I’d mentioned that we went to see the Fenner Windmill Farm again today, in Madison County. I don’t know what it must be like living up near them, but I do think they are rather beautiful, and majestic. The entire area up there is absolutely beautiful; I tell the kids that this area of New York is probably the most beautiful of all. People are very wise to want to preserve its beauty.
There were several new cell phone towers up there from when we last visited two years ago. I never knew it before, but landowners lease a portion of their property to cell tower companies. What a lucrative idea, that of cell tower site promotion! I used to think that cell phone towers marred the scenic countryside, but I have changed my mind. I think if towers are placed tastefully, why not? It benefits the landowner, who gets that extra income that, here in New York State, is always welcome. And since obtaining a cell phone, I am much more appreciative of cell service out in the “boonies.” Winter driving in these parts can be life-threatening; I think it is beneficial to have phone service available for emergencies. Of course, I’m against speckling every square yard of farmland with towers; but towers are more powerful these days, and I was impressed with the ones we saw today.
It was only about a decade ago that people in the Adirondacks were up in arms about cell phone towers in the forest. The cell tower company tried to appease the people by camouflaging the tower as a pine tree. LOL, it didn’t work very well; everyone around here calls in “Frankenpine.” But cell phone towers are becoming part of our way of life, similar to the telephone poles and electric wiring poles of yesteryear. What do you think? Do you think towers mar the scenery? Do you think the cell tower industry can have a symbiotic relationship with landowners?
On July 4, the kids and I went to Rome, NY, to the Erie Canal Village. I’ve blogged about our day there, Part 1 and Part 2. What an adventure it was! One of the best parts was riding the horse-drawn packet boat down the sliver of the old Erie Canal. Here’s a video I made of the idyllic experience. If it wasn’t for the power lines in the meadows and the sounds of traffic on the roads, you’d think you were transported back to 1830 or so, at the height of the Canal’s popularity. The ride was so peaceful and the scenery so beautiful, I wish it would never stop.
You’d never know it today, but before the Erie Canal, traveling west from the eastern seaboard of the United States was almost impossible. The Adirondacks to the North all the way to Canada barred the northern pass, and the Appalachians from Canada down to the Carolinas were impassable until the airplane was invented. The only way west was through Central New York, and that was by oxen-driven carts or wagons.
I wrote a post about the uniqueness of the Mohawk Valley geography and the transportation boom here.
The Erie Canal was the brainchild of decades of inspiration and planning by some of our newly independent and ambitious American forefathers. When the plan was finalized in 1817 and the first shovelful of dirt removed (in Rome, where the Erie Canal Village is located), some scoffed and said it could never be done. President Thomas Jefferson said it was “little short of madness to think of it!” New York State is rugged country– millions of tons of soil and solid rock had to be removed; millions of gallons of water from swamps and rivers had to be reorganized and displaced. Where the Canal had to cross over bridges, aqueducts were created and the waters of the Canal elevated; where mountains stood in its way, dynamite blasted the New York bedrock into movable pieces. This was before bulldozers and cranes. Thousands of men lost their lives to accidents, disease, and exhaustion.
When finally completed on October 26, 1825, it was the engineering marvel of its day. It included 18 aqueducts to carry the canal over ravines and rivers, and 83 locks, with a rise of 568 feet from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. It was 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide, and floated boats carrying 30 tons of freight. A ten foot wide towpath was built along the bank of the canal for horses, mules, and oxen led by a boy boat driver or “hoggee”. The Erie Canal.org
New York State is not flat land– it’s very mountainous. Our highest point is Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks, at 5,344 ft, and we have all mountains and hills in between. If the Erie Canal was to be built straight across the state, all the waters of Lake Ontario would soon drain into the Atlantic Ocean, like a waterfall, lol! Thus, the “canal lock” was created. There’s a good explanation about how the locks work here. I found this cute animated icon that helps.
Some called the Erie Canal the Eighth Wonder of the World. Many had said it couldn’t be done. The completion of the Canal and the burst of business it brought catapulted New York State into fame and riches, earning its nickname, “The Empire State.” All the wealth of the Westward Expansion passed over New York State soil. Before the Erie Canal, New Orleans was the nation’s biggest harbor; after the Erie Canal, Upstate New York thrust New York City into the limelight, and its harbor became one of the largest in the world.
