ARCHAEOLOGY — For the last ten years, Professor Sherene Baugher has offered a three course sequence in archaeology and the cultural landscape. The three courses also involved community outreach and service-learning. Professor Baugher and her students work as partners with community groups in research-
ing, excavating, and uncovering the past. Students engage in archaeological field and laboratory work, library research, and interviews with community members. Past projects have involved working with the Native American community in excavating a Cayuga Indian village near Trumansburg and a Tutelo site south of Ithaca. After success with these two projects, the Friends of Robert H. Treman State Park and the park staff encouraged Professor Baugher and her students to become involved in both the documentary history and the potential archaeological sites of Enfield Falls. Between 1998 and 2003, a total of 238 Cornell Students undertook archaeological fieldwork and laboratory work at two sites in Upper Robert H. Treman State Park. Three years of archaeological work at the Park has revealed a rich history. In addition to the physical evidence of buildings and artifacts, some of the former residents of Enfield Falls or their descendants enthusiastically shared their family histories with the archaeologists.


HISTORY OF ENFIELD FALLS — The rural hamlet of Enfield Falls no longer exists. However, house foundations, wells, roads and even garbage pits lie buried one or two feet below the present ground level of Robert H. Treman State Park. Throughout the nineteenth century, the town of Enfield was primarily an agricultural settlement. In 1864, for example, eighty percent of the town’s land was devoted to agriculture. Within this rural setting, farmers traveled to the hamlet of Enfield Falls for supplies, to sell their products, and to take advantage of its mills. The first building in Enfield Falls was a sawmill erected in 1812 by Benjamin Ferris. In 1817, Isaac Rumsey built the town’s first gristmill to grind the grain of local farmers. The water that powered the mills came from Five Mill Creek, also known as Enfield Creek. The first gristmill burned down in the 1830’s, but Jared Treman replaced it with another gristmill that operated from 1839 to the end of the nineteenth century. Jared Treman’s mill is listed on both the National Register and the State Register of Historic Places and serves as the Park’s Mill Museum.

By 1866, Enfield Falls consisted of the sawmill, the gristmill, several homes, a general store, a blacksmith shop, shoemaker, a cooper, and a tannery. The Enfield Falls Hotel was also located here. The hotel provided meals and rooms for tourists eager to visit the Five Mile Creek’s beautiful gorge and Lucifer Falls. After the Civil War, various tourist guides featured the hotel.


In the early twentieth century, Robert Treman became interested in the scenic qualities of Enfield Falls. Treman began buying up property within the hamlet, including his purchase of the old gristmill built by his uncle Jared Treman. Once most of the property in Enfield Falls was acquired, Robert and Laura Treman donated 387 acres to the State of New York in order to establish the Enfield Glen Reservation. The hamlet of Enfield Falls was slowly transformed into an attractive state park first by State Park employees in the 1920s and then by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s. Most of the nineteenth century buildings were removed. Only the grist mill and the miller’s cottage were kept as reminders of the site’s former history.

This exhibit, “rediscovering Enfield Falls” presents some of the artifacts from our archaeological excavation of two homes that once stood on these park lands: the Tryon House Site, home of one of the former owners of the Enfield Falls Hotel and the Duncan/Bower House Site, the home of the Duncan and Bower families. Their house was built atop the ruins of the town’s original general store.

Because the archaeological work is still on-going, future exhibits, tours of the site, and public lectures will continually update the public on our latest findings.