Clocking in at 0.92 square-miles, the village of Aurora, Cayuga County, is perhaps the smallest place with one of the biggest reputations in the Finger Lakes.
The village is located within the town of Ledyard, on the shore of Cayuga Lake — the longest of the Finger Lakes at nearly 40 miles, with an average width of 1.75 miles. The total population is less than 300 people.
The Cayuga people of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy dubbed the land ‘deawendote,’ or the “village of constant dawn,” for its stunning sunrises. It was also known as ‘chonodote,’ or “peachtown,” for its abundance of peach orchards planted by the natives — destroyed by the hundreds in 1779, when General George Washington issued a campaign against the Seneca, Cayuga and Loyalists in Central New York.
Aurora was settled by Anglo-Americans in 1795 following the Revolutionary War, and in 1976, just after the bicentennial, the entire village was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, with several buildings earning national landmark status.
In 1868, Henry Wells (of the Wells Fargo Express Company) founded Wells Seminary for women, a 300-acre campus overlooking Cayuga Lake. He rejected an offer from Ezra Cornell to merge their two newly founded schools, as creating higher education opportunities for women was “the dream of Wells’s life.” (The college would not become co-ed until 2005.)
For the next 156 years, Wells powered the village of Aurora, creating jobs year-round, bringing in part-time residents to boost the economy and subsidizing municipal costs like the water treatment plant, which was under college ownership.
On the morning of April 29, 2024, Wells College announced its permanent closure, citing “that the College does not have adequate financial resources to continue” and “many small colleges like Wells have faced enormous financial challenges … exacerbated by a global pandemic, a shrinking pool of undergraduate students nationwide, inflationary pressures, and an overall negative sentiment towards higher education.”
The college community — more than 350 students and 150 staff and faculty — was given no advance notice.
When she heard the news, Rachel Snyder, a 2011 graduate of Wells College who now lives in Rochester, immediately went to work. The Wells Legacy Society (WLS) was founded two weeks later, with her as president.
“We organized to ensure the campus wasn’t turned into a development,” said Snyder, who works at the Rochester nonprofit Measures for Justice. “A lot of areas in the Finger Lakes are being developed by private equity firms, and we want to preserve the historic architecture and incredible artifacts on campus.”
WLS has raised about $46,000, largely through a Facebook group of approximately 3,000 alums, which Snyder has run for five years. Part of the funds have gone into legal fees, and part to help 87 students left without tuition or book assistance.
WLS is made up of volunteers who are connected to Wells in myriad ways; Snyder, for instance, met her husband through her Wells roommate and held her bridal shower at the college. Vice president Karen Hindenlang is a longtime Aurora resident and a Wells College alumna (‘77). Her husband was a beloved senior professor and faculty advisory committee member who retired before the college closed.
“I’m the society’s boots on the ground in Aurora, because I’ve lived here for decades,” said Hindenlang, who is also chair of the village’s zoning board.
An early focus of WLS was the impending legacy partner — Manhattanville University in Westchester was the frontrunner — which was awarded to Hobart and William Smith Colleges in mid-June. The Geneva-based school will maintain the closed college’s records and endowment, keeping it in the Finger Lakes region. With that substantial win underway, WLS can refocus its energy.
“We want to bring media attention to the way the college was closed, but also to make sure that the architecture is preserved so that the campus itself doesn’t just get torn down and replaced with some glass and metal structure,” said Snyder. “We want to help create a sense of place in Aurora for Wells alums, too, because this place is really important to a lot of us.
In March 2025, Wells College was selected for the Landmark Society of Western New York’s Five to Revive list, which calls attention to sites across the region in need of rehabilitation. The Landmark Society then strives to facilitate investment and protect the area’s architectural heritage, working to create connections and reactivate buildings within the communities.
According to a statement on the Landmark Society’s website, “the college is home to many National Register buildings … Unfortunately, as part of the closure Wells College decided against turning on the heat in many of its buildings this winter, and they also turned off all water and drained the pipes, creating potential for mildew and rot as well as damage to structures and artifacts. For now, the duty to protect the college’s significant physical assets falls to the college’s trustees, and their decisions will impact the local community. The economies of small college towns, especially those in primarily rural areas, are highly tied to the activities of the college and its students. Better care and rehabilitation of this historic campus could stimulate the local economy by providing jobs and generating business.”
The campus is assessed at $8.5 million, and WLS is hoping the winning bid comes from a nonprofit, a senior living community or a destination similar to the Chautauqua Institute.
“There’s been a heart of service at the core of this community, and, of course, the cultural and educational benefits,” said Hindenlang. “The library was open to the community and then the lectures and concerts were all available to the public. It was the ‘commonweal’ people used to talk about.”
Throughout the past year, the Aurora Village Board has urged state officials to work with Wells College trustees to keep the campus zoned for a nonprofit, educational institution. In April 2025, the Ithaca Times reported that a formal $10.8 million joint offer had been submitted by Grande Venues, the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge and Summit World Schools, “with plans to transform it into a multifaceted educational and residential hub.”
In the meantime, the campus was largely fenced off in January, though the village’s only doctor is still practicing from the onsite clinic and the golf course is still active. The water treatment plant struggle is ongoing, like a complicated custody battle, as full ownership has not been transferred to the village and legal fees are rising. Residents may see their water bills rise rapidly as the village takes on a $300,000 annual cost to operate the plant — a 27% increase in the yearly budget.
“This is pretty unique,” said Hindenlang. “There’s no template, so now we’re just waiting for more information or a finalized sale.”
According to April 2024 data from The Hechinger Report, a national nonprofit newsroom that reports solely on education, American colleges are closing at a rate of roughly one per week. Small, liberal arts institutions have been hit hardest; Cazenovia College outside Syracuse and Medaille College in Buffalo both closed a year before Wells, in 2023.
“Wells was liberal arts school, and that’s also being devalued throughout our country, when we need it more than ever,” said Snyder. “Helping to preserve that community and critical thinking and acting with humanity — that’s important.”
Notable Wells alums include Frances Folsom, who would later become President Grover Cleveland’s first lady and then marry Wells College president Thomas J. Preston, Jr. after Cleveland’s death, serving on the Wells Board of Trustees for nearly 50 years.
But perhaps the most notable alum is Pleasant T. Rowland, creator of the American Girl dolls and books, who injected a sizable amount of money into redeveloping historic village properties from 2001 to 2007. Rowland, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin, is largely responsible for the Inns of Aurora, a luxury resort and spa that’s been featured in “Architectural Digest” and “National Geographic Traveler” as well as recently landing on the “Travel+Leisure” World’s Best List 2024, the “Condé Nast” Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards 2024 and the “Vogue” Global Spa Guide.
But Rowland also chased out most of the small business owners as she rehabbed the mansions they inhabited, said Hindenlang, including the local funeral home. And the Inns of Aurora can’t fill all the jobs lost when the college closed.
“My heart hurts for the people left behind in the village — they have limited access to their own water plant and their livelihoods have been impacted,” said Snyder. “It’s devastating.”
Many of the villagers worked as college staff: maintenance and housekeeping, electricians and plumbers. They went away to get licensed and came back to work at Wells. When the closure happened last year, it was felt immediately.
“Everybody was connected to the college. I think for one family here, it was six generations,” said Hindenlang. “Think of the institutional memory they hold, how do you download those databases?”
While the future of the campus remains in question, the members of WLS are hopeful.
“Aurora is a little jewel of the Finger Lakes,” said Snyder. “It would be a tarnish on the legacy to just let Wells fade into oblivion.” wellslegacysociety.org
Leah Stacy is CITY’s editor. She can be reached at leah@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
