Tag Archives: Stony Brook State Park

The C.C.C. Left Its Mark — on Us

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In the midst of the calamitous Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” poured forth new programs designed to put people back to work. One of the most fondly-remembered New Deal programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps.
While some companies (as the local units were called) were reserved for Great War veterans, most C.C.C.’s were older male teens who did a year’s service (usually not in their home states), simultaneously getting training. They were clothed, bedded, boarded, and paid, but most of the money went to their parents, who thus had more income and fewer expenses. In addition to that it removed the boys from the job market for a year, making job-seeking just a little bit easier for the unemployed. Photos show that the local contingents were racially integrated, but that wasn’t the case everywhere. (There was a smaller similar program for women, jokingly called the she-she-she, but I don’t believe it operated in our area.)
The main C.C.C. camp for Steuben County was in Kanona, with a “side camp” at Painted Post and temporary camps when and where useful. (The Kanona facility later became a P.O.W. camp in World War II, and then a seasonal camp for migrant farm workers.)
A company of C.C.C. spent the better part of a year camped near Addison with the idea of putting a dam across the Tuscarora Creek, but it was finally decided that the ground was unsuitable. C.C.C. also built a camp for men coming in to construct the Arkport Dam.
Schuyler County had Triple-C camps in Watkins Glen (later Hidden Valley 4-H camp) and Burdett. Their legacy includes a lot of the work in the state park – buildings, trails, stonework, bridges (including the Sentry Bridge near the entrance to the Gorge Trail), and more.
C.C.C. and W.P.A. (Works Progress Administration) also did quite a lot of development in Stony Brook State Park, though with the passage of time it’s hard to tell which group did what. Much of the older park infrastructure, including the two Rim Trails, comes from this period.
In the Ithaca area, according to the Ithaca Journal, C.C.C. fellows were “trucked to work sites in Enfield Glen (later Robert H. Treman), Buttermilk Falls, and Taughannock Falls State Parks. There they excavated flagstone and did masonry work, blasted, excavated fill, graded, planted trees, shrubs and grass, built roads, bridges, and water systems, erected park buildings, and – after the disastrous floods of July 1935 and August 1937 – repaired damaged facilities that in many cases they had only recently completed.” The Gorge Trail at Treman comes from this work.
C.C.C. also completed major development at Allegany State Park near Salamanca. Sections of the Finger Lakes Trail and North Country Trail were originally created by the C.C.C.
Many of the state parks had been designated, if not fully executed, by Robert Moses back in the early 1920s. What we now call Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, in marshes at the north end of Cayuga Lake, got its start in 1937. C.C.C. established a camp at Montezuma and performed much of the earliest work, including creating low dikes to restore the historic marsh area.
And that ain’t all – as we’ll see next week! In addition to all the work manifestly done, C.C.C. played an indirect role in the winning of World War II, and that will also be part of next week’s story.

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.

“Our Gem — Stony Brook State Park”

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By many reckonings Niagara Falls is the first state park in America, although quite a few people assume that it’s a National Park. The huge Adirondack State Park is protected, along with much of the Catskills, by our state constitution. And what would Manhattan be like without that vast and aptly-named Central Park, which is a city park?

Watkins Glen State Park is a money magnet for our region, bringing in visitors from around the world. (“I’ve been to Hawaii,” one lady told me on the trail one day. “I’ve been in their gorges, and they’re nothing like this.”) Bath and Hammondsport each have a Pulteney Park, and each one focuses and defines its community.

Parks are vital aspects of our lives. Watkins Glen State Park preserves the gorge. The state recently preserved the shorelines of Hemlock and Canadice Lakes, in the most significant park acquisition of almost a century.

Besides their preservation purpose, parks also serve recreational purposes – hunting, fishing, hiking, boating, birding, swimming, picknicking, just plain getting outdoors. In the 1920s many people still thought of cities as an aberration, and worried about the people who were forced to live there. Surely they needed life-giving infusions of countryside, lest they turn into Morlocks or something?

Such thinking in the 1920s helped drive creation of our modern state park system, ironically under the leadership of two quintessential city boys, Al Smith and Robert Moses.

It was Moses himself who selected the site for Stony Brook Park, and Governor Smith bought the original 250 acres for a dollar. One of the reasons for the selection was that it was, like Letchworth, an easy drive from Rochester. (Besides providing an outlet for city folks, the new system was also designed to stimulate better roads.) Another reason for selection, of course, was that marvelous gorge.

Situated about midway between Letchworth and Watkins Glen, Stony Brook often gets overlooked. It shouldn’t. It was a significant picnic and party destination at least as far back as the 1880s. Most people couldn’t swim back then, but as the 20th century advanced, Stony Brook swimming lessons… in COLD water… became a staple of life for many area kids.

Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt visited the park… still largely undeveloped… as part of celebrations for Clara Barton, who had founded the first American Red Cross chapter in the nearby Village of Dansville, in Livingston County. (The park itself is in the TOWN of Dansville in STEUBEN County.) F.D.R. and President Hoover spoke via telephone as part of the ceremony.

Much of the park, though, was still undeveloped once Roosevelt replaced Hoover in the White House. C.C.C. ( Civilian Conservation Corps) youngsters created much of the park infrastructure as New Deal work projects during the Great Depression. In those ugly years Steuben County also operated a transient camp in the park, providing temporary shelter for hundreds of homeless people.

Acquired in 1928, the park today has 577 acres, with facilities for camping, swimming, bowhunting, hiking, nature study, cross-country skiing, and more. On Friday, January 6 we’ll kick off our Steuben County Historical Society Winter Lecture Series with “Our Gem: Stony Brook Park,” an illustrated presentation by Jane Schryver and Paul Hoffman. The 4 PM event in Bath Fire Hall is free and open to the public – we hope we’ll see you there!