What do you do when you are traveling alongside a highway and occur to a physique of h2o around a mile large?
That was the problem that men and women traveling on the Genesee Highway encountered when they obtained to Cayuga Lake: Do you cross the lake somehow or do you test to go all around the northern conclusion and as a result of the marshes? Tracing the path of an old Indian path, this Genesee Highway was the major artery to get to “the West” right until the Erie Canal. This aids to explain why the 1st ferry services in the Finger Lakes was the one particular started by John Harris and James Bennett in 1789 around Cayuga Lake’s northern close. Until finally 1800, it delivered a poorly needed suggests of beating the obstacles elevated by Cayuga Lake alone, as very well as the Montezuma marshes to the north for the items and folks using the Great Genesee Road.
Harris and Bennett both of those came to the central Finger Lakes location in 1788. Harris settled in the spot around Cowings Position, just south of the existing village of Cayuga in Cayuga County. Harris’ father, Samuel Harris, operated a ferry on the Susquehanna River at a settlement started by Samuel’s father — very first named Harris’ Ferry and later renamed Harrisburg, Pa. Bennett settled on the west shore of Cayuga Lake, around the place the present Cayuga Lake State Park is. Bennett was a brother-in-legislation of John Harris. Harris and Bennett are buried in the Bridgeport Cemetery on the west shore of Cayuga Lake.
Shortly following finding settled in their new properties, Harris and Bennett saw the have to have for a way to get across Cayuga Lake to connect the two land segments of the Excellent Genesee Road. In 1789, they began a ferry company in the exact site of an Indian “ferry” or route across the lake on the previous Indian path. Originally, their ferry support was a diagonal route across Cayuga Lake. The terminus for the ferry on the east aspect was about a single mile north of the present village of Cayuga. In 1795, the western terminus was adjusted northward to be particularly throughout from Cayuga Landing on the east shore and in line with the Genesee Street.
Bennett was the…