West Bloomfield's older story follows Honeoye Creek and Routes 5 and 20

West Bloomfield’s story starts before its town line. The town history describes Seneca villages in the area, including one on Fort Hill along Honeoye Creek, another near what was once West Bloomfield Station, and a third in the southern part of town. Around those villages, Seneca people cultivated corn, beans, squash, apples, and peaches.

The later town story follows the old route west. A recorded public religious service was held in 1790; schools opened in 1796; an academy followed in 1812. The town was set off from old Bloomfield on February 11, 1833. The same town page places West Bloomfield on the northwestern edge of Ontario County along the Routes 5 and 20 corridor, about 20 miles southeast of Rochester.

That gives the place a different feel from the lake-and-resort shorthand people sometimes use for the Finger Lakes. West Bloomfield is more of a road, creek, schoolhouse, and village-institution town. Its older layers are Seneca fields and orchards, early churches, small manufacturers, general stores, and a corridor that kept people moving between Ontario County, Monroe County, and Livingston County.