Browse Items (1302 total)

Constructed as the Genesee County Poor House in 1828, this site in Bethany, NY became the warehouse for a variety of afflictions: alcoholism, mental illness, disability, and pauperism. Inmates spent years there including one, Phebe White, who died…

Sharing a border with the Rattlesnake Hill Wildlife Management Area, this 1,300-acre tract similarly was created during the 1930s. Under the State Reforestation Act, nine different owners were bought out between 1930 and 1946, creating a mixed-use…

West of Dansville, NY is this 5,100-acre tract managed by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). It was obtained during the 1930s by the Federal Resettlement Administration--which bought out struggling landowners and transferred…

In the late 1990s Gary Russell, who had inherited a 771-acre plot of land along the Genesee River in Allegany County, reached out to the Nature Conservancy about putting it into a forever-wild trust. He and his brothers had floated along its waters,…

Near the location of the Groveland Shaker Colony (1837-1892), and then the Craig Colony for Epileptics (1894-1988) was a tract of land sometimes called the "Big Woods." By the early 1960s, the de-institutionalization movement presaged closure of the…

Smallest in size of the Finger Lakes, Canadice and nearby Hemlock Lake have been a major source of drinking water for the City of Rochester since 1919, following a decades-long legal fight. That legal decision had important effects upon surrounding…

This item consists of three images from a NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) management plan for a 750-acre area located in Ontario County. Much of the land had been used for agricultural production, with resulting soil exhaustion,…

Map of post-bellum Rochester puts an emphasis upon the city's developing industrial infrastructure: canals, roads, railroads, and a very short-lived steamship to Canada named theNorseman. Oddly, the one specific businesses mentioned is the Rochester…

At the popular "Brontosaurus Hall" at the American Museum of Natural History, a young girl sits in preserved footprints of a dinosaur. Note: this image has been croppedS