To take advantage of the many educational opportunities available and to make the most of your field trip, we suggest the following...

Spend a day within a 19th-century country village. As you stroll among the 68 restored and fully furnished buildings, you will see how a log cabin settlement grew into a bustling community of stores, shops, schools, churches, and fine houses. Take a tour and visit the Village Homes, the Businesses, Shops and Professions Buildings, the Public and Religious Buildings in the village, and the Village Gardens.

• Village Homes
• Businesses, Shops and Professions
• Public and Religious Buildings

Experience vivid impressions of 19th-century American country life -- the aroma of soup simmering over an open hearth and bread baking in a brick oven, the ringing of the blacksmith's hammer, the calls of barnyard animals -- and the friendly voices of villagers and craftspeople.

In the Genesee Country in the 1820s and 1830s, some 40 hamlets and villages were providing economic services and other community functions for the flood of settlers who were clearing and developing its rich lands. Each village had its special character and history, but all supplied the same basic needs. The Genesee Country villages were located and built by enterprising pioneers who seized the opportunity to provide their fellow settlers with taverns, stores, mills, tanneries, and smiths, as well as churches, libraries, and academies to fit their varied tastes.

In an endeavor to visualize and interpret this bygone era, Genesee Country Village has been assembled from authentic functional buildings and artifacts of the period from a score of area towns. It does not endeavor to recreate any specific village, but to recapture and portray the character and atmosphere of the village era. Genesee Country Village was opened to the public in 1976.