War ended, and the Curtiss plant closed just as Prohibition began. The economy collapsed again, and drunken men taking pistol practice became routine on Hammondsport streets.

*The last of the steamboats gave up the ghost, and in 1919 local folks formed the Finger Lakes Association – now Finger Lakes Tourism Alliance – to promote family travel to the region. This meant improving the roads, and Governor Al Smith made an inspection, ordering that the West Lake Road be paved.

*Then came the Great Depression and the catastrophic 1935 flood, but Roosevelt’s New Deal repealed Prohibition, built the Glenn Curtiss Memorial School, and took up the disused trolley tracks in Penn Yan. When World War II came Mercury Aircraft jumped from two employees to 850. But 14 boys from Curtiss School died, and the other communities fared equally sadly.

*State Route 54 was installed in the 1950s, finally providing a good land route between Hammondsport and Penn Yan. Ira Davenport Hospital replaced the old Bath Memorial. Curtiss Museum and the Finger Lakes Trail both got into operation in the early 60s. Experiments by Charles Fournier and Konstantin Frank transformed the grape and wine business. The Hurricane Agnes flood took a toll in 1972. Family farms largely went out until the influx of Amish and Old Order Mennonites. The big wineries were largely succeeded by smaller “boutique” operations.

*As the farms went out the forest came back, and with it came the deer, the bear, the turkey, the beaver. The steamboats are gone, but locals and visitors alike crisscross Keuka in sailboats, motorboats, rowboats, and canoes. Another season on the lake.

Keuka Lake — Highway or Playground?

Funny thing about Keuka Lake.

*For the first 130 years or so of European occupation, it was a highway. But HOW that highway worked kept changing.

*It’s about 21 miles along the main axis, between Penn Yan and Hammondsport… plus you’ve got that arm reaching over to Branchport.

*Twenty-one miles doesn’t seem like much. But until well into the 20th century, there was NEVER a good land connection between Hammondsport and Penn Yan.

*People and goods moved over the lake, and the traffic generally ran from north to south. The vale of Pleasant Valley started a long portage down to Bath, where goods (or travelers) could embark on the Conhocton River, poling-floating-drifting-paddling-rowing down as far as the salt water of Chesapeake Bay. (Native people had done the same for centuries.) There was even a schooner on the lake (the “Sally”), maybe as far back as the Jefferson administration.

*So the Southern Tier, and the Keuka-Seneca region, prospered on that watery highway down to the Tidewater, and Bath was laid out to become the great metropolis of western New York.

*Then that busybody DeWitt Clinton went and opened the Erie Canal. River traffic continued, but it was pretty much an act of desperation. Land pices collapsed, and farmers found themselves with mortgages that were now horrendously overpriced, and produce prices so low that they could never get free and clear. Mob actions, petitions, and conventions finally led to revaluations.

*Things perked up once the Crooked Lake Canal opened in 1831. This ran from Penn Yan on Keuka Lake to Dresden on Seneca… and from Seneca, you could access the Erie Canal system. Suddenly regional farmers were back in the game, and steamboats started chugging across the surface of Keuka. Hammondsport became a true port, with goods hauled from as far away as Pennsylvania, transshipped to Penn Yan, and thence transshipped again by canal boat. Some visionaries even shipped experimental loads of grapes to New York City!

*Lake traffic was now running south-to-north, reversing the earlier pattern.

*The Southern Tier REALLY came to life again when the Erie Railroad opened its Lake Erie-New York City main line in 1851, right through Elmira, Corning, Addison, Canisteo, Hornell, and onward.

*That might have killed off lake traffic, BUT Penn Yan and Hammondsport still lacked decent overland connections. Glenn Curtiss helped create independent land tranportation with his motorcycles, but on at least one occasion got mired in mud on the shore road, arriving hours late, after dark, and absolutely filthy for a visit with his mother. In the early 1900s the post office moved mail in the Keuka region by steamboat, contracting overland routes only when the lake froze up.

*The three end points of Keuka Lake were never joined by rail, except for a trolley between Penn Yan and Branchport. But by the 1920s Governor Al Smith was having the highways paved, beginning with Keuka’s West Lake Road. The steamers and canal were gone by then, and the railroads mattered less and less. Keuka’s surface, once a busy commercial highway, became a pleasure place – just as it still is today.

