The 1940 census data is available online. You can find an intriguing 1937 map of Dryden "prepared by the technical staff of the Tompkins County Development Association", and lots of data on Dryden individuals as well in the census schedules.
In Enumeration District 55-10 (Varna through Bethel Grove), unfortunately, they didn't indicate addresses, so it's hard to know who, for example, lived in my house. (I don't find a name matching the owner at the time, so I'm guessing it was rented.)
The map, though, has all kinds of great things. Dryden Road (then 13, now 366 and 13) was Ithaca-Cortland Road. The north end of what is now Hanshaw Road used to be called Zeman Road, and Ellis Road and Stevens Road followed a course much like the western end of current Route 13. Stevenson Road was Reed Road, and Ellis Hollow Creek Road was just plain Creek Road. Quarry Road continued past Snyder Hill Road to the Catskill Turnpike, better known now as Route 79. Fulkerson Road used to connect the current Sheldon (then South) Road to Wood Road. Schultz Road connected Mill Street in Freeville to Caswell Road, and Johnson Road used to be Wickiam Road and Cotrell Road.
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp SP-48 was along the west side of Turkey Hill Road between Ellis Hollow and Ellis Hollow Creek. Its enumeration is two blank pages, and its population is listed as zero. I'll have to find out what happened there - someone certainly lived there, as the Wikipedia entry for Cornell Plantations reports that "From 1935 to 1940, the federal government's Civilian Conservation Corps Camp SP 48 devoted 170 to 200 workers to planting trees, constructing dikes, and building trails in order to develop the Arboretum." They seem to have pulled that from this Cornell Daily Sun article of November 7, 1940. Maybe the census simply didn't count these "imported" residents as living here.
Update: And here's a Journal article from Carol Kammen on the census.
Posted by simon at April 6, 2012 10:24 PM in demographics , history , maps , roads, traffic, and transit