In the 1920s, the federal government passed prohibition laws that banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol. This effectively ended hop farming. Additionally, the rise of industrial farming during World War I made it harder to be a small-scale farmer. Between 1890 and 1920, South Bristol’s population fell from 1,225 to 695. In Frost Town, the school was closed in the 1920s, only a few houses remained occupied after 1930, and most residents migrated to Naples, Rochester, or other areas.
This image shows an abandoned logging railway at the bottom of Honeoye Lake, presumably the short track railway at the mouth of Briggs Gully. As early as 1921, the railway was in ruins. Image: Alfred R. Stone Collection of the Rochester Museum and Science Center, 1921.This photograph shows the logging shanties or village at the bottom of Honeoye Lake. These shanties may be the very same buildings shown in the Meyers Camp image also featured in this exhibit. By 1921 they were abandoned and would very quickly disappear into the natural landscape. Image: Alfred R. Stone Collection of the Rochester Museum and Science Center, 1921.This image from 1980 by Mary Shedlock shows the grave of Rowena Macumber that was found in the parking lot of the CNC welcome center. Rowena, who died in 1865, was buried in the Macumber family plot that roughly corresponds to the small wooded space between the split in the CNC’s driveway. Image: Cumming Nature Center Mary Shedlock Collection, 1980.
1970s – The Cumming Nature Center
After Frost Town’s lots were abandoned, many of them were bought up and consolidated for private hunting use. The land that now belongs to the Cumming Nature Center was first consolidated as a hunting estate for George Bonbright in the 1920s. In the 1940s, it was sold to the Cumming family who donated it to the Rochester Museum and Science Center in 1973.
This 1929 property map shows the properties that had been collected and consolidated from the previous landowners around Frost Town, including lands of the Macumber and Hatch families. Bonbright eventually sold this property to the Cumming family in the 1940s, who donated it to the Rochester Museum and Science Center in 1973. Image: Cumming Nature Center, 1929.This image was taken when the Cumming Nature Center opened in the late 1970s. Image: Cumming Nature Center Mary Shedlock Collection, 1980.
