USA > New York > Wayne County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 22
USA > New York > Cayuga County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 22
USA > New York > Seneca County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 22
USA > New York > Ontario County > History of Central New York : embracing Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, Ontario, Tompkins, Cortland, Schuyler, Yates, Chemung, Steuben, and Tioga Counties, Volume I > Part 22
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Then came the Steuben, built at Hammondsport in 1845 for A. M. Adsit and John W. Davis of that village. This ship was 126 feet long, of seventeen foot beam and was a sidewheeler. It was bought in April, 1864, by Capt. Allen Wood and the same year burned at its dock at Penn Yan.
CROTON, H.Y. 4JO
HIGH SCHOOL, GROTON, N. Y.
MAIN STREET, TRUMANSBURG, N. Y.
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The third boat was the George R. Youngs, constructed in Penn Yan in 1864-65. It was 130 feet long, with nineteen foot beam. Meals were served in the ship's dining room. In 1873 its name was changed to the Steuben, after purchase of the craft by the Lake Keuka Navigation Company. It was dismantled at Hammondsport in 1879.
Captain Wood's Keuka, built in 1867 at Geneva and brought from Seneca Lake by canal, was a screw steamer sixty-five feet long with a twelve foot beam.
The same company had the steamer Yates built at Penn Yan in 1872. She was 115 feet in length and twenty wide and her engine came out of the old Arnot which plied Seneca Lake. The Yates ran for twelve years, burning at her Penn Yan dock in 1883.
The Lulu was built in 1878 at Hammondsport for Sanders & Hall. She was a side-wheeler, seventy-eight feet long and with a beam of thirteen feet. It was operated in connection with the Bath and Hammondsport Railroad, but was afterward sold to Lake Keuka Navigation Company and was dismantled at Ham- mondsport about 1896.
The Urbana was built for the navigation company at Ham- mondsport in 1880. It was a side-wheeler 120 feet long with beam of twenty feet. She was dismantled at Hammondsport in 1904.
In that little village at the head of the lake the Holmes was built in 1883 for William L. Halsey, founder of the Crooked Lake Navigation Company. The Holmes was the finest on the lake up to that time with a 325 horsepower engine which gave a speed of fourteen miles an hour. The name was changed to the Yates in 1904. It was sold in 1891 to the Lake Keuka Navigation Com- pany and was dismantled at Hammondsport in 1915. The boat- man, Hawley, died in 1884 and his widow, with T. O. Hamlin, went on with the business, launching the steamer William L. Halsey in 1887. The Halsey was 130 feet long by twenty foot beam. The boat was sold to the Lake Keuka Navigation Com- pany in 1891 and made her last trip in October, 1915. She sank at the dock at Hammondsport in 1917.
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The twin screw steamer Mary Bell was built in Hammonds- port in 1892. She was 120 feet long by twenty-four beam. In 1905, when the Erie Railroad purchased the Keuka Lake Navi- gation Company of C. W. Drake, the name Mary Bell was changed to Penn Yan. The old boilers were replaced by Almy Water Tube boilers at a cost of $10,000. But in 1915, these together with the engine were scrapped for gasoline motors.
The twin screw steamer Cricket was built in 1894 for Samuel McMath of Penn Yan. She was eighty-five feet long with a nine- teen foot beam.
The modern resort colony touch is given Lake Keuka by Lake- side Park at Gibsons on the west shore, by Keuka College, Camp Airey, Camp Corey (Rochester Y. M. C. A. camp), Camp Iro- quois (Elmira's Y. M. C. A. camp), hundreds of fine summer homes, convenient inns, comfortable inns and other adjuncts of modern life.
There is a prosaic story of how Lake Keuka got that name, after having been originally known as Crooked Lake. Ed Mott, a native of the region and for many years connected with the New York Sun, is credited with having made the name sugges- tion to Col. Andrew Jackson Switzer, superintendent of vine- yards for a wine company on the lake. Switzer had found in his travels that few knew of Crooked Lake and he wanted a more distinctive name. Keuka was used on all the wine company's advertising, the name caught popular favor and is today officially recognized.
SENECA LAKE.
Seneca Lake, over whose waters the sails of a hundred sloops once billowed, is today the heart of water sports in Central New York. Some of the largest accredited outboard races in the East are staged here, where the first regatta ever held by the Central New York Yachting Association was run off in 1930. Seneca is the largest of the Finger Lakes, being thirty-six miles long with an average width of three miles.