Today, most of the old Canal is in ruins. Some has been preserved for tourist attractions, like the Erie Canal Village in Rome. Some has been modified for recreational boating uses. The canal was rerouted for heavy cargo passage and renamed The New York State Barge Canal, but interest in the Canal waned because of faster methods, like railroad, and then trucks. Interestingly, because of high gasoline prices, transporting of goods by the canal is seeing renewed interest.
We’ve been to a few museums dedicated to the Erie Canal. You can read about them here:
You can read about Part 1 here. After wandering around the historic houses and marveling over the advances in modern technology (like, uh, washing machines and light bulbs!), we made our way over the the Cheese Factory Museum. I have to admit, I know very little about the history of cheesemaking. I don’t even eat cheese very often!
The cheese industry in New York was the top in the nation for a while, even surpassing Wisconsin. Cheese was an important meat substitute for the diets of early Americans. Livestock was not eaten nearly as frequently as it is now.
The kids had a lot of fun exploring the various hands-on displays.
I shake my head and wonder what on earth is going on in Central New York. This is from fellow New York blogger, Strikeslip, at Fault Lines:
…the OD [Utica’s newspaper] notes that ‘Utica’ will be removed from the 2009 Boilermaker logo, and also seems to be lacking from the race’s website. Supposedly the organizers want a more “regional” identity. Former Mayor Julian believes that this would be the loss of an area marketing tool. Mayor Roefaro, however, does not have a problem with it. . . Could Roefaro be right?
The City of Utica is so closely associated with the Boilermaker Road Race that its name may not have to be attached. The Boilermaker will still be Utica’s ‘signature event.’ The thousands of runners converging on Utica from all over the country and beyond is probably all the “marketing” that is needed. The Running of the Bulls = Pamplona, Spain. Il Palio = Siena, Italy. The Boilermaker = Utica. The name is there, whether it’s legible or not.
The OD news story to which Strikeslip refers quotes the Boilermaker director:
“We draw from Utica. We draw from Rome. We draw from the entire community,” Boilermaker Executive Director Tim Reed said Monday, one day after the annual 15K road race. “I want it to be an event that is open to everybody.”
This is an incredibly outrageous statement. How does removing “Utica” from “Boilermaker” suddenly include the whole community? The 15K race is held in the city!! And no one has found the race to be non-communal because the name of Utica is attached to Boilermaker. What’s really going on here? Reed is not acting stupidly here, he knows what he is doing. And it smells. What’s worse is that the mayor of Utica is going along with this slimy business. Long ago, Utica used to be a noble city, and was a manufacturing capital for many years, producing everything from air tools to silverware. Now, even her own leaders seem pitted against the city.
There’s a petition open, asking for people to support keeping “Utica” an incremental part of “Boilermaker.” The petition has garnered some local support, but it would be more powerful if people from all over the United States and the world added their name and thoughts.
I can’t believe that I took over 100 photos of our day spent at the Erie Canal Village in Rome, NY! We were there for most of the day, on July 4th, and had an absolute blast.
You can see all the photos I took here at my Flickr site. I’ll showcase only the basic photos for the blog posts. I think our visit, which incorporated seeing and learning so many different things, may take up a few posts. First, some history about the Village. It’s a huge, outdoor living museum where time stopped almost 200 years ago. Really, if it wasn’t for the sounds of traffic on the main road, or the power lines visible behind the fields, you’d think you were really in the early 19th century.
On July 4, 1817, the New York State governor was in this booming town of Rome, NY. This area was the location of the official beginning of the famous Erie Canal, said to be the most incredible engineering marvel of all time. It had been the brainchild of various New Yorkers shortly after the Revolutionary War, who wanted to open up the NY wilderness. Transportation in NY in those days was over rugged country and thickly-forested hills. A man-made waterway connecting the Hudson River/Atlantic Ocean to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie was the dream. Very few leaders were willing to sponsor this “insane” idea. Thomas Jefferson, when hearing about the plan, refused to give any federal aid to the project, saying, “You talk of making a canal 350 miles through the wilderness… it is little short of madness to think of it at this day!” Long before the Erie Canal was bringing in millions of dollars into New York’s coffers, it was called “Clinton’s Folly,” or “Clinton’s Ditch.”
The Erie Canal was completed in 1827, and brought instant wealth to the state. It also proved to be the springboard for Western Expansion, as this area of New York was the only passable way west from the eastern seaboard of the United States.
