Hotel Frontenac

Hotel Frontenac on the west shore of Cayuga Lake north of Taughannock Falls State Park. Courtesy of Bill Hecht

During the steamboat era, there were a number of luxury hotels built along the shores of Cayuga Lake, including the Hotel Frontenac. 

“Around 1870 a hotel was built on Frontenac Point which was then known as Frog Point, or Point Deposit. The hotel was sold in 1878 to Thomas O’Connell and his brother Martin, who changed the name to the Frontenac Hotel in honor of the famous Cayuga Lake steamboat the Frontenac.” http://falzguy.com/frontenac-falls.html

The hotel is long gone and the Boy Scouts created Camp Barton on the site in 1927.

On Cayuga Lake with the Haendel today

The tour boat MV Haendel of Tiohero Tours crosses Cayuga Lake today during one of its one hour tours.

Today, we held our regular Saturday Ithaca Farmers Market one hour, narrated tours of the south end of Cayuga Lake, a beautiful, warm, sunny day, with just a breeze. We usually run two tours, and sometimes a third if there are passengers, which is what we did today. The first two trips sold out!

The Haendel awaits departure today at the dock at the Farmers Market. Notice how muddy Cayuga Inlet was.

Cayuga Inlet was muddy, with the heavy runoff from yesterday’s downpours. Buttermilk Creek in Buttermilk Glen was muddy last evening. The muddiness, which attracted some people’s attention, was a great opportunity to explain how downtown Ithaca was formed, from the silt, sand, gravel, and clay washed from the surrounding hillsides through gorges into the south end of the lake for thousands of years. Ithaca is Gorges, and the gorges made Ithaca.

The Haendel will be back at the Market again tomorrow. For more information, see Tiohero Tours.

Ithaca Festival Parade!

Are you looking forward to the Ithaca Festival next month? Well you don’t have to wait! Relive the 2008 Ithaca Festival Parade on Ithaca’s public access cable TV channel 13, or online right here. Here’s the schedule of upcoming cablecasts of this 47-minute fun experience:

5/8         10am,    5/12       5pm,   5/14       6pm

To see the parade on your computer, click on the photo below!

He-Man Chainsaw Marching Band

New TV episode: The Treman Show

Spring is definitely upon us! Crews at the state parks in the area have been hard at work getting the trails open for the season. This episode of our TV show, Cayuga Lake Heritage, on Ithaca area public access cable channel 13, features The Treman Show, about Robert H. Treman State Park, produced several years ago by the Friends of Robert H. Treman State Park. There is also a short video about the opening of the Gorge Trail at Buttermilk Falls State Park.

This episode went live on Tuesday, April 26, and will repeat three more times:

Sunday, May 1, 10:00 a.m.

Tuesday, May 3, 8:00 p.m.

Sunday, May 8, 10:00 a.m.

If you can’t see the show on TV, you can see most of it right here. First of all, check out the one minute video about the Gorge Trail about Buttermilk Falls State Park:

And to see the full 25-minute Treman Show, click on this photograph:

Click on this photo to see The Treman Show!

For more information about the park, see the website of the Friends of Robert H. Treman State Park at http://friendsoftreman.wordpress.com/

 This episode of Cayuga Lake Heritage will be the final one for the season.

Finger Lakes National Forest, Scaling Lucifer’s Wall, and Three Falls at Lick Brook

Ithaca cable channel 13, Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 10:00 a.m.

An old growth white pine tree rises above the forest canopy in Finger Lakes National Forest.

The current episode of our public access TV show, Cayuga Lake Heritage, on Ithaca’s cable channel 13, features another great video by Michael Ameigh of SUNY Oswego: Highland Homestead: Life on the Hector Backbone, about the Finger Lakes National Forest straddling the divide between Cayuga and Seneca Lakes.

The second part of the show includes my short video called Scaling Lucifer’s Wall. It shows park employees rappelling down the high cliff by Lucifer Falls at Robert H. Treman State Park, knocking off winter-loosened shale to minimize the risk of stones falling on the trail below when the gorge opens later this spring. This short video is an episode for a new YouTube channel I’ve begun called Walk in the Park, which is also a Facebook page I’ve created. I may begin showing Walk in the Park episodes on their own on PEGASYS public access.

You can watch Scaling Lucifer’s Wall here!

This current episode of Cayuga Lake Heritage will run through Sunday, April 24.

In the previous episode, I included another short video called Three Falls at Lick Brook. You can see that here as well:

Community Beautification Program of Tompkins County

An example of the gorgeous work of the Community Beautification Program

Who plants all those incredible flower beds around Ithaca each year? Find out on our current episode of our public access TV show, Cayuga Lake Heritage, on local cable channel 13: Sunday, March 20, 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, March 22, 8:00 p.m., and Sunday, March 27, 10:00 a.m. It will be scheduled by the station at other times as well, so check channel 13’s program lineup on the the screen at the end of each hour.

You can also see the entire 29-minute show online here:

Our guest this time is Dan Klein, coordinator of the Community Beautification Program. Dan organizes dozens of volunteers to create incredibly beautiful plantings all around Ithaca, all funded by the county’s hotel room tax, that is by visitors and tourists. Find out how you can become involved by going to http://ccetompkins.org/garden/community-beautification-0 , or call Dan at 607-272-2292.

Upcoming training sessions for the Community Beautification Brigade are on Tuesday, March 22 and Monday, March 28, from 6-8:30 p.m.

