Finger Lakes history · regional story
Developing historyThe forest laboratory at the head of Hemlock Lake
Rochester planted trees to protect its water supply. When disease appeared in the plantations, the work expanded into nurseries, underplanting, and a laboratory in Springwater.
Research status
This history is still developing.
Parts of this account remain unresolved. Here is what the sources support, what is uncertain, and what we are looking for next.
About this review. Written and source-checked with AI assistance under an owner-authorized editorial process. This is not a personal review by Riley or an independent historian. Sources and unresolved questions are listed below; corrections are welcome.
- What the records establish
- DEC's retrospective account connects the 1902 planting program, the 1929 disease investigation, the 1934 nursery, and a laboratory established in 1939. These details are attributed to the 2015 plan; original laboratory files have not been examined for this story.
- What remains uncertain
- We have not established the laboratory's staff, research output, exact working life, or closing date. The plan's tentative statement concerns a period of forestry activity; it should not be read as a documented laboratory closure. This account makes no claim about what remains visible on the ground today.
- What we are researching next
- Look for city water-department reports, laboratory correspondence, payrolls, nursery accounts, and state forestry records. Those could turn a brief institutional reference into a history of the people who did the work.
The forest around a water supply can have a planting history as well as a natural one. DEC's 2015 Hemlock-Canadice management plan traces Rochester's large planting program to 1902. Over the next 29 years, it reports, 3.7 million conifer seedlings went onto 3,000 acres.
Disease appeared in the plantations in 1929. According to the plan, state forest pathologist H. H. York investigated, and the city and state began working together on a precaution: plant hardwoods beneath the stressed conifers so forest cover would remain if the conifers died.
The city started a hardwood nursery in 1934. The plan counts 475,000 hardwood seedlings planted from 1936 through 1940. These were planned plantings beneath an existing canopy, not simply the return of trees to abandoned fields.
Then comes a short paragraph that deserves a longer investigation. In 1939, the plan says, Rochester established a forest pathology laboratory in Springwater, at the head of Hemlock Lake. The account supplies a place and a year, but very little about the people or daily work inside.
It also admits a gap. Records were not readily available to the plan's authors, who tentatively connected the end of this period of forestry activity with the start of World War II. That is not enough to assign the laboratory a definite closing date.
Sources
- NYSDEC, Hemlock-Canadice Unit Management Plan (2015), printed page 13/PDF page 15 for planting; printed page 14/PDF page 16 for disease, nursery work, underplanting, and the Springwater laboratory.