The Great Genesee Road

Today we call most of it New York Route 5. Over the centuries it has been called the Iroquois Trail, Genesee Road, Mohawk and Seneca Turnpike, Buffalo Road. In Route 5 and the Great Genesee Road, author Richard Figiel takes readers on a historical journey tracing the first road to penetrate west into New York State, exploring the artifacts and stories of centuries along the way from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.

Many centuries ago, it was a Native-American path binding the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Then the trail became the principal overland conduit of the 17th and 18th-century North American fur trade. The Dutch turned the footpath into a cart track. The British and French turned it into a battleground. After the Revolution, the first homesteaders came to know it as the Genesee Road, leading them to a land of milk and honey in the western Genesee River Valley.

Rambling across New York’s pastoral countryside from Schenectady, through Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and ending in Buffalo as its “Main Street”, Route 5 travels through layers of history and stories of a restless, young America. Featuring rich storytelling, generous illustrations, historical and contemporary photographs, and detailed maps old and new, Route 5 and the Great Genesee Road is a fascinating trip through the making of New York State, the expansion of a young country, and a piece of history that readers can still explore today.

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