The Farming Story Part 4: Prohibition, Depression, Floods, and War

As in the Civil War, so in World War I. The young farm hands went into uniform even as agricultural demand boomed. (We were helping feed France and Britain, as well as ourselves.) There was local agitation to create a Farm Bureau, which as we know was effective, and the Farm Bureau quickly set up tractor workshops. Farms mechanized, BUT the war ended unexpectedly in 1918. Farm prices crashed, and many farmers were now left struggling with time payments on their equipment.

*Then, at the same time, Prohibition came in! This closed the wineries and ruined the grape growers. We think of the Great Depression as starting in 1929. But for many farm families it started ten years earlier, in 1919. With widespread use of the motorcar, community and economic life began to dry up in the hamlets. They had had their own stores, schools, doctors, churches, undertakers. But who needed the little store in Coss Corners or Harrisburg Hollow when you could drive to Bath… or from Perkinsville to Wayland, Bloomerville to Avoca, Hornby to Corning? The rich man of Risingville now ran a shabby little shop in the sticks, with an outhouse in the back, and a kerosene lamp on the counter.

*This is the period in which thousands of Steuben people joined the Ku Klux Klan, which then as now exploited fear and turned it into hate by telling lies about people who are Not Like Us, and blaming THEM for all the trouble.

*When the Great Depression truly set in, one bright star locally (besides the evaporation of the Klan) was the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Charles Fournier came from France to revive Gold Seal with up-to-date practices. Taylor, which had eked its way through the dry years, expanded its operation, and new wineries opened. Every Labor Day growers and buyers met in Penn Yan to hammer out “the grape deal,” establishing prices that would be paid that year.

*This is also the period in which County Agent Bill Stempfle took the lead in reviving and modernizing potato production in the mucklands, bringing in growers from Maine and Long Island who were grateful to find lower land prices, and whose intensive farming practices could offset worn-out land. And, of course, there were New Deal programs to help the farmer.

*BUT this is the period in which the bill came due for almost 150 years of short-sighted land use practices… especially when catastrophic floods struck in 1935, 1936, and 1946. The ’35 flood, which killed 44 people regionwide, was in many ways far worse than the ’72 flood. One Avoca sharecropper in 1935 received as his share for the year one calf. Avoca became a pilot program for New Deal soil conservation practices. From this period we get diking and re-routing of the Conhocton and Canisteo Rivers, the Almond Dam, the Alfred Dam, tree plantations, drainage ditches… much of the work carried out by Civilian Conservation Corps lads from their main camp in Kanona.

*When the New Deal started, 10% of American farms had electricity. When it ended eight years later with the advent of World War II, 10% of farms did NOT. However, that 10% included Steuben County. R.E.A. got about 50 miles of wire strung before the needs for another world war cut off their materials. But demand for farm producrs, once again, went up… even as, once again, the prime workers were siphoned away.

The Farming Story Part 4: Grapes, Dairy, and Potatoes

The 1860 gazetteer told us that Steuben folks annually produced over 1.5 million bushels of grain; 60 thousand tons of hay; more than a quarter-million bushels of potatoes; almost 300 thousand bushels of apples; 2 million pounds of butter; and 200 thousand pounds of cheese.

*So what’s missing? Grapes. The 1860 gazetteer gives grapes exactly three sentences, in a footnote, saying that in 1857 Urbana had 30 acres in vineyards, and double that the following year, with about 2000 acres suitable for the purpose.

*Eight years later the county directory shows 117 related opreations… vineyards, wineries, boxmakers, etc. – in Urbana along, plus 36 in Pulteney and 15 in Wayne.

*Folks started experimenting commercially with grapes just as an Ohio grape region was wiped out by blight, leaving immigrant workers and winemakers from Europe available. This may help explain the European feel of the earliest wineries. Grapes and wine became a very big deal in Steuben, Yates, and Schuyler Counties, with Hammondsport and keuka lake being the heart of the region.

*Another feature of late 19th-century agriculture in Steuben was the appearance of small creameries and cheeseries scattered across the map, and often run as co-ops. As ever, the original producer got the least out of his efforts, while those higher up on the chain got more. These small operations were a way of keeping some of that in the community.

*Tobacco too became a noteable product at this time.