The Erie Canal Village, opened in 1978 when Rome, NY, was going through an historical awakening of it’s roots, takes us back to that “boom” time of prosperity in New York. There are numerous museums you can explore– a few settler’s houses decorated as if the families would be back at any moment; a blacksmith shop and horse corral; a schoolhouse and Methodist church; the Harden Museum filled with various horse carriages and sleighs depicting transportation of that era; an ice house, general store, railroad station, and tavern (where you can actually buy food and drink); a museum inside an old cheese factory showing the cheese industry of New York; and more! Best of all– a 30-minute ride on the old Erie Canal packet boat, horse-drawn. What a great day!
A hot air balloon drifted over our area yesterday evening. It was beautiful to watch as the sun set. We could see the flames from the tanks- they made a bright flash. The kids had never seen a “real” hot air balloon, so this was a treat.
Our trip to the Roscoe Conkling Park was brief, but it is a beautiful park and we hope to return. The park is perched atop Utica’s high hills, and overlooks the city and the Mohawk Valley with breathtaking views.
The park is named for Utica resident and mayor Roscoe Conkling. He was a popular mayor and national congressman, and also rubbed elbows with national political luminaries, such as Senator Thomas Pratt and President Chester Arthur. As a matter of fact, it was even speculated that Conkling has something to do with the assassination of President James Garfield so that Conkling’s pal (and Vice-President) Chester Arthur could become president. Conkling was influential in the nomination of Ulysses S. Grant as president.
When we wandered the park, we were alone, except for a few joggers. At the top of the hill are various monuments to local philanthropists.
A curious tin chair rested in the ground. It looked out of place!
The best thing of all is the view of the valley. The Val Bialas ski lift begins up here. What a beautiful view! In the summer evenings, the city must look spectacular, all ablaze in a glittering symphony of fanciful Hinkley lighting.
Also down the hill is the Utica Zoo– we love the Zoo. Read about our wintertime exploits here. Roscoe Conkling Park is lovely– it must be a wonderful and peaceful repose from the hectic city living below.
Last week, I took the opportunity to drive to nearby Utica, NY, to visit the Forest Hill Cemetery in the city. Utica is an amazingly historic town, and walking through Forest Hill Cemetery is like stepping back in time. Many of New York State’s most notable citizens are buried here. I won’t list them all! but I’ll show you a few of the sites we found. Behind Forest Hill Cemetery is the Roscoe Conkling Park. I’d never even known this place was there! What a beautiful park, and it sits perched on a high hill overlooking the city in the valley below. Breathtaking. I took photos– keep reading.
Forest Hill Cemetery was founded in 1850. It is a huge plot of land, established when people were becoming more aware of sanitation for urban areas. It’s a beautiful cemetery. The Gothic-style gate opens into several small park-like islands.
I found the old resting place of the Oneida Stone, that famed stone of the Oneida Indian Nation! It was taken from the Oneidas in 1849 and placed here during the cemetery’s opening ceremony. The stone has been returned to the Oneidas since 1974. According to Anthony Wonderley in his book, Oneida Iroquois Folklore, Myth, and History, the stone now sits at the Oneida Nation council house, on their historic land given to them after the American Revolution (on the old Honyoust tract).
The cemetery, like I’ve said, is filled with the buried remains of hundreds of luminaries from New York State history. New York State governor and Utica native Horatio Seymour is buried here.
Roscoe Conkling, a long-term Utica mayor and national figure, is buried here, too.
Also among those resting here are James Schoolcraft Sherman (vice-president under William Taft), John Adams’ granddaughter, John Jay’s personal secretary, Jedidiah Sanger (who founded New Hartford, NY), Moses Bagg (an influential merchant) and local philanthropists James Watson, Thomas Proctor, Alfred Munson, and Rachel and Maria Williams. I also found a few famous folks from the American Revolution, including Captain Benjamin Walker who was an aide of George Washington and Baron von Steuben (who is buried north of here and whose memorial site we have visited).
And we also saw the burial site of Amariah Brigham, that groundbreaking doctor who believed mentally ill patients could be treated, and began his practice at the very famous Utica Insane Asylum. The link will take you to my post about that, and this link is my post about our visit there.
One thing that caught our eye was a very peculiar memorial in the more “modern” section of the cemetery. I’d never seen anything like it.
