Genesee Country Village & Museum was conceived and founded by John L. Wehle who from its inception in 1966 until his death in 1994 served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees. "Jack" Wehle, a lifetime collector of sporting art, perceived that another art form -- the work of regional carpenters, master builders, and housewrights -- was fast disappearing from the landscape and with it was vanishing an important aspect of the Genesee Valley heritage. He proposed a Museum Village of selected examples of 19th-century Genesee Country architecture. The buildings would be showcases in which the art of the cabinetmaker, the weaver, the potter and other artisans would be displayed in appropriate cultural context.

A rise above the Oatka Creek in a quiet corner of Monroe County, N.Y., was chosen for the village site. Much of the land, once cleared and farmed, had reverted to the wild state which greeted the first settlers. Stone fences trailing through the rolling woodlands and anchoring the hedgerows remained as evidence of the frontier farming venture.

For ten years the founder and the museum director, architectural historian Stuart Bolger, guided a corps of carpenters and masons in turning the long-neglected land to new and useful purposes in the form of a recreated village. During the first decade of development some three dozen buildings of the style, type, and function found in the rural communities of western New York State were acquired and set down in the configuration of an early Genesee Country hamlet. Vintage farm structures were moved in and placed alongside the village. With care and historical respect these buildings were restored.

In the meantime the curatorial staff undertook the quest for relevant artifacts with which to furnish and equip the renewed buildings. Opened to the public in 1976, Genesee Country Village & Museum doubled in size and content in its second decade.

The two hundred acres occupied by the village buildings are surrounded by over a thousand acres of grain and corn fields, grasslands, ponds, and wetlands which furnish a rich habitat for game and wildfowl. The ongoing development of the Genesee Country Nature Center , another of Genesee Country Village & Museum's missions, affords opportunities for the public to observe the undisturbed flora and the unthreatened fauna within the preserve.

Complementing the emphasis which the village places upon a narrow portion of the American experience, the John L. Wehle Art Gallery, as a further dimension of the Genesee Country Village & Museum program, offers a wide range of commentary on art and natural history, presented through the work of hundreds of internationally recognized artists and sculptors.