BACKROADS • JULY 2022
Page 17
Morton’s BMW Motorcycles presents Dr. Seymour O’Life’s
MYSTERIOUS AMERICA
THE NORTHEAST’S MOST MYSTERIOUS HISTORICAL SIGNS Last year I rode on the Ramapo Motorcycle Clubs Fall Foliage Ride. As always, the club put on a stellar event, and riding to it from Backroads Central I noticed a small historical placard at the confluence of Route 17 and 17A. It claimed that this was the site of the “First Marked Trail in the Nation,” right outside Harriman Park and just north of New York City? Well, indeed so. It seems that nearly 100 years ago Doctor Frank Lutz, an entomologist who would become one of the curators of the Museum of Natural History created the Station for the Study of Insects. Although this marked trail was the first of its kind and ran only a mile, it changed the way the world looked at discovering nature. And, to think this happened right at the spot I was making a right turn – one that I have made hundreds of times and only now learned about this. That got me thinking about signs – especially Historical Signs. Last July, I told you about the famed artist Charles Wilson Peale and the mastodon he recovered in the Hudson Valley, but up in Cohoes, New York, there is a marker that tells us that mastodons were everywhere thousands of years ago.
The Cohoes Mastodon
The Cohoes Mastodon was discovered in 1866 during the construction of Harmony Mill No. 3 near Cohoes Falls on the Mohawk River. The mastodon’s remains were found deeply buried in a large pothole, which had been worn into the bedrock by the swirling action of water and stones at the end of the last Ice Age. You can see the big fella at the New York State Museum in Albany.
First Milk Pasteurization
On Route 10, near Bloomville, New York there is a sign that is something of which we all have taken part. The Sheffield Farm building still stands just outside Bloomville, but it is now deteriorating and used for highway storage. In 1892, L.B. Halsey installed the first milk pasteurization machine in this building. It was revolutionary, to say the least.
