AA-2026-BFD4C0
On the image
Watkins Glen State Park in the Finger Lakes region of New York was, by the 1950s, one of the most reliably photographed stops on the American family road trip, which meant that several million Americans stood in roughly this same spot over the course of a decade and pointed a camera at the same stone arch bridge spanning the gorge above Cavern Cascade, each one convinced they had discovered something. The WPA-era stonework pathway and bridge — built in the 1930s by men who understood that a national park should look like it had always been there — had aged just enough by mid-century to appear ancient, which was more or less the point. The gorge itself is genuine geology, Devonian shale carved by glacial meltwater into layered shelves that the water still descends in overlapping sheets, indifferent to the postwar tourism economy that had grown up around it. A family driving a two-tone Ford would have parked at the entrance, walked the gorge trail in their street shoes, and returned to the car with damp ankles and the firm conviction that this was better than Niagara, which they had also seen that week. The stone bridge holds the frame with the authority of something built to outlast the people who funded it, which it has.
Visually related — by likeness
Watkins Glen Gorge Trail, New York, 1950s. 1950–1959. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-BFD4C0. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/watkins-glen-gorge-trail-new-york-1950s.
@misc{aaAA2026BFD4C0,
title = {Watkins Glen Gorge Trail, New York, 1950s},
year = {1950–1959},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-BFD4C0},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/watkins-glen-gorge-trail-new-york-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Watkins Glen Gorge Trail, New York, 1950s PY - 1950–1959 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-BFD4C0 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/watkins-glen-gorge-trail-new-york-1950s ER -
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