Upstate Legends! The Roscoe Diner, a Travelers Best Friend!

For the thousands of people who traveled from Upstate New York to New York City over the past 7 decades, the Roscoe Diner was a haven of good food and good memories.

The diner is located about 2 hours north of New York City, and NYS Rt. 17 was one of the two large arteries for which those traveling by car would traverse from the mountains to the city.  The other being the New York State Thruway.

Upstate New York is basically "SUNY-land."  It has a ton of colleges and universities all over the region, and many of the students at these colleges are from "Downstate," or the New York City/Long Island region.  These included places like SUNY Oneonta, Binghamton University, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Fredonia, Cornell University, Syracuse University, SUNY Albany, Colgate University, SUNY Cortland, Hartwick College, and many others.  As the students and their families went back and forth in their station wagons over the years, for school breaks, semester changes, moving in days, moving out days, Christmas breaks, etc., Rt. 17 was a busy highway.  And so was the Roscoe Diner.

The diner opened in 1962 in tiny Roscoe, NY.  The village itself is known as "Trout Town, U.S.A." for its fertile rivers and trout-filled creeks which run through the area.  So, the diner was already a busy place with people coming to fish the Willowemoc and the Beaver Kill.  Add in the students, and then add in the general tourist activity and you can see why this diner was so important, popular, and, yes I'll say it, beloved.

We definitely think the Roscoe Diner belongs in the "legendary" category.  So, as the ubiquitous bumper stickers seen around the world reads:  "Meet me at the World Famous Roscoe Diner!"  We hope you enjoy these stories, memories, and photographs.

For more in our series of "Upstate Legends!," paying tribute to people, places, and experiences, keep reading!