*Likewise we experience the advent of Grange, or the Patrons of Husbandry. (Francis McDowell of Wayne was one of the eight original founders.) While out west Grange was an active political force, here in the northeast it often served more of a social purpose. But Grange worked hard to educate the farmer and improve practices, AND it fought a decades-long battle for Rural Free Delivery. Until that was well in place, a little after 1900, the only way you could get your mail was to go to the post office and ask for it. It’s hard for us to recognize how isolated the farm family was. R.F.D. helped change that.

*The second force for education was the Steuben County Fair. It’s been continuous since before the Civil War, when the new Ag Society took it over, and bought the curremt sire while the war still raged. In the next few years the first permanent facilities went up, notably the gatehouse, the fair building, and the track. Hornell, Troupsburg, and Prattsburgh also maintained annual fairs for many years.

*And, of course, there was Cornell University, thanks to the Morill Land Grant College Act, providing federal support to help each state create a college for the teaching of agriculture, mechanics, and the useful arts.

*By 1900 or so there were over 8000 dairy farms in Steuben County, and Steuben was the second county in the United States for potato production. But the small family farms on the hilltops had become uncompetitive, and people started walking away from them, not even attempting to sell because there were no buyers. Many of these were eventually taken for taxes, and formed the basis of our vast system of state forests and state game lands.

Isabel Drake’s Remarkable Photos Show the World of 1900

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A hundred years back and more, there lived in Corning a remarkable family – mother, father, and three daughters – that left its mark on history, without doing anything actually historical. On the other hand, they had a whale of a lot of fun.

*The reason we know them particularly is that Isabel Walker Drake (the mother) was a pioneer in the new age of photography that had been made possible by George Eastman, up in Rochester. She used high-quality equipment (as she could afford to do), including a panorama camera with a pivoting lens. She had a clear eye and a steady hand, and she knew when to grab an interesting shot. Her photos will be the subject of a free Steuben County Historical Society presentation by Charles R. Mitchell (Friday Dec. 1, 4 PM in Bath Fire Hall).

*In addition to her artistry, Mrs. Drake mastered the technical side of photography, developing her own negatives and printing her own photos. Whenever she had a question, she just got on the phone and called Mr. Eastman.

*Mrs. Walker’s father had been a member of Congress, her brother-in-law was an owner of Corning Building Company, and her husband James was an owner of First National Bank on Market Street, so she probably had easy entry into George Eastman’s circle.

*The big brick house at 171 Cedar Street, now part of the arts organization of the same name, was their “starter home.” They later built a much bigger and finer place, next to the T. G. Hawkes mansion, up in the Corning Free Academy neighborhood.

*Just so you get the picture, that home (now gone) had its own schoolroom, stage, and pipe organ (which was later donated to Pulteney Presbyterian Church). Musicales and extravaganzas were part of life in the Drake home. The girls were educated at home, tutored by Professor Borstelmann, who operated the Corning Conservatory of Music. The Langdons of Elmira were among their friends.

*When they weren’t at home they were often out at Drake’s Point on the west side of Keuka Lake. One of the cottages there at the Point is now Lakeside Restaurant. The family arrived by riding the train to Hammondsport, then taking their naphtha launch from there.

*Madge, Dort, and Martha attended Ogontz Academy in Philadelphia… the only school in America with required military drill for girls. Photos show them fishing, sledding, playing baseball, skating, snowshoeing, sparring with boxing gloves, messing about in boats. On at least one occasion they brought a pony up onto the porch (and mother photographed it).

*Mrs. Drake photographed Glenn Curtiss flying the “June Bug,” and Geronimo touring the 1901 Pan-Am. She photographed trips to summer on Block Island, and to visit gold mines out west (including maneuvers by “Buffalo Soldiers”).

*It couldn’t last. They appear to have always spent more than they made, and the panic of 1913 wiped them out. Cousin Sid Cole was killed in World War I. The home and the summer home were lost, the girls went to work, and Mrs. Drake’s five boxes of albums with outstanding photos were rescued decades later by an alert antique hunter who snatched them up for a song, had some of them published in “American Heritage,” and donated them to Corning-Painted Post Historical Society.

*Mary Anne Sprague, who knew the Drake family, said, “They had fun. And they WERE fun.” And so they were. Their photos show it. And they also show our world, as it was so long ago, when no one dreamed of World Wars, and the 1900s still sparkled.