Town & Village of Boonville

NY 28 skirts through the SW corner of the Town of Boonville, Oneida County. Alder Creek is in Town of Boonville also. The Village of Boonville, however, is about 9 miles west of NY 28 from Woodgate. You turn west at the flashing yellow light in Woodgate to get to Boonville, it's called Woodgate Road there. But watch out, parts of this town road to Boonville are very tricky. About 2.5 miles west of Woodgate there are 20 mph downhill S curves for a mile. The minimal winter maintenance and all the shade make winter driving tricky here. After that, when you get into the town of Boonville, you pass Hog Mountain State Forest on the south side of Woodgate, now Hawkinsville, Road.

Two miles east of Boonville, you go through the hamlet of Hawkinsville, where the road crosses both the Black River and the Old Black River Canal. The tow path of the Old Black River Canal is a snowmobile trail here. The trail is a jogging and bicycling trail in better weather. Then you come into Boonville and the road ends at NY Route 12. The Village of Boonville is right off of NY 12, the main road in these parts. Main Street into the village center is NY 12D, by the remnants of the old canal. Like most older towns, it has a lot of logging and other wood related industries. Unlike some of the really depressed villes on the Northern Plateau or Mohawk Valley, the village center is still lively. It is more of a working man town that caters to some tourists, snowmobilers and hunters; definitely not a nature lover, "tree hugger" sort of spot. But all the basics of life and some frills are for sale there, within walking distance of each other, in the village center. It is one of the few villages that still looks like and functions as a village.

The township, which consists of 4400 residents, is located in the divide between the Mohawk River and Black River on the southeast portion of the Tug Hill Plateau, which gets all the lake effect snow off of Lake Ontario. It is also the beginning of the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains. It was served by the now defunct Black River Canal, which connected the Erie Canal to the Black River. Being in Tug Hill, it gets tons of snow, off Lake Ontario, which makes it a haven for snowmobilers. Though people told me that the real snowmobile glory days have passed. The Village of Boonville is not in the Adirondack Park technically, though it is an Adirondack town.