Living on the Great Lakes

 Growing up around here you get so used to living around the Great Lakes that you don’t appreciate them.

 Recently, in reading a book about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it hit me again about how significant this watershed is.  The Great Lakes make up 80% of the freshwater in North America and over 20% of all the freshwater in the world. 

 When Alexis De Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831, he described the Great Lakes as one of the wonders of the world—and he only saw the smallest of the lakes, Lake Erie.

 I remember, as a kid, our parents taking us to go swimming at Lake Erie State Park.  We looked out at the water, at the expanse, and couldn’t see the other side.   It was described to us like seeing the ocean, which, at that time, we had never seen.

 Lake Erie seems commonplace to those of us who live around here.  Our neighbors in Dunkirk, Fredonia and Westfield often see the lake.   Those of us living across the “great divide” in the Jamestown area might see it at a distance as we get to the top of the Chautauqua Ridge on our way to Buffalo. Yet, our greatest attention to Lake Erie seems to come in mid-winter when we hope that it ices up thus slowing down snowfall in the hills.

 My Dad told me one time that he had always wanted to spend a summer as a deck hand on a Great Lakes ship...a dream that he never realized. Yet, in this book by John Bacon titled “The Gales of November,” maybe it is just as well that his dream didn’t come true.

 Over the decades, there were many ship wrecks and sinkings of these Great Lake freighters...one of the reasons being that they were built not so much for the weather and waves they would encounter but for the dimensions of the locks through which they had to pass. 

 The locks at the “Soo” (Sault St. Marie) were especially influential in boat/ship construction—ships were made long and narrow to just fit into them.  The ships are also flat bottomed so that they can traverse the relatively shallow waterways that connect the lakes themselves, which can mean that they are less stable in heavy seas.

 Millions of tons of iron ore have been shipped using these vessels over the decades to such places as Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland and Buffalo...all made possible by the shipping highway of the Great Lakes.  Shipping by water costs significantly less than by rail.   The book’s author argued that World War II could not have been won, had not the United States been able to ship the iron ores of Minnesota to the factories further east which were making the ships, tanks, and guns needed to win the war.

 Today, the Great Lakes seem to be in better shape than ever.   Pollution has pretty much been tamed, and, around here, fisherman by the hundreds go to Lake Erie to catch perch, salmon and walleye.

 Yet, the book was a good reminder that storms and wind can come up quickly on the Great Lakes.  The fact that fresh water forms the waves, and that the waves are confined by the topography surrounding them...means that the waters of the Great Lakes can become deadly if not respected.

 We have better technology and weather prediction capabilities than we did when the Edmund Fitzgerald went to the bottom in that storm on Lake Superior in 1975. Yet, it still holds a lesson—those using the Great Lakes must be on guard for wind and high waves when storms are strong. 

 There is nothing in the world that compares with the Great Lakes.  We are lucky to live along their shores.

 Rolland Kidder, Stow, NY

 

This article was published in the Jamestown Post-Journal

June 13,2026

 

 

 

A Beautiful Day On The Expressway

                                                                                    May 30, 2026

Rolland Kidder

Most people now call it I-86, but I still call it the “Southern Tier Expressway.” That expresses what it truly is.

On an overcast day last fall, my wife and I were returning from the Syracuse area where one of our kids lives. It is quicker to take the Thruway to get home, but I always opt for the back roads and the expressway that threads through the hills of the Southern Tier.

As we came up the big hill heading west from Bath, the clouds were almost touching the ground as we came to the summit of the pass at Howard. When we drove by Hornell, I said to my wife, “I think we will be in the clouds when we go over the Alfred-Almond Pass” – and at over 2,000 ft. above sea level we were.

It was a dramatic day to drive the Southern Tier Expressway. From Steuben County to home, the clouds hung like a draped cloth over the hills as the road wound its way west.

As we drove past the last sharp, almost-a-mountain hill, that juts up from the valley floor near Steamburg, I mentioned to her again about how the clouds were obscuring its top. I call this place “Mount Parment” after a friend who had the idea years ago that it would be wonderful place to build a magnificent Monticello-type home overlooking the valley floor and the expressway down below.

Then, as we neared home rounding the bend right behind the Cheney farm and the Chautauqua Lake overlook service area, we again touched the bottom of the overcast. We came out of the cloud, slowed down and crossed the now two-lane Chautauqua Lake bridge from Bemus to Stow and were home.

It was one of those miraculous, cloud-filled days on the Southern Tier Expressway.

There are old, pre-expressway memories, now only remembered by a few. When I was in college, there was no expressway. It took about 2 hours to drive to Houghton, N.Y. Now, with the expressway, you can reach Route 19 near Belfast in a little over an hour. Houghton is just up the Genesee Valley from there.

Charlie Henderson, a former Assemblyman from Steuben County, told me once that he was responsible for the northern loop that the expressway now takes going through Hornell, instead of following the route of old Rt. 17 through Wellsville.

I don’t know if that is true, but I always thank Charlie (now deceased) when I climb those magnificent passes at Alfred/Almond and Howard which takes the Southern Tier Expressway past his old hometown. The views there are incredible no matter what the weather is.

There are a myriad of stories of how the Southern Tier Expressway was built. Most “tip their hat” to Senator Robert Kennedy who made sure that the 13 counties of the Southern Tier of New York were included when the Appalachian Regional Commission was formed. That federal agency became the source of much of the funding for the highway’s construction.

All of that, of course, is now ancient history. The highway is there. It transits one of the most varied landscapes on the Interstate Highway System, and those of us who live along it never get tired of the beautiful drive!

 

Published in the Jamestown Post-Journal

May 30, 2026