Sodus Bay (Alton)

Sodus Bay is an embayment of Lake Ontario and a former place-name for the hamlet of Alton.

In 1826, a Shaker group established a communal farm south of Sodus Bay. Its 150 members erected a mill, barns, and other buildings. Concerned that the farm might be taken by eminent domain for a canal project (which was never built), the Shakers abandoned their complex in 1838 to rebuild elsewhere. Six years later, the land and surviving buildings were purchased for the Sodus Bay Phalanx, a Fourierist Utopian community about half of whose members were freethinkers. It failed after about three years.