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On today’s Episode:
Summit Park: A Lost Oriskany Landmark
A century ago, Summit Park brought the excitement of a modern amusement park to the hills above Oriskany. Opened in 1897 as a trolley park, it drew visitors from Utica and throughout the Mohawk Valley with its roller coaster, merry-go-round, enormous dance hall, electric lights, concerts, circuses, and other attractions. Even President Theodore Roosevelt was among its notable visitors.
In this conversation at the Oriskany Museum, Oneida County Historian Alexis Albright explores Summit Park’s remarkable history and what it tells us about life in the Mohawk Valley at the turn of the 20th century. The park reflected an era of new technology, growing prosperity, and leisure travel, when trolley parks were becoming popular throughout the Northeast.
Summit Park eventually adapted to the rise of the automobile, but improved roads also made it possible for people to reach attractions farther from the trolley lines. After nearly three decades, Summit Park closed in 1926, leaving behind memories of one of the region’s most extraordinary lost landmarks.
Maggie’s Garden: Lobelia
In mid-August, Maggie Reilly’s garden in New York Mills is buzzing with pollinators. Maggie highlights two beautiful native lobelias that thrive in moist soil and can grow in sun or part shade.
Great blue lobelia produces tall stalks covered with small blue flowers with white throats. Blooming from late summer into fall, it attracts bees for both nectar and pollen, as well as hummingbirds and butterflies for nectar. Maggie also notes that these plants can be relatively short-lived, often relying on seeds spread by wind, birds, or the plant itself to return in future years.
The other standout is the brilliantly colored Cardinal flower, whose scarlet-red blooms are especially popular with ruby-throated hummingbirds. Maggie explains the remarkable relationship between the flower and the hummingbird: the flower’s tubular shape and deep nectar are perfectly suited to the hummingbird’s long bill. As the bird feeds, pollen from the flower’s male anthers is deposited on its head and then transferred to the female stigma of the next flower it visits.
It’s a beautiful example of how closely plants and pollinators can evolve together—and another reminder of the extraordinary connections happening right in our gardens.
Upcoming Garden Tours! Garden Tour in Clinton Saturday, August 22nd, 2026, 10am-12pm
Public Welcome Registration Required, Free Event, Home/Private Garden Tour
Summit Root Glen: A Living Legacy in Clinton
Root Glen, on the Hamilton College campus in Clinton, is a beautiful place to escape into nature without leaving the Mohawk Valley. Its trails, gardens, bridges, and shady creekside paths offer an easy opportunity for a walk, exercise, or simply a break from everyday life.
The glen takes its name from Oren Root, who purchased the property in 1850. Oren and his wife, Nancy, began transforming the land with trees, shrubs, and flowers. Their son, Elihu Root, went on to serve as U.S. Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and a U.S. senator, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite his national career, he continued returning to Clinton to oversee the gardens.
In 1937, Oren’s grandson Edward Root and his wife, Grace, continued the family’s work. Edward became known for hybridizing daffodils and irises, while Grace devoted herself to expanding the glen after his death. She ultimately donated Root Glen to Hamilton College in 1971.
Today, the seven-and-a-half-acre glen includes both formal gardens and wooded trails. The Asa Gray Bed contains plants that the renowned botanist Dr. Asa Gray sent to Oren Root more than 150 years ago. The zigzagging bridges over the creek are a favorite for visitors, while the Saunders Peony Garden draws visitors from near and far when its peonies bloom in May and June. Towering over the gardens is the enormous Northern Spruce, listed on the National Register of Big Trees, measuring 180 inches in circumference and reaching approximately 120 feet high.
Hamilton College Cemetery
Edith Ruth Root married Ulysses S. Grant III
Close close friendship and alliance between Samuel Kirkland and Oneida Chief Skenandoa
Across the street, Hamilton College Cemetery adds another remarkable layer of history. It is the final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant III, grandson of President Ulysses S. Grant and husband of Edith Root, Elihu Root’s daughter. Grant III was born on July 4, 1881, and actually lived in Clinton. The cemetery is also home to the monument of Samuel Kirkland, the missionary whose Hamilton Oneida Academy eventually became Hamilton College. Nearby lies Skenandoa, the influential Oneida chief and close friend of Kirkland. According to tradition, Skenandoa asked to be buried near Kirkland so that, at the resurrection, he could cling to the missionary’s garments and ascend with him.
Together, Root Glen and Clinton Cemetery offer an extraordinary concentration of natural beauty and local history. Within a small area are the legacies of the Root family, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a presidential grandson, an important Oneida leader, and the missionary whose work helped establish Hamilton College—a remarkable piece of the Mohawk Valley’s past that visitors can still experience today.
Mohawk Valley Soundscape: The Lingering Voices of August
Eastern Wood Pewee and Red-Eyed Vireo continue to sing through August
By mid-August, the great chorus of spring has faded. Nesting is largely over, territories matter less, and the forests and fields of the Mohawk Valley have settled into the quieter rhythms of late summer.
Yet a few persistent voices remain. The eastern wood pewee continues to sing from the forest canopy, its long, plaintive whistle drifting through the trees. A member of the flycatcher family, it hunts flying insects from an exposed perch, often returning to the same spot after each darting flight.
Below the canopy, the red-eyed vireo methodically searches leaves and twigs for insects while delivering its distinctive stream of short, conversational phrases.
Both birds will soon begin their long migrations south. Red-eyed vireos may travel as far as the Amazon Basin, while eastern wood pewees winter primarily in northern South America. For now, however, their voices remain part of the August forest—a lingering echo of spring’s great chorus before the woods grow quiet.
Naturalist Matt Perry takes us to a beaver pond on a warm August morning, where the wetlands are alive with dragonflies, painted turtles and the distinctive call of the green frog — a sound often compared to the pluck of a loose banjo string.
We learn how male green frogs establish territories along the shoreline, how their tadpoles may spend a year or two developing in the water, and why beaver ponds provide such valuable habitat. It’s a late-summer visit to one of the Mohawk Valley’s vibrant wetlands and a closer look at one of the familiar voices of August.
