#bluffpointruins

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

One mystery that may never be solved

By Jonathan Monfiletto

Seemingly ever since the first white Europeans set foot in what is now Yates County – and seemingly well before that time as well – people have wondered about the mysterious stone formations on Bluff Point, the triangle-shaped piece of land that juts out into Keuka Lake and splits it into west and east branches. People are still wondering about – and attempting to study and examine – these formations today, but the truth of the matter is we may never know the real truth about them.

Even though the first non-native people first set foot on the western shore of Seneca Lake in the late 1780s, and on Bluff Point shortly thereafter, it took nearly 100 years for the first formal survey of this ancient structure to take place. And even that happened apparently by accident; what became known as the Bluff Point ruins were discovered, or rather re-discovered, in either the fall of 1879 or the spring of 1880 (depending on which source you read) when Samuel Hart Wright and his son, Berlin Hart Wright, were in the process of making the first geological survey of Yates County. A typewritten facsimile of a Yates County Chronicle article about the finding is dated November 26, 1879; in a remembrance of the event written for The Chronicle-Express on July 14, 1938, Berlin asserts the work took place in spring 1880.

In the process of the survey, Berlin wrote nearly 60 years later, the two men came upon what he described as the remains of an aboriginal settlement in the vicinity of the property then owned by Howland Hemphill. If Bluff Point were to be bisected twice into quadrants, then the Hemphill farm would be located in the northwest quadrant – on the bluff but not on the point. Berlin estimates the original ruins covered 14 acres of Hemphill’s property; while the east portion of the ruins lay in a cultivated field at the time of the survey, Berlin noted continuations of walls could still be seen standing. He said the ruins consisted of the foundations of the walls in the form of graded ways that measured one to two feet high and three to eight feet wide and were bordered with large, flat stones.

Depressions in the ground indicated the locations of posts that may have supported a roof. Within these walls appeared to stand compartments or rooms of various sizes and proportions. Some of the divisions of the structure contained monuments of stone slabs standing in groups of different patterns – some in circles, some in squares, some in arcs, reminding Berlin of Stonehenge in England. A huge monolith – three feet wide, eight feet high, six inches thick, pointed at the top – served as a sentinel guarding the structure from its northwest corner. Prostrate slabs lay around the standing ones.

Hemphill had lived on his property for about 50 years by that point, coming to Bluff Point as a young man at a time when the Seneca still lived around there, and he related to Berlin a question he posed to one of the Seneca leaders of the origin and use of the ancient structure. The leader replied to Hemphill that the structure was present when the Seneca first came into the region, and no tradition as to its origin existed within the tribe. This tale has provided the basis for perhaps the only consensus among researchers, professional and amateur alike, on the Bluff Point ruins – they are not of Native American origin, in terms of being made by the Seneca. However, Berlin became perhaps the first person to write – and certainly not the first or last to think – that the Seneca could not have had the skill, knowledge, civilization, technology, et cetera to construct such a structure. Using language that would be considered derogatory in the least and racist in the most nowadays, Berlin also noted the Native Americans of the region were nomadic and likely would have moved on from place to place without building such a structure.

In his remembrance, Berlin comes to the conclusion the structure on Bluff Point was built by the Mayas or a civilization descended from them. Thus, he likely became the first person to form – or at least form in writing for publication – an opinion about the origin of the Bluff Point ruins. Of course, he has definitely not been the last person to form and publish an opinion.

Almost two years after Berlin wrote his remembrance, Gil Brewer, of Canandaigua, made headlines in the local newspapers having spoken at the annual meeting of the Yates County Genealogical and Historical Society in March 1940 and described the Bluff Point ruins as being of Etruscan origin or serving as a Viking settlement. Over the years, as he continued to be featured in the local press, Brewer seemed to waver between these two opinions yet hold firmly to both of them. Brewer is described in one article as “the man who had made a business of excavating on the interesting site,” and it does seem he conducted several such examinations over his time.

In an address to the Historical Society in July 1952 titled “Indian Forts in Yates County,” Arthur I. Tyler – a retired district superintendent for the University of the State of New York, according to the letterhead on which his address exists today – concluded the Bluff Point structure was nothing more than a stone quarry set up – surreptitiously if not legitimately – by the early settlers to the area. Indeed, the Wagener Mansion was built from stone taken from the ruins; even Hemphill had acknowledged to Berlin he used some of the stones to build his house – and Tyler asserted some stone buildings in Penn Yan may have been sourced the same way. He made this claim while identifying the structure known as Old Fort or Friend Fort – a similar formation in the Sherman Hollow area of the town of Jerusalem – as one of Algonquin origin later taken over by the Iroquois.

Indeed, by this point – as Berlin had stated in 1938 – virtually nothing remains of the so-called Bluff Point ruins that makes the structure able to be easily identified or examined. That hasn’t stopped anyone from trying to assert a claim on the origin of this mysterious formation.

Writers such as Christopher Wright and David Kelley (both of whose writings were commissioned for the History Center and are contained within our subject file) attempted to “research the research,” as I heard one gentleman suggest, and compile the work performed by others into one narrative on the Bluff Point ruins. Others, such as Henry J. Minnerly in 1980, have continued to search for an answer; Minnerly – described as semi-retired Bath village employee turned amateur archaeologist – put forth a new theory when he claimed the structure might be of Celtic origin and could have been a Druid temple. A few years later, in 1983, James L. Guthrie and Robert G. Guthrie – brothers or cousins, apparently, who roamed the Bluff Point area in their childhood – made a similar claim, noting they found in the area an artifact that was certified as being of Celtic origin. David D. Robinson, writing initially in 1989, brought the conversation back to the idea that the Bluff Point ruins were the work of mound builders similar to the Hopewell of Ohio.

Everyone from Samuel Hart Wright and Berlin Hart Wright to modern-day researchers have attempted to spark interest in the site from New York State archaeologists to no avail. To this day, it seems no one associated with New York State has examined the Bluff Point ruins or has any interest in doing so, further adding to the mystery that may never be solved.