Does Cayuga Lake Ever Freeze Over?

Looking north over Farley's Point toward the frozen northern 8-10 miles of the lake. By Bill Hecht

OUR LATEST EPISODE OF CAYUGA LAKE HERITAGE, a public access TV series in Ithaca, NY. Find out when Cayuga Lake has frozen over and why it usually doesn’t.

This episode went live on March 1 and will be re-cablecast on the following dates on Ithaca’s cable channel 13: Sunday, March 6, 10:00 a.m.; Tuesday, March 8, 8:00 p.m.; and Sunday, March 13, at 10:00 a.m. It will also be shown at other times at the discretion of the station manager; check the schedule on the screen usually shown just before the hour.

If you can’t watch it on TV (the best option), I have posted it to YouTube and inserted it here. The show is 29 minutes long. Due to rendering among formats, the online version is not as sharp as on TV, but it is adequate, the audio is good, and you get the story!

“Footprints of the Ice Age, ” a film by Michael Ameigh to show on Cayuga Lake Heritage beginning February 1.

Mastodons walking across Ithaca's South Hill, 13,000 years ago, painting by Ithaca artist W.C. Dilger (1952)

Cayuga Lake Heritage is proud to present Michael Ameigh’s film, Footprints of the Ice Age. Produced and narrated in 2009 by Michael Ameigh of S.U.N.Y Oswego, the film takes us from the records in the rocks in the Grand Canyon to central, western and northern New York State, tracing the evidence and legacy of the Ice Age, both in the landscape and in the ecology. From Niagara Falls to Mark Twain’s Elmira, from the Finger Lakes to Lake Ontario, from the Mohawk River to the top of Whiteface Mountain, Ameigh reveals the profound effect the Pleistocene Epoch has had in shaping our region. 

I will show Footprints of the Ice Age in two half-hour episodes, part 1 beginning Tuesday, February 1, at 8:00 p.m. on Ithaca’s public access cable TV channel 13 (exclusively). Part 1 will repeat for two weeks, on Sunday, February 6 at 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, February 8 at 8:00 p.m., and finally on Sunday , February 13 at 10:00 a.m. The station manager may schedule it at other times during this span on short notice.

Part 2 of Footprints of the Ice Age will continue on the same Tuesday, Sunday schedule for two weeks beginning Tuesday, February 15, and ending Sunday, February 27.

These episodes of Cayuga Lake Heritage will not be available online. Footprints of the Ice Age has been broadcast a number times on WCNY public television.

Mr. Ameigh indicates that educational institutions and other similar organizations may obtain a copy of Footprints of the Ice Age from him for the cost of duplication. For more information, contact Michael Ameigh at ameigh@oswego.edu.

Cayuga Lake Heritage Episode: “Dreams of Equality”

The Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, now part of Women's Rights National Historical Park, was the site of the first Women's Rights Convention in 1848.

One of the proudest elements of the heritage of the Cayuga Lake area is in Seneca Falls, NY, near the northwest corner of the lake itself. Seneca Falls was an important transportation and manufacturing center in the 1800s. It was also a center for social change, including anti-slavery activism, and in 1848, the beginning of the Women’s Rights Movement in America. The latter is recognized at Women’s Rights National Historical Park and the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

The National Park has an excellent visitor center with exhibits about the history of women’s rights in America and a 28-minute film, Dreams of Equality, which re-enacts the First Wwomen’s Rights Convention through the eyes of participants, and continues with the progress of the movement subsequently. Particularly charming are short discussions between pairs of modern-day boys and girls that are interspersed in the presentation.

I obtained permission to show Dreams of Equality on my Ithaca area public access cable channel 13 TV series, Cayuga Lake Heritage. It will be shown officially three more times on Sunday, January 23 at 10:00 a.m., Tuesday, January 25 at 8:00 p.m., and finally on Sunday again, January 30 at 10:00 a.m., on Ithaca cable channel 13 exclusively. It may be shown at other times during this period on short notice at the discretion of the station manager. Unfortunately, this episode will not be available online.

The information desk at the visitor center at Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls.

Cayuga Lake Heritage New Year 2011 show

Happy New Year 2011

My first episode of 2011 is being cablecast now on Ithaca’s public access cable TV channel 13. The last pre-scheduled showing will be Sunday morning, January 16, at 10:00 a.m. But keep your eyes out through Monday for additional showings by going to channel 13 just before the hour to see their lineup of shows.

This New Year’s episode is made up of three video segments which you can also see online here. The first short segment, just over a minute long, is the changing of the lights from 10 to 11 on the Ithaca College dormitory towers. The voices in the background are a group of young adults apparently speaking Japanese, who were also watching the lights change. This segment lasts just over a minute.

The sceond video segment was recorded on December 18 during the last day of the year at the Ithaca Farmers Market at Steamboat Landing, and features the 13th Annual International Rutabaga Curling Championship! It is a lot of fun and lasts 7 1/2 minutes.

The rest of the show was made up of a 20-minute retrospective of videos shown on the show during the last six months since the program began in July. I think you’ll enjoy it!

The next episode will run live on Ithaca’s cable channel 13 on Tuesday, January 18 at 8:00 p.m. and will be repeated for two weeks on Tuesday evening at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 10:00 a.m., as well as at other times scheduled by the station manager on short notice. I plan to show Women’s Rights National Historical Park’s visitor center video, Dreams of Equality.” This episode will not be posted online.