Exploring Historic Route 20

Hackney Falls is a natural 22 foot tall waterfall along the Owasco River in Auburn, NY - along the original alignment of Route 20 (right).

For nearly 200 years, water power along the Owasco River in Downtown Auburn has been at the foundation of the community's manufacturing, industrial, and economic growth. Historically, there were over 11 sites harnessing the power of the river to drive the local mill industry.

In 1816, Elijah Miller and John H. Beach built a large cotton mill at Hackney Falls on North Division Street. The mill went through various owners until it was bought by Lorenzo Nye in 1853. It burned in 1869, and was rebuilt and enlarged by Nye as a woolen carpet factory. The partnership of Nye & Wait was formed in 1871, at which time the works consisted of a four story stone and brick building perpendicular to the Owasco River containing the spinning and weaving shops and the power house. Over the years, the facility expanded to over 100,000 square feet in size with 150 looms, all powered by water from the Owasco River. The Nye & Wait Carpet Company closed down in 1969.

The North Division Street Hydroelectric Facility stayed in service for 21 years, before being shut down in the fall of 2013 due to numerous turbine malfunctions. It was rehabilitated in 2019 and is currently active.

This Juneteenth, we honor the enduring legacy of freedom and resilience. Few figures embody the unbreakable spirit of liberation like Harriet Tubman — the legendary conductor of the Underground Railroad who risked everything to lead hundreds to freedom. 

Just off Historic Route 20 in Auburn, NY, the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park stands as a powerful tribute to her life, faith, family, and unyielding fight for justice. Walk the grounds where she lived, worshiped, and continued her activism after the Civil War — caring for her community and building a better future.

Today, as we mark 161 years since enslaved Texans finally learned of their emancipation, let Tubman’s courage inspire us to keep marching toward equity, truth, and freedom for all.
Plan your visit to this sacred site and connect with history that still echoes today.

Route 20 viewed above the summit of Jacob’s Ladder in Becket, MA.

This is the highest elevation Route 20 reaches east of Randolph, NE. Climbing the Berkshires was always a challenge. In 1910, the road was improved to connect Boston and Albany.

Historic Route 20: Westward Expansion, 1776–1840

In the decades following the American Revolution, the young United States faced the dual challenges of honoring its promises to Revolutionary War veterans and forging a path into the vast western territories. The cash-poor federal government turned to land as payment, granting parcels in the frontier to soldiers and encouraging settlement that would secure the nation’s future. This era of westward movement, roughly from the early 1780s to the 1840s, laid the foundations for what would eventually become U.S. Route 20—a corridor of trails, turnpikes, and pioneer roads tracing ancient Native American paths across New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and into Iowa. 

Settlers first pushed into the hills of western Massachusetts and upstate New York. Lands long inhabited by Native American nations, particularly in New York, saw increasing encroachment; many Iroquois communities had been devastated by colonial campaigns during the Revolution. Further west, Connecticut’s claims in the Ohio Country led to the establishment of the Firelands (or Sufferers’ Lands) west of what would become Cleveland. This tract compensated Connecticut residents whose towns had been burned by British forces in 1779–1781. Actual settlement there accelerated after the War of 1812, transforming dense forests into farming communities. 

Improved roads and turnpikes became essential arteries for this migration. The Great Western Turnpike, chartered in 1799, connected Albany on the Hudson River westward to Cherry Valley, New York. Subsequent extensions in the early 1800s pushed it to Cazenovia and Skaneateles to link with the Seneca Turnpike (also known as the Great Genesee Road) near Manlius. The Genesee Road, authorized in the 1790s and improved as a turnpike around 1800, followed old Iroquois trails westward toward Buffalo, facilitating access to the military tract and new settlements. These routes, built and maintained through private investment and tolls, represented a significant upgrade over rudimentary paths, enabling wagon travel and stagecoach services. 

