In the western region of New York State, not far from the city of Rochester, is the Letchworth State Park.  The park is about 17 miles (27 km) long, following a gorge cut into the shale, limestone, and sandstone of the landscape by the Genesee River.  The walls of the gorge are as tall as 550 feet (170 meters) in places, and there are three significant waterfalls within the park, but the interest of the area lies in more than it’s natural beauty.

William Pryor Letchworth purchased one thousand acres along the gorge in 1853 for his estate, and later bequeathed it to the State of New York, forming the foundation for the Letchworth Park, and giving it it’s name.  His intent, which has been realized, was to deter commercial business from coming in and damaging the fragile area.  But long before this the area was the territory of the Seneca people, who called the gorge Sehgahunda, or ‘vale of the three falls.’  Because they sided with the British in the Revolutionary War, they were largely forced out of the area by the victorious Americans.  When Letchworth owned the land, he moved a Seneca council house, that had stood at Ga-o-ya-de-o (Canadea) on the Genesee River since long before the Revolution, to his land in order to preserve it.  That building is still in the park, and according to the information I got there, “in it gathered the war parties that devastated the frontiers and before it their helpless prisoners ran the gauntlet.”  I’m not sure how it’s maintained, or what may have been replaced over the years to preserve it, but the logs of the walls look ancient and are clearly part of the original structure.

To me, one of the most fascinating stories associated with the park is the story of Mary Jemison.  Mary was the child of immigrants from Northern Ireland, born on a ship as they came to the New World in 1743.  They claimed and cleared land for a farm in what was Iroquois territory, and in 1755, at the start of the French and Indian War and when Mary was 12 years old, a raiding party of Shawnee and Frenchmen captured her and her family and a neighbor boy.  The rest of her family were killed and scalped, but Mary and the boy were spared, and she was adopted by the Seneca and given the name Deh-he-wa-mis, meaning a pretty girl.  She became fully assimilated into the Seneca culture, married a Delaware man named Sheninjee, and named her first son Thomas, after her father.  With this husband she moved to the Genesee River valley that is now the Letchworth State Park, where he died shortly thereafter.  She later married a Seneca man and they had six more children, of which three were still alive at the time of her death at age ninety.  Mary and her family supported the British during the Revolutionary War, and so were forced off much of their land afterwards, but because she still spoke English as well as Seneca, Mary was able to negotiate a treaty with more favorable terms, the Treaty of Big Tree in 1797.  She lived on one of the remaining tracts of Seneca land in the valley until she sold it in 1871 to move to the Buffalo Creek Reservation.  She lived out her life as a Seneca, and was known to local residents as “the White Woman of the Iroquois.”  A statue commemorating her life stands in Letchworth park, showing her as a young woman coming to the area carrying her son Thomas in a cradle board on her back, and she’s buried at the site.

There’s a cabin nearby that originally belonged to Mary’s daughter Nancy, and in it is the original door from Mary’s house.  I love to think of how many times this strong and influential woman opened and closed this simple door made of two wide planks.

I spent the night at the campgrounds within Letchworth Park, and they were some of the nicest I’ve seen anywhere, very clean, peaceful, and well maintained.  As I was cooking dinner, though, this little guy walked through my camp — skunks are actually really adorable and gentle creatures, but I kept my distance!

In the morning — after a quick skunk check — I hiked along the gorge to see the rather unimaginatively named Lower, Middle, and Upper Falls.  All were beautiful, but the Middle Falls, being the widest and tallest, was really the main attraction.

Seen from a distance, as I hiked downstream, you can imagine how it must have looked here when the Seneca owned the land, and why they considered it so valuable.

The whole gorge was a lovely place to hike — here’s a view of the, again not very creatively named, Big Bend.

The facilities of the park are really excellent, and even in the busy summer season, seemed hardly used.  Take a look at this impressive picnic pavilion with indoor barbeques making use of the stone chimney.  Looking at the schedule, the last time it was booked was two months ago.

The stone work of the bridges, retaining walls, and walkways is just as impressive, and much of that work was done by the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1941.  In 1933, President Franklin D Roosevelt established the CCC to provide relief and occupation for millions of young unemployed men during the Great Depression.  Men aged from 18 to 26 years old, and World War I veterans, received housing, food, and clothing, and were paid one dollar per day, in exchange for work performed on conservation and construction projects.  Given the population, discipline, order, and uniform dress were important aspects of the camps, with plenty of recreation and education opportunities, and even dances to meet the girls in the local communities. If I remember correctly, my own uncles worked in the CCC, and remembered those days very fondly.  There’s a statue at Letchworth to commemorate their contributions to making the park the beautiful place it is.

As I left the park in mid-afternoon to move on to my next destination, it gradually occurred to me how many wind turbines I had been seeing all over New York State.  These weren’t huge projects in general, but rather a few scattered turbines across the hillsides in multiple places, but I didn’t remember seeing so many in the past.  By asking around and looking on Wikipedia, I found that the wind power capacity of the state has indeed been growing since the first wind farm came online here in 2000, with a current capacity of 1,722 MW installed, and more planned, making NY the eleventh ranked state for wind power.  I stopped for a break from driving under some of these, and listened to the rhythmic whoosh of the blades slowly turning.  The contrast between the ancient landscape I had been visiting and the latest in energy technology appealed to me, but I was pleased to feel no clash or conflict in their juxtaposition.