Mass. Line to Albany cont.

Benjamin Budd's Tavern, 11.2 m., (L), now a private residence, was built about 1800 on the site of the cabin of David Brainard (1718-47), Indian missionary. (TheOldLibrarian - the Indians would have been the Mohicans, whose homeland this area was. Pictured here is Mohican chief Etow Oh Koam).

At 11.8 m. is a junction with State 66. Left on State 66 down the Kinderhook Creek valley to the Berkshire Theatre Workshop, 3.5 m., a summer school for dramatic training...

At Nassau, 16.1 m., when legal obstructions can be circumvented, greyhound races are run at the Rensselaer County Fairgrounds. Tickets for admission are distributed profusely without charge ; the large profits are made from betting. The course is sometimes run with monkeys astride the dogs.

Skirting the Hudson Valley fruit belt, at 20.9 m. US 20 unites with US 9.

At 24.1 m. is the junction with US4.

At 29 m. the route bears L. on the Parker Dunn Memorial Bridge.

(TheOldLibrarian - US 20, before it crosses the Hudson into Albany, runs through East Greenbush, in 1940 a region of small farms, and Rensselaer, home of Fort Crailo, site of the writing of Yankee Doodle Dandy etc. A New Yorker, I have perhaps noticed this more in the NY guide than others, the sometimes curious omission of towns along the way.)

Mass. Line to Albany cont.

At 2.1 m. is the eastern junction with State 22 which unites briefly with US 20.

New Lebanon, 2.9 m., (400 pop.), was the birthplace of Samuel Tilden (1814-86) who as member of the state legislature and governor pushed the investigations that smashed New York City's Tweed Ring and the upstate Canal Ring. Tilden was initiated into politics at an early age when conferences were held at his father's house by Martin Van Buren... and other big wigs of the Albany Regency... In 1876, as presidential candidate, he won a majority of the popular vote. But the electoral vote was so close that a special commission was appointed which gave Rutherford Hayes the office by a majority of one... (Pictured here)

Just west of the village is (R) the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes (open May-Nov.), built around a spring. On the Sunday nearest the feast of St. Christopher (July 25), thousands of motorists drive to the shrine for the annual blessing of automobiles.

Crossing the narrow valley of the Wyomanock Creek, the road passes between the Lebanon Valley Ski-Jump Course (R) and Toboggan Slide (L)...

Section a. Mass. Line to Albany; 29.3 m.

Shaggy Mount Lebanon rises north of the point where US 20 crosses the Massachusetts Line, 0 m., 7.8 m. west of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. As the highway winds down the mountainside it passes several barnlike houses (L), remnants of the Mount Lebanon Shaker Settlement, established here in 1785. The Shakers were one of the earliest religious cults to sprout along the east-west axis of the Empire State. Its distinguishing tenents were celibacy, community of property... The social unit was the large 'family' housed under one roof, but the men and women eating and lodging seperately. The physical paroxysms accompanying their religious exercises gave rise to the name 'Shaking Quakers,' later abbreviated to Shakers. (Pictured here, the Mount Lebanon Meeting House ca1933.)

In response to a revelation, Mother Ann led six men and two women converts to America from England in 1774. This group originally settled at Watervliet, but Mount Lebanon was the first formal Shaker Society...

A combination of communism, industry and inventiveness built a prosporous society during the 19th century... But the sects exclusive dependence on converts and the adoption of orphans to recruit its numbers has led to a slow disintigration until today there is only a handful of aged Shakers left.

Tour 8, US 20 across New York

(Pittsfield Mass.) - Albany - Cherry Valley - Sangerfield - La Fayette - Auburn - Geneva - Canandaigua - Fredonia - Westfield - (Erie, Pa.) US 20. Massachusetts Line to Pennsylvania Line, 387.6 m.

Two, three, and four lane concrete, with stretches of two-lane macadam...