Stagecoach stops—taverns, inns, and relay stations—sprang up along these routes, offering weary travelers food, lodging, fresh horses, and news from the East. These humble outposts became vital social and economic hubs in an otherwise sparse landscape.

Lake Erie ports grew in tandem with the overland routes. Buffalo, New York, evolved from a small trading post near Buffalo Creek into a key embarkation point, its growth fueled by its strategic position at the eastern end of Lake Erie. Erie, Pennsylvania, laid out in 1795 near Presque Isle Bay, developed as a port and shipbuilding center. Cleveland, Ohio, benefited from Connecticut Western Reserve settlers and its harbor location. These emerging cities served as gateways for further westward movement by water and land. 

The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 marked a transformative moment. Linking the Hudson River at Albany to Buffalo on Lake Erie, it provided a reliable, low-cost water connection between the Atlantic seaboard and the Great Lakes. Goods and people flowed westward more easily, while agricultural produce from the interior moved east. Buffalo’s population surged dramatically in the following years, and the canal bolstered the growth of Cleveland and other lake ports by integrating them into a broader commercial network.

West of Cleveland, travelers faced one of the era’s most formidable obstacles: the Great Black Swamp in northwest Ohio. This vast, dense wetland of mud, standing water, and tangled vegetation slowed progress for decades. The Maumee and Western Reserve Road (sometimes called the Mud Pike), completed around 1827, attempted to bridge it from Lower Sandusky (now Fremont) toward Perrysburg and Maumee. Despite efforts to improve it with corduroy logs, stone, and ditches, it earned a notorious reputation as one of the worst roads on the continent, with taverns lining the route to assist (and profit from) stranded travelers. Yet it provided a critical link along the emerging northern route. 

In Indiana, the Great Michigan Road, developed in the 1830s, extended this network. Running from the Ohio River through Indianapolis to Michigan City (a small part of Route 20) on Lake Michigan, it followed and improved Native trails, including connections to the old Sauk Trail. It opened northern Indiana to settlement and commerce, channeling migrants and goods toward the growing settlement at Chicago.

Chicago itself rose rapidly in the 1830s from a small fort and trading post at the mouth of the Chicago River, its location at the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan making it a natural hub for lake and overland traffic. 

Further west in Illinois, the route traversed rolling prairies and lead-rich hills. Settlements like Rockford emerged along river crossings. Near present-day Elizabeth, the Apple River settlement grew around lead mines in the 1820s; during the 1832 Black Hawk War, residents fortified cabins into Apple River Fort for protection. Galena, named for the lead ore, boomed as a mining center and Mississippi River port in the 1820s–1830s, its population and river traffic rivaling larger cities for a time. Ox carts and stagecoaches hauled lead over pioneer roads linking the mines to Chicago and other markets. 

Pushing onward, the corridor reached the Mississippi River. Dubuque, Iowa, originated from early lead mining efforts by Julien Dubuque in the late 18th century and grew as a river town.

The west was becoming explored near present day Sioux City. Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804 up the Missouri River, where Sgt. Charles Floyd was buried—marking one of the westernmost points of early official American exploration tied to this westward arc. 

Throughout this period, Native American trails provided the foundational alignments for many of these roads. Iroquois paths in New York, Sauk and other trails in the Midwest, and longstanding routes used by Indigenous peoples for trade, hunting, and movement were widened, graded, and incorporated into turnpikes and territorial roads. While facilitating American expansion, this also accelerated the displacement of Native nations through treaties, conflict, and settlement pressure.

By the late 1830s and early 1840s, the patchwork of turnpikes, plank roads, swamp crossings, and lake-linked settlements had created a viable overland and water corridor from the Atlantic to the upper Mississippi. What began as Revolutionary War land grants and pioneer footpaths had evolved into a corridor of opportunity, commerce, and nation-building—setting the stage for the modern highway that would one day bear the number 20. This era of sweat, mud, and ambition embodied the restless spirit of westward expansion.