"Famous Visitors Continued" by Pat and Tom Willis, photo of display taken 2/2009. Click on the image to enlarge the display. 
"Famous Visitors" by Pat and Tom Willis, photo of display taken 2/2009. Click on the image to enlarge the display. FAMOUS VISITORS
September 4, 1916
Original Text by Pat and Tom Willis
Each summer between 1915 and 1924 (with the exception of 1917 and 1924) three of the most famous men in America, Thomas Alva Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, along with the naturalist John Burroughs (until his death in 1922) went on a camping trip somewhere in the U.S. They traveled by car, stopping for lunch along the road and camping each night, usually in some farmer’s field. The pace was leisurely. Although each did his share of chores, there was a sizable group that traveled with them to handle the heavy work.
The 1916 trip began on August 28 in Orange, New Jersey. The route was north to the Catskill Mountains to pick up Burroughs and then to Albany and the Adirondacks crossing over into Vermont, then south through Massachusetts and finally back to New Jersey on September 9, after traveling a little over 1,000 miles. Henry Ford was scheduled to pick up the party in Plattsburgh, but urgent business on the West Coast prevented his attendance.
The evening of September 3, the party camped on a bend of the Ausable River, two miles from Ausable Forks. They broke camp on September 4 at 10:45 a.m. and drove through Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, Paul Smiths and camped for the night near Chasm Falls, 18 miles south of Malone.
The afternoon of September 4, the group traveled through the Town of Brighton. North from Harrietstown on the present Route 86 and then on the present Split Rock Road. At the intersection of the Gabriels-Bloomingdale road they turned left and went through Gabriels, down the hill to Easy Street, on to Paul Smiths Hotel and then north past Barnum and Mountain Ponds and Meacham Lake.
Source:
- Braver, Norman. There to Breathe the Beauty: The Camping Trips of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, John Burroughs, 1995.
Brighton History Days have been held one weekend each summer since 1994, sponsored by the Brighton Architectural Heritage Committee.
