US 20, northwest of East Lee, parallels the Housatonic and threads its way among the fertile fields and rich farms. (Pictured here: early filling station in Lee.)
Lee, 46.6 m. (pop. 4178, sett. 1760), named for General Charles Lee, later notorious for his treason to Washington, is a prosporous paper manufacturing town... It is said that one half of the paper used in cigarettes during the World War was made in Lee.
The slender spired Congregational Church, built in 1857, has walls and ceilings decorated by an itinerant German painter in true fresco. The white marble Public Library occupies the site of the log house where the original settlers held their first town meetings.
On Orchard St. is the entrance to Ferncliff, an evergreen-crowned eminence, on the northwest slope of which is Peter's Cave, where Peter Wilcox, condemned to die for his participation in Shay's Rebellion, hid for a time. He was captured, but eventually was pardoned.
Left from the village on West Park St., across the river, at 0.4 m., a road runs left to the Lime and Marble Quarries that supplied marble for the capitol at Washington... The small mill nearby has cut thousands of headstones for the graves of soldiers buried in Arlington Cemetery.
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