I did some reading and this is a memorial to Justus Henry Rathbone of Utica. He founded the Knights of Pythias, and became extremely influential in politics and business. The Knights of Pythias sounded occultic to me (the oracles at Delphi in Greece worshiped the fortune-telling snake, Pythias)! I did some quick research and found that the Knights of Pythias is from the Greek myth Damon and Pythias. Huh. Wikipedia says this of Rathbone:
Justin H. Rathbone was the founder of the international fraternal order of the Knights of Pythias. He was born October 29, 1839 in New York. He graduated from Colgate University and attended Carlisle Seminary. He was a music composer and actor. In 1863 he moved to Washington D.C. as a government clerk in the Treasury Department, where he founded the Knights of Pythias on February 19, 1864. Rathbone wrote the ritual for the Knights of Pythias which is based on the mythological friendship of Damon and Pythias. He died in 1889.
It was a very interesting visit, and I don’t think I even scratched the surface of all the history to be discovered. I’ll have more about our visit to the Roscoe Conkling Park up the hill, and about the Oneida Stone, in future posts.
There have been areas we’ve visited that looked so beautiful and comfortable that we just wanted to settle in. Ever feel that way? A lot of New Yorkers do! A healthy portion of New Yorkers (”snowbirds” they are called) have visited and loved Florida so much that they find some land and live there for half the year. Many of my relatives have found a beautiful villa for sale that they couldn’t resist, and have settled in permanently. There is a huge Mecomber clan in central Florida who migrated from NY to the Sunshine State.
How about you? Looking for the perfect vacation home? Check out Bardell Real Estate. They specialize in available properties in the “Disneyland” area of Orlando. You can view villas, retirement housing, manufactured housing and more online, at your convenience. They’ve also got some good articles on buying and selling your home.
Florida is a little too humid for me, so I think I’m a solid New Yorker. However, that won’t stop me from suggesting a nice little vacation villa purchase for my southerly-minded relatives… as long as they get a large enough home to host a few northen Mecombers, heh heh.
New York State is literally loaded with little streams, creeks, rivers, and lakes. It’s a wonderfully water-ful state, but sometimes we do experience flooding. I recently blogged about our visit to see the Susquehanna River right before the historic flood of June 2006 (we had another historic flood in July that year, too). And I was sifting through my photos and found a few snapshots of our visit to Canadarago Lake, just north of Cooperstown. You can read about our visit to Cooperstown, here and Fly Creek, here.
Last winter, we drove down Route 20 and Route 28 and then backtracked the same way to go home. I used to live in this area many years ago. I haven’t traveled here in a long time, though. The change from all those years ago to now was striking to me, and I can’t say it was good.
This area is a very rural area. Hillsides are always dotted with Holsteins and horses, and big red barns jut out from the hills. Some of the barns are very unique in their design– there’s even an historic stone octagonal barn in this area. The houses also are very grand, built at a time when New York State was abundantly verdant and proud of her august agricultural citizens. I love architecture and pretty houses, and have always enjoyed driving down Route 20 and 28 because of all the elegant Greek Revival and Italianate houses here.
I was in for a shock. So many houses and farms are now terribly run-down. Barns that once beamed their proud red colors are dingy and have broken windows. Many of the grand old dames from NY’s glory days are shamefully drab, and they grotesquely sag from years of disrepair. A few houses even had plywood and plastic to patch broken windows! It was a gloomy sight indeed. I knew that times have been very hard for Upstate farmers (and others) thanks to city-slicker politicians in Albany, but this was devastating. People can’t even keep up their houses anymore. For sale signs were almost as abundant as the browning cornstalks. My heart was bleeding.
I’m sorry to be so negative in my post. I was so awed at the change that it necessitates mention.
We stopped by Baker’s Beach along the lake, a favorite old place of ours long ago. I stopped just in time to take a few photographs of a snowstorm coming in across the lake. The kids were oohing and ahhing.
Can you see the storm moving in, in the photo above? The south side (to the right of the picture) was as sunny and clear as could be. The north side is filmy and foggy. The snow was coming! It was like a faucet turning on!
Geese were plentiful at the lake. Not all fly south? Or are they just waiting around for something? When I got out of the van to take the photos, all of them started honking and squeaking, and made quite a racket. They didn’t realize that my kind of “shooting” is different!
We quietly drove home. It had been a nice, quiet journey. I am still concerned for Upstate, though. I hope things get better…
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I shake my head and wonder what on earth is going on in Central New York. 
