A 23-mile journey to celebrate Southold Town’s mile markers
The 23-mile trek commenced Saturday morning on a winding stretch of sleepy Franklinville Road in Laurel. It was 9:04 a.m. and Derek Stadler and his mother, Hannelore, had just arrived from Hicksville to take part in Mile Marker Day, Southold Town’s kickoff event for its 375th anniversary celebration.
That day, the Stadlers would spend two hours driving their black Ford Focus along Main Road and then Route 48 from Laurel to Orient, stopping roughly every mile to identify and answer trivia questions about the stone markers that until recently were believed to have been erected 260 years ago by Benjamin Franklin. (New research by local historian Amy Folk all but proves they were actually installed by the town as postal markers in 1829.)
“Frankly, I wondered why Amy Folk had chosen this particular time to come out with that information because it couldn’t have been worse timing,” said Mile Marker Day organizer George Cork Maul. “But when I looked into it a little deeper, I realized that history is very rich, and the more information you find out about a story, the better the story gets.”
The findings didn’t seem to matter to the event’s 100 or so participants. Mr. Stadler, a 42-year-old library webmaster for City University of New York with an avid interest in Long Island history, was more shocked he had never spotted the markers before.
“I’ve biked through here several times but never noticed them,” he said.
That began to change around 9:10 a.m., when the Stadlers stopped at a Franklinville Road tent occupied by Mr. Maul and volunteer Beth Young.
“We ask that you set your odometer to zero,” Ms. Young told the mother/son team. She handed them an informal quiz participants were asked to fill out along the way. “Each marker should be about a mile apart.”
The Stadlers’ journey officially began just up the road at mile marker 7, across from Aldrich Lane. Mr. Stadler, who found out about Mile Marker Day during a visit to Southold Free Library to check out its microfilm collection, explained that the first six mile markers had at some point been lost or destroyed.
But where was the eighth marker? Mr. Stadler thought he had perhaps driven past it.
“This is really like a scavenger hunt, trying to find these things,” he said with a laugh as he walked west toward Empire Gas Station in Laurel, scanning the area. His mother, a 77-year-old native of Cologne, Germany, had decided to wait in the car.
“He’s so interested in all of this and he takes me along,” she said cheerily.
Ultimately, the Stadlers never found the marker. It was raining more heavily at this point, so they determined it made sense to just move on.
“We’re going to be soaked by the time this is over with,” Mr. Stadler observed.
Fortunately for the pair, the markers were fairly easy to identify from the roadway from that point on. One of the Cutchogue stones was surrounded by lush greenery; another, in Peconic, was situated in front of some baby goats owned by Catapano Farms.
At the latter marker, the Stadlers were quizzed about how many picnic tables they saw at Triangle Park, located across the street.
“Six,” Mr. Stadler said as his mother used a pencil to jot down the answer. “I count six.”
A few minutes later, when the pair reached marker 17, bells from the nearby Southold Presbyterian Church began ringing — a sort of purely coincidental greeting.
The quiz’s question about marker 18, located next to a private farm on Boisseau Avenue in Southold, puzzled the Stadlers. “Look for something tall to the right of the marker,” it said. “Hint: Don Quixote was always chasing these.”
Well, there was a very tall tree to the right of the marker, but that couldn’t have been the answer, they reasoned. Could it have been the property’s antique-looking windmill? That was Ms. Stadler’s guess, but her son wasn’t so sure. He wanted to Google the answer but didn’t have good cell phone reception. They decided to just keep moving.
Heightened traffic made it too dangerous to keep getting out of his car to photograph each marker, so Mr. Stadler began snapping quick shots of the next two stones with his Sony camera from inside his car. It was almost 11 a.m. by this point, and he and his mother had already driven through Laurel, Mattituck, Cutchogue, Peconic, Southold and Greenport.
“We’re in this thing now,” he joked.
A short time later, the Stadlers crossed the causeway connecting East Marion and Orient. The rain had slowed to a light drizzle and sunshine was beginning to peek through the clouds.
The Stadlers parked their car at the last marker, number 30, and posed beside it.
“Is this some kind of a treasure hunt?” a man waiting in his car for the Cross Sound Ferry joked.
In a way, perhaps it had been. After all, Mr. Stadler pointed out, it’s “amazing” that the markers still exist.
“I’m happy that people take notice of them and try to preserve them,” he said.
Southold Town Councilman Bob Ghosio, who was in Orient to greet participants after they found all the stones, echoed those sentiments.
“The 375th anniversary committee has put a tremendous amount of work into putting this Mile Marker Day event together,” he said. “The markers have been here since what, the early 1800s? George Cork Maul and Mark Terry did a great job putting this together.”
After having a commemorative postcard stamped by Dan McCarthy of Southold, who was dressed as Benjamin Franklin, it was time for the Stadlers to head west. They planned to have lunch at Meetinghouse Creek in Aquebogue. It was a sort of belated Mother’s Day present, Mr. Stadler explained.
The pair said they had fun participating in Mile Marker Day — and they plan to attend more 375th anniversary festivities.
“It was very well-organized,” Mr. Stadler said. “Friendly people.”
He laughed.
“We had a little bit of rain, but you can’t really do much about that.”