Tag Archives: Seneca Lake

A Walk in Watkins

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We took a walk in Watkins recently, and it’s a good place to do so. Although we associate Watkins with its spectacular glen, most of the village itself is as flat as a pan. The streets are rectilinear. While the town is busy, especially in summer, most of the time you can get around comfortably on foot, and while Franklin Street is also Route 14, Watkins Glen has a good array of signals and crosswalks. There’s plenty to look at, and there’s even a free municipal parking lot (Third Street, just behind the Chamber of Commerce).
Watkins Glen is like Bath and Corning, in that it doesn’t have a “Main Street” – Watkins has Franklin Street instead. (Some places, like Wayland and Hammondsport, DO have Main Streets, but changing traffic patterns leave them not quite as “main” as they were planned to be.) Bath DOES have a “Maine Street,” though, right next to Vermont Street.
Seneca Lake draws walkers like a magnet draws iron filings. While Cayuga Lake is a little longer, Seneca is decidedly broader and definitely deeper, making it the largest Finger Lake in both volume and area. It’s not quite an inland sea, but it behaves like one, with waves running up the lake to crash against the stone seawalls of the Watkins marina. Of course there are gulls aplenty, but depending on the season you can also spot coots, buffleheads, loons, eagles, osprey, cormorants, and plenty more. A pier jutting well out into the lake has a famed pavilion at the far end. In season you can also see (and book a cruise on) the schooner “True Love,” on which Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly honeymooned (and sang the song of that title) in the movie musical “High Society.”
This waterfront is mostly for pleasure craft nowadays, but time was when it was a hardworking transshipment point. Roads converged here from Horseheads, Corning, Hammondsport, Geneva, and Ithaca. More importantly, Seneca Lake welcomed a canal at Watkins, connecting down into Pennsylvania. And even more important yet, several railroads and a trolley line stopped here. By 1876, as tourism boomed, a brand-new elegant station welcomed visitors. It’s now the Seneca Station Harbor Restaurant, with a spectacular view of the lake.
Most of the Franklin Street structures are historic. A. B. Frost bought a marble business as soon as he got back from the Civil War, and around 1870 put up the three-story iron works at 2 North Franklin. Municipal Hall (303 North Franklin) was a Works Project Administration project during the New Deal. The garage at 111 North Franklin started out in 1874 as a livery stable. Which makes it especially cool that the Glen Theater (112 North Franklin) opened its doors in 1924. Thirty years between livery stable and picture palace! Wow! What a transition, in far less than a single lifetime! (They preserve the original period interior. We love it.)
While you walk you can also keep your eyes peeled for hall of fame blocks set into the sidewalks, honoring racing car drivers – or look up a little and you’ll find huge racing murals on exterior walls. Watkins Glen folks take their racers seriously. There’s now a closed course a little outside of town, but you can visit the original 1948 Grand Prix start line in front of the courthouse. Pick up a brochure, and you can drive the original route yourself.
The Glen, of course, is the town’s stellar attraction, and the state park includes hiking and walking trails (though believe me, they aren’t flat). The 580-mile Finger Lakes Trail wends through the park, and then on sidewalk to the other end of town, where it hits open fields and starts to climb again. Likewise the Catharine Valley Trail begins in Watkins at Lafayette Park, following the old canal-and-trolley route down to Montour Falls.
We first saw Watkins Glen in 1995 when we stopped downtown for lunch as we passed through, just before my wife had open heart surgery. When we moved to Bath a year and half later we said, “Oh, good – we’ll be near Watkins Glen!” It’s a good town to visit. We like it a lot. Good memories.

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.

“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!

The Little Land Between the Lakes

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Yates County has shoreline on Keuka Lake… and Seneca Lake… AND Canandaigua Lake. How cool is that?

It’s never had a magnet attraction like Watkins Glen State Park, or Watkins Glen International, or Corning Museum of Glass. But all that lakefront means that Yates gets plenty of company anyway, all summer long.

There’s a long-standing story that Red Jacket, the charismatic Seneca leader, was born in the Penn Yan area, where we even find Red Jacket Park. And we know that his mother lived nearby at the end of her life, but actually no one knows where Red Jacket was born.

Sullivan’s invasion rampaged through the region in 1779, killing and burning indiscriminately. Some of the first Europeans to muscle in permanently were followers of pioneer prophetess Jemima Wilkinson, the “Publick Universal Friend.” They came to Torrey in 1778, but later moved the center of their community to Jerusalem. Claiming to be (or at least, to have) a divine spirit, she ruled her flock imperiously until she “left time” in 1819, after which her following withered away.

They had worked hard and well, though, and Penn Yan grew largely from their labors. Lying at the foot of Keuka Lake, it became a busy transshipping town. By 1833 a canal, and then later a railroad, connected with Dresden (still in Yates) on Seneca Lake, and thence to the Erie Canal system and the entire world. Penn Yan and Hammondsport (in Steuben County) became rivals (sometimes friendly), but neither could get along without the other. Each was a vital link in Keuka’s transportation chain.

Yates was set off from Ontario County in 1823, and uninspiringly named for the governor who signed the enabling act. The county later gained land from Steuben, but lost to Tompkins and Seneca.

There are nine towns in Yates County (Starkey, Barrington, Torrey, Milo, Benton, Potter, Middlesex, Italy, and Jerusalem), including four incorporated villages, (Penn Yan, Dresden, Rushville, and Dundee). Branchport and Bellona are unincorporated communities.

Penn Yan is the largest town, the county seat, and a fun place to visit. The county fairgrounds are here, and Main Street is a good place to stroll and shop. There’s a “new book” store (Long’s Cards and Gifts) and two used book stores. Millie’s Pantry offers lunches and gifts, with proceeds making sure children get enough to eat.

Yates County History Center has, among other things, notable Jemima Wilkinson memorabilia, including her coachee (a cut-down carriage – she liked her comforts). Penn Yan also has a movie theater and a very nice Carnegie Library (one of very few in the region). This library has recently undergone significant renovations, though it still retains space for buggy parking. Branchport recently completed a brand-new library, plus there’s a library in Dundee and reading centers in Rushville and Middlesex.

Jerusalem is home to the dramatic Keuka Bluff, that high formation that juts out into the lake to form the East Branch and West Branch, both of which lie largely in Yates. The Bluff is home to Keuka Lake State Park and also to the jewel-box Garrett Chapel, a beautiful stone structure hidden in the forest overlooking the East Branch.

Yates County has two weekly newspapers (the Observer and the Chronicle-Express), not to mention Keuka College (founded 1890) and a public-use airport. As traditional family farms have gone out, conservative “plain-dress” anabaptists have moved in. It’s no surprise that vineyards line much of the lakeshores. The wonderful Keuka Outlet Trail stretches from Penn Yan on Keuka Lake to Dresden on Seneca.

Yates is a small county, and sadly easy to overlook. Lacking a magnet attraction it’s not necessarily the place people visit for short stays. But people make homes there. And they stay the summers. The little land between the lakes is not Brigadoon. But in the depths of World War II Arch Merrill observed that Penn Yan was a good community – the kind of place where you could ride out the storm.