From the East is New York City (the Big Apple), one of the most famous cities in the world known for its skyscrapers, Broadway performances, diversity of food, language and culture and home to the Statue of Liberty. From the West is the mighty Niagara Falls and its spectacular show featuring 3,160 tons of fresh water dropping 167 feet off the precipice of the Niagara Gorge splitting New York, USA from Ontario, Canada.
How did New York get its name?
In the six hour great divide between these two prime destinations is Cooperstown, a quaint little village at the southern tip of Otsego (Glimmer Glass) Lake, nestled in the foothills of the Adirondack and Catskill Mountain ranges. The village was founded by the father of James Fenimore Cooper, author of the novel “Last of the Mohicans”. It was in this wilderness of central New York State that Cooper set the stories of pioneer adventures for his frontier characters.
In 1907, a report by the Mills Commission, which was appointed to determine the origin of baseball, resolved that “the first scheme for playing baseball, according to the best evidence obtainable to date, was devised by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1839.”
Thus today, Cooperstown is best known as the home of baseball and the National Baseball Hall of Fame; a must-visit museum where magical moments of baseball are enshrined. The town’s population of 2,000 swells yearly during the induction of baseball greats to the Hall of Fame with fans hopeful for sport celebrity sightings and eager to throw some pitches two blocks away at Doubleday Field, the once upon a time cow pasture where, in 1839, Doubleday and the Cooperstown schoolboys played “town ball”, the first game of baseball.
Cooperstown is a place to explore; as although it is filled with shops of baseball paraphernalia and restaurants decorated with gloves, balls, bats and caps, it has kept its post-revolutionary / Americana flavor through the preservation of its many Colonial and Queen Anne historical homes wrapped in columned verandas with wide lawns and terraced gardens.
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