Strange in every natural aspect, the lake is as strange in its fascination for the outdoorsman and the geologist. Its bottom
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in some places is 174 feet below sea level and its surface is 444 feet above the sea, making its maximum depth 618 feet. At a depth of 200 feet Seneca maintains a uniform temperature of seven degrees above freezing the year around. Only four times in the memory of man has the lake entirely frozen over, so that Seneca is the only body of water north of the Mason and Dixon Line open to navigation twelve months in the year.
The greatest volume of water emptying into Seneca Lake comes from the outlet of Keuka. Comparison of the discharge of this outlet with the discharge from Seneca Lake indicates that a volume of water equal to 39,241 gallons a minute is contributed by springs beneath the lake's surface. There are tales that Se- neca rises and lowers, not unlike the action of the sea.
Weird rumblings beneath the waters gave birth centuries ago to the Indian legend of the "Death Drums of the Iroquois." Still the legend is recounted of summer nights as cottages hear again the faint distant sound as of drums beneath the waters. Then there is the myth of the "Wandering Chief" and the "Spectre Boatman" and other strange tales created by the Red Man to account for Seneca's eccentricities.
On the eastern shore, near the head, the lake is buttressed by palisades, upon whose stone face, ages ago, the Indians painted the stories of their valor to remain as imperishable records for those who understand. Here are the only "Painted Rocks" east of Lake Superior.
The first sloop on Seneca was the Alexander, built at a cost of $2,304.28 and launched in 1796 before an assemblage of sev- eral thousand, representing every state then in the Union and most foreign countries. Down the length of the lake went Louis Philippe, King of France from 1830 to 1848, in a tiny boat, while he was in exile in America during the ascendency of Napoleon.
At a very early day before Watkins Glen was settled, the head of Seneca Lake navigation was about three miles up the inlet to Catherine's Town, now Montour Falls. To this point the early sloops made regular trips and it was regularly called the "head of the lake." The first steamboat to engage in lake com-
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merce made its initial trip July 4, 1828. Since then there have been many changes in navigation on the lake.
Other places still of importance have the ruins of docks where lake craft land no more. Lake landing places entirely deserted are Hector Falls, Peach Orchard and Dey's Landing on the east- ern shore, and Fir Tree Point and Starkey Landing on the west- ern bank. Dresden and Glenora no longer hear the steamer whistle, but to all the landing there still come strange gasoline craft from distant places, for Seneca is connected through a spur with the Barge Canal. The extension of railroad lines along both shores of Seneca, and the taking of mails from the steamer service, sounded the first notes of the knell of steamboat naviga- tion.
At the head of the lake is Lakeside Park, the municipal park of Watkins Glen. At the northern end of the lake are the Geneva public bathing beaches and camp grounds, while between are miles of uncrowded waters, along whose shores camp hundreds of vacationists. The lake lies splashed across one of the finest fruit sections of the East. The head of the lake is in the center of a natural gas belt and beneath the lake, down 1,800 feet below the surface, is a salt mine that annually produces over one mil- lion dollars worth of salt. Bass, trout, pickerel and salmon trout abound.
Exquisite scenery and an intriguing background of history make Owasco Lake, smallest of the Finger Lakes, an outstanding gem of Central New York. The lake is nearly twelve miles long and a mile and a half wide, but it has a watershed embracing 204 square miles. It is 710 feet above sea level and reaches a depth of 177 feet. Four hundred summer homes border its shore and annually an average of 25,000 persons are "in camp" during the season beside its azure waters.
At the foot of Owasco Lake lies beautiful Enna Jettick Park, the finest resort park in Central New York. Just across the river is Island Park, with one of the finest bathing beaches in the district. Bus lines, two state highways and a steam road connect Owasco Lake with Auburn, two miles distant. Good hotels and inns are at frequent intervals along the shore, which is overlooked
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by the golf courses of the Auburn and Owasco Country Clubs. Every foot of Owasco's shore reflects in some manner the modern aspect of ancient glory. A treasure house of heirlooms and a re- pository of cherished traditions is Willowbrook, a stately home at the foot of the lake, in whose halls presidents and statesmen have foregathered.
In another day the shore of Owasco echoed to the whistle of steamers. One of the oldest craft was the Dance Maid, whose broad deck was the scene of many a dancing party when the moon was high and the lapping waters at her side murmured a soft accompaniment to the merry notes of old time fiddlers. The most famous boat on Owasco Lake was the Lady of the Lake, launched at Ensenore in 1885. A special train of two coaches and a baggage car left the Southern Central depot, now the Le- high Valley, in Auburn, for Ensenore, where Capt. George Clark was to slide from the ways the largest and most beautiful steamer the lake had ever seen.
