![]() ![]() This neo-Palladian limestone house, from which its residents could see Cooperstown at the other end of the lake, is on the Hops Trail because its second owner, George Hyde Clarke, with his tenant farmers, was a major buyer and producer of hops on thousands of acres he inherited through his Colonial lineage.Ītypical as it may be, this is the only example - open to the public - of the style in which some of the hops kings lived. ![]() ![]() Turn left onto Route 31, which will take you across four miles of farmland to the northeastern end of Otsego Lake and the right turn to Hyde Hall. From Sharon Springs, go about 11 miles west on Route 20 to East Springfield, watching for signs for Hyde Hall, a 50-room, English-style manor house and one of the last great early-American country homes. To get the real story on Cooperstown, start at Hyde Hall. Instead, as John O'Dell, history curator of the Baseball Hall of Fame acknowledges, the well-intentioned burghers of Cooperstown established the baseball museum based on misinformation about Abner Doubleday, a Civil War general who never lived in the area and apparently didn't invent the sport. Nearby Cooperstown would today be the home of the Beer Hall of Fame if historical accuracy determined where museums are built. Just as hop roots surface in unexpected places, hop culture turns up in another village with two claims to fame. The superhighway smothered Route 20's roadside businesses, though an exceptional example, a gift shop in the form of a giant tin tepee, persists in inviting passers-by to trade money for souvenirs a few miles west of Sharon Springs. What began as a pioneer turnpike later brought baled hops to market, and, beginning in the 1920s, the roadbed became a main transcontinental trunk, still favored by many European tourists who prefer its slower pace to I-90, the New York State Thruway. Other villages along Route 20 have also declined, though few travelers will lose sleep over the loss of the cheap family-owned motels and kitschy gift shops that once lined the road. "The waiters, including Ed Koch, made good money here." "In their heyday, the hotels were filled," Spofford says. Now the grand hotels, forsaken by wealthy clientele who came to regard Saratoga Springs as more fashionable, are mostly gone, some victims of "insurance fires" after the spa tourism collapsed. So is "downtown" Sharon Springs, which is north on winding, two-lane Route 10, about a mile downhill from its intersection with Route 20.Īt one time, there were more than 60 hotels and rooming houses here. Set back behind trees, Clausen Farms is easy to breeze by as Route 20 crests on a long hill. Llamas graze in the pasture immediately below.Ĭreaky steps lead to the phone-free, television-free bedrooms upstairs, and to bathrooms with pull-chain lights, pedestal sinks and claw-foot tubs. The Casino lobby, in a turret paneled with pine darkened by more than 100 years of sun and smoke from a large fireplace, features a wraparound porch and a spectacular 90-mile view across the valley. This may well be the only B&B in the nation with its very own 19th-century kegelbahn, a German-style bowling alley. Guests have the option of staying in the renovated Georgian residence of Tim Spofford, Clausen's great-great grandson, or in the 1890 Casino, a two-story Victorian clubhouse where Clausen's beer buddies would work out in the gym, drink, gamble, smoke cigars, play billiards and bowl. But his summer home was modest compared with Henry Clausen's estate.Ĭlausen, a leading German brewer from New York City, then beer capital of the United States, built a sprawling compound, a 60-acre remnant of which is now a charming bed and breakfast, Clausen Farms. Max Schaefer, for example, whose Schaefer Beer would one day be a sponsor of the New York Yankees in the early days of televised baseball, owned one of the major bathhouses in town. Hops made Sharon Springs a watering hole for the city's wealthy beer kings, who came to the area to mix business with pleasure while ensconced in their swanky summer places. The local economy still depends to some extent on farmers, just as it did more than a century ago when they took advantage of the Erie Canal to send boatloads of hops to New York City and Europe. ![]()
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