In 150 years trails and woods-roads have been joined to make US 20 a popular route spanning the Empire State but touching only two large cities - Albany and Auburn. From the crest of the Taconics the highway drops into the Hudson Valley; west of Albany it mounts the flank of the Helderbergs, dips into and out of the valley of Schoharie Creek, plunges into the upper valleys of the Susquehanna watershed, rides the serrated northern rim of the Allegheny Plateau, crosses the base of the Finger Lakes, then cuts across the rolling Ontario Plain to Lake Erie, and thence southwest to the Pennsylvania line...

Following the trails made by moccasined feet, the route runs the length of the 'Long House' of the Iroquois Confederacy... The Revolution ended, Sullivan's soldiers went home to New England bearing tales of a fertile land to the west; and with the peace, the westward rush was on...

The migrating New Englanders, besides settling the region with stubborn, sturdy men and women, added their characteristic religious and political vagaries. Memorials of their sects and cults are scattered along the route from the Shakers at New Lebanon to the the Brotherhood of the New Life at Brocton...

US 20 across New York

New York is TheOldLibrarian's home state, and I'm looking forward to this part of the tour. Many familiar and beloved stretches of rural highway here; if you ever can, drive US 20 from outside of Albany to Skaneateles, it is a lovely stretch of upstate NY touring.

The descriptions that follow are drawn from New York: a guide to the Empire State, Federal Writers Project, 1940. Like the other state guides, this title is widely available in libraries (see www.worldcat.org), and used book stores for modest prices (check www.abebooks.com).

As always on this tour, bear in mind that it is drawn from a series of books now almost 70 years old! This fact is part of their charm and historical interest, but obviously some sites are no longer there and so forth...

Pittsfield to the NY line

West of Pittsfield, US 20 crosses the Taconic Range. At 3.4 m. is a splendid view of the mountains (N). Prominent is the 'Ope of Promise, a knob like peak on Tower Mountain. On this the spirits of dead Shakers were supposed to dwell. (Pictured here: Shaker Village round barn.)

The Old Shaker Colony, 4.7 m., was established between 1780 and 1790. At the Community House and Handicraft Shop the handicrafts are still cultivated, though less than a dozen members remain of a once large and prosporous community.

The Summit House (alt. 1480) and an Observation Tower are at 6 m.

At 7.1 m. on Lebanon Mountain (alt. 1400) is a turnout from which there is a view of open fields, and in the distance the wooded tops of the New York Berkshires. In the heart of the valley are a group of buildings of the Lebanon (NY) Shaker Village (L). The Lebanon School for Boys occupies a group of buildings formerly owned by the Shaker Community.

Pittsfield

(TheOldLibrarian: the following is adapted from the Pittsfield city entry in the guidebook... Pictured here is West Street in the 1940s)

Pittsfield, power-source and playground. (alt. 1038, pop. 45,516, incorp 1761.)
Railroad stations: Union Station, West St., B. & A. R. R.
Bus stations: 48 South St. for Greyhound, New England Transportation, Arrow, Interstate, Vermont Transit, Berkshire Motor Coach, Blue Way. Nutmeg and Peter Pan lines.
Accomodations: one first class and three second class hotels; numerous inns.

In the shadow of Mount Greylock, high in the rolling Berkshires, Pittsfield opens the commercial gateway to western Massachusetts. Situated between the upper branches of the Housatonic River, the city is traversed by streams which for a hundred years or more furnished power to factories producing such varied products as silk thread, mohair braid, tacks...

Today the city has a prosporous, tranquil look of general comfort and culitivation which makes it one of the most attractive industrial cities in the state...

There has been a change, however, in the character of the city's holiday population. In the latter part of the 19th century Pittsfiled attracted a wealthy leisure class who resided solidly on spacious estates. The rambling old Maplewood Hotel, in the heart of the modern city, was a relic such as could not be matched short of Saratoga, with its long verandas...

The advent of the automobile has changed everything. The leisurely old school ladies and gentlemen who once trotted sedately in victorias or runabouts are no more. Their modern successors now whirl in and out again in swift cars, and hotels, new and old, are conduits for a never ending stream of summer and winter visitors...