General William H. Seward, son of Lincoln's Secretary of State, christened the ship, breaking a bottle of champagne over her bows and addressing the throngs, whose cheers echoed through the great glen cutting its way back into the hillside. Captain Clark invited many aboard and 170 took a maiden trip on the vessel. The Lady of the Lake made her last trip at the close of the 1908 season.
With that craft on regular schedule, another line opened in 1888, the Moravia running from Cascade and the "Lady" from Ensenore. Their stops included Port Townsend, the old Two Mile House on the Owasco River near the foot of the lake, destroyed several years ago by fire.
The most spectacular day in the history of Owasco Lake came on Thursday, September 27, 1877, when a concourse of 20,000 people, the largest crowd ever assembled on Owasco's shores up to that time, came by train, by boat, on horseback, afoot and in wagons to witness a clash of great skulling kings. The event, according to an old file of the Auburn Bulletin, "excited an in- terest which extended throughout the length and breadth of the land and is reported this morning to the press of the world."
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Even the day before throngs started to assemble and by the morn- ing of the race two railroads were running special trains to the scene. The Southern Central, now the Lehigh, operated eighty cars to handle the influx of regatta enthusiasts. Many young people from nearby towns walked all night to gain a choice vantage point along the race course. Horses, with buggies and wagons, were hitched along the road for a mile in either direc- tion from Ensenore.
Auburn city schools closed for the day and some factories suspended work to permit employes to see the contest. Every class and condition of persons were among the concourse along the shore. The lake itself was alive with small craft. To handle the crowds Sheriff Sanders had a force of sixty special deputies mobilized.
The main race started at 5:09, the winners crossing the finish line in the following time: Charles E. Courtney, twenty-one minutes, twenty-nine and one-half seconds; James H. Riley, twenty-one minutes, thirty-three and three-quarters seconds; Frenchy Johnson, twenty-one minutes, forty-two seconds; James Ten Eyck, later coach of the Syracuse crews, twenty-one min- utes, forty-three and one-half seconds. The oarsmen, referees and sports writers were unanimous in declaring the Owasco course superior to most others.
Old records show that first efforts to provide steam craft on Owasco came in 1847, but proved futile. In that year Aaron Kellogg of Moravia conceived the idea of a steamboat to open up traffic by water between Auburn and Moravia. He finally financed building the Ensenore, which was launched with eclat into Mill Creek. Horses dragged the boat into the Owasco Inlet, where it started to steam down to the lake. Suddenly the boat refused to obey the rudder. Attempts to move the boat caused a threat to stand on its stern end. Several hundred pounds of stone were loaded for ballast. Then it was found the craft had settled deep in the mud. So weight was thrown off and more steam turned on. But a plug blew out and crew and captain, fearing an explosion, dived into the water. The Ensenore never again moved under her own power.
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SKANEATELES LAKE.
"The most beautiful body of water in the world" is the de- scription given Skaneateles Lake by the late Secretary of State William H. Seward after a trip around the world. Extending eighteen miles between the hills which converge into mountains at its head, the blue expanse forms a large part of the eastern boundary of Cayuga County and its southeastern end lies along Cortland County. With an altitude of 867 feet above sea level, it is the highest of all the Finger Lakes and is only 283 feet below the level of Lake Geneva, a queen of the Alpine lakes in Switzer- land. So pure are its waters that it supplies the City of Syracuse without filtering.
The Indian name Skaneateles is variously interpreted as "Beautiful Squaw" and "Long Lake." In Indian days, before the outlet of Skaneateles was dammed, a man with his head above water could wade across the lake from what is now Shotwell Point to Mile Point upon a sand bar. In 1797 a log dam was built, elevating the lake four feet. Today the water area is great- ly increased.
The first steamboat on Skaneateles was the Independent, built in 1831 to a length of more than eighty feet. Skaneateles village financed the project by subscription and a gala celebra- tion marked the launching of the old side-wheeler on July 4, 1831. The craft's owners were obliged to go to Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, for a license to operate, as he had been granted a monopoly throughout the state. Soon afterward a forty foot steamer, the Highland Chief appeared in competition with the older vessel, which towed a passenger and freight barge.
Up to 1910 there was regular steamboat service on the lake, ships plying the waters with thousands of excursionists. The Skaneateles was launched July 4, 1848, and May 24, 1849, the Homer. The Echo and Ada were small steamers, the second of which was owned by Joe Crandall, at one time proprietor of the Lake View House. The Bonnie Boy, a thirty-footer, was owned by Ira Smith. Frederick Roosevelt owned the Lotos. The Alena, a small steamer, was the first boat on Skaneateles to be driven
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by a Shipman engine. Kerosene was her fuel instead of wood or coal. The Ben H. Porter, named for a gallant soldier of the Civil War, was launched in 1866. Joseph Reed, famous in the vicinity as an iron worker, was at one time a deck hand on her. He recalls a snow fall in the second week of April, about the year 1875, that reached a depth of twenty inches and weighed so heav- ily upon the deck of the Ben H. Porter that the steamer capsized at her landing.
The Glen Haven, built by the Skaneateles Railroad Company in 1876; the Ossahinta, built about ten years later, and the City of Syracuse constructed in 1899 were in active service until almost the end of the World War. The last named boat carried 500 passengers and carried an orchestra. Steamer traffic was abandoned shortly after the great resort of Glen Haven at the head of the lake was purchased by the City of Syracuse and dis- mantled as a protection against contamination of the water sup- ply. What is said to have been the first water cure in America was located at Glen Haven in 1841. Dr. W. C. Thomas conducted the cure for forty years at this "Lucerne of America" and reached the age of 107 years. In the early days of Glen Haven, when the place had no post office, it claimed the distinction of being the only town in the state which issued its own postage.
CAYUGA LAKE.
Cayuga Lake, forty miles long, the longest of the Finger Lakes, has been immortalized in the Cornell alma mater song, "Far Above Cayuga's Waters," and thousands have envisioned its changeful moods in the novel, "Tess of the Storm Country." Like Seneca it is subject to the strange "lake guns." Cayuga is two miles wide, 435 feet deep and its surface is 381 feet above sea level, thus making two Finger Lakes whose bottoms are be- low seaboard.
As early as 1791, a dozen years after Sullivan's expedition had laid waste thirteen Indian villages along its shores, a Mr. Lightfoot brought a boatload of goods up Cayuga Lake for sale in a shanty he had erected at the head of the lake. In exchange for tea, coffee, crockery, drygoods, hardware, cutlery, gunpowder
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and whiskey, he procured skins of marten, otter, beaver, fox, bear and deer. He continued his trade for twelve years.
On December 15, 1819, the Cayuga Steamboat Company was incorporated and just fourteen years after Robert Fulton had navigated the Clermont on the Hudson, a steam engine built in Jersey City came to Ithaca for the steamer Enterprise. The Telemachus followed the Enterprise in 1828 and a year later came the DeWitt Clinton and in 1836 the Simeon DeWitt. In 1850 the whistle of the lake's first modern passenger steamboat, the Kate Morgan, echoed between the hills. Other early craft in- cluded the Howland, Forest City, Beardsley, Skeldrake, Aurora, Ino, T. D. Wilcox renamed the Ithaca, the Iroquois, the Mohawk, the Demong, the Comanoche and the Frontenac.
The greatest tragedy of Finger Lakes history occurred on Cayuga July 27, 1907, when the Frontenac burned to the water's edge a mile south of Farley's Point on the east shore, with the loss of fourteen lives. The Col. J. H. Horton, a little steamer which served the cottage colonies at the head of the lake, burned April 15, 1925, taking from Cayuga Lake the last remnant of its old passenger boat traffic. Boat building on the lake developed rapidly with the coal traffic at about the time of the Civil War and in 1878 there were four boat yards at Ithaca alone, when building was at its height.
Through Cayuga Lake passes the Barge Canal, bringing today many strange visiting craft to mingle with its own flotilla of canoes, sailboats, motor boats and yachts. Along the eastern shore the late Charles E. "Pop" Courtney, dean of rowing coaches, fashioned his own shells and sent the Red and White Cornell crews to victory in many an intercollegiate regatta. In older days ferries crossed the lake at several points.
OTHER SMALLER LAKES.
In addition to the six major Finger Lakes, the region of Cen- tral New York is dotted with smaller bodies of water, equally as beautiful but less majestic. All have their quota of summer homes, with dancing pavilions here and there dotting the shores.
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Lake Como, 1,306 feet above seaboard, is the highest lake in the district, not far from Moravia, Cayuga County, and from Groton, Tompkins County. Excellent bass fishing there tempts the angler. The lake is near to the old Salt Road over which in olden days, salt was shipped from Syracuse to New York City.
Three beautiful little lakes lie in the northern part of Cayuga County. Cross Lake, famed for its pike and pickerel, lies not far from Cato. It is about five miles long and a mile wide and is formed by Seneca River, the outlet of all the Finger Lakes. The river widens as it crosses a sweeping valley, creating the lake. Otter Lake, just at the outskirts of Cato, is two miles long and a half mile wide, while Forest Lake, not far distant, is three quarters of a mile long and wide.
In Schuyler County, four miles from Odessa along the con- crete highway winding between picturesque hills is Cayutta Lake, whose wooded shores give it a wild beauty. Northwestward in the same county is Lake Lamoka, placidly lying 1,100 feet above sea level. To the northward is Waneta Lake, with the village of Wayne at its head, in a setting of mountainous hills.
Bath, Steuben County, has a charming little lake of its own -Lake Salubria-two miles distant on the Corning-Bath high- way. It is surrounded by summer homes.
Little York Lake, not far north of Cortland, is a pleasure cen- ter for Cortland County, with numerous camps and amusement spots.
On the western side of Ontario County lie three lakes of ex- quisite beauty. Hemlock Lake forms part of the boundary be- tween Ontario and Livingston Counties and just east of it is picturesque Canadice Lake. Then comes Honeoye, nestling be- tween hills which rise 1,400 feet from the level of the water. The shore lines of all three lakes are lined with cottages, pavilions and recreation grounds. Midway on the west shore of Honeoye is California Ranch Park, on Burrit's Point, owned by Dr. C. Burrit of New York. The lake is noted for its colony of blue herons found at the southern end.
If plans already perfected by the City of Rochester are car- ried out, Honeoye Lake will in the next few years be converted
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into a reservoir, increasing in length to fifteen miles, almost three times its present size. The little historic village of Honeoye at its foot will be thus swept away before the march of progress. It will be submerged, for the benefit of the big city thirty-five miles distant, which wants added water supply fresh and cold from the Honeoye area.
Nothing but the village cemetery, in a slightly elevated posi- tion at the outskirts of the village, will remain when sixty-eight billion gallons of water overflow the countryside to an average depth of twenty-six feet, transforming little Honeoye Lake into a great basin twelve and five-tenths square miles in area. Build- ings that have survived fire and storm for a century or more, familiar old landmarks, Edwin Gilbert's store, which his grand- father of the same name established in 1826, the old-fashioned homes, the church and the school-all must go.
Despite long and hard court battles, the City of Rochester won over the village in the fight it made to preserve its life. Most of the owners of the 140 buildings in the village are confident they will receive a fair settlement for their property. They will simply move elsewhere. A huge dam with a catchment of 187 square miles, will be built to flood the valley, where the Algonkin lived before the Iroquois came.
CHAPTER XXIII
POWER DEVELOPMENT.
AN IMPORTANT RESOURCE - DEVELOPMENT OF HYDRO-ELECTRIC POWER - TRANSMISSION OF POWER-STEAM AND GAS-NIAGARA, THE START-OTHER POWER DEVELOPMENTS-LOCALITIES SERVED.
One of the greatest resources of the Empire State is its water power, a resource which brings to Central New York electricity at low rates for virtually every city, village and hamlet. Accord- ing to the United States Geological Survey estimate of January 1, 1930, the state's developed hydro-electric power is 1,805,195 horsepower-which is more than thirteen per cent of the de- veloped water power of the entire United States-and since that date more than 80,000 horsepower has been added. And in addi- tion to the natural power is a vast production of power by steam plants. The power source, natural and man-built, is one of the chief contributing factors to the region's manufacturing industry.
Coupled with the supply of electricity is the development in the past two years of the big Wayne-Dundee natural gas field in the heart of the area. Today it contains some eighteen billion feet of gas and new wells are still coming in. Late in 1932 plans were being considered by utility interests for piping this gas supply on a wide scale, with tentative plans for ultimately sup- plying virtually every city of Central New York with natural gas.
Little local gas and electric plants in various communities were but the forerunners of the great development of gas and electricity in the region in the past decade. The mighty Corliss steam engine that stood in the center of Machinery Hall at the Centennial Exposition was the symbol of the mechanical power achievement of a half century ago-great power but irrevocably bound to the locality where it was produced. The long distance
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transmission line is the symbol of the more mobile power of later years, when the pioneers of Niagara followed the route of Sul- livan's army.
Development of power at Niagara was the start of power development in Central New York. Power was developed there as early as 1757. Water wheels were improved down through the years, but the art of power transmission remained at a stand- still. Rope drive, shafting and compressed air were proposed- and rejected. Industries using Niagara power were few in num- ber and were limited in location to the banks of the hydraulic canal at Niagara Falls.
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