HAMMONDSPORT - A century has whipped by since Glenn H. Curtiss rode motorcycles at terrifying speeds along the back roads of this hill-bound village, spooking horses and unsuspecting buggy drivers.

Within a few years, the “fastest man on earth” and “Hell Rider” monikers seemed the least of his triumphs. Curtiss turned into a pioneer of aviation whose aircraft innovations swiftly eclipsed those of Orville and Wilbur Wright.

Just as centennial highlights come into view, his faded legacy is being invoked in a long-running feud over the fate of the unobstructed lakefront panorama in this time-warp valley at the southern tip of Keuka Lake.

Developers have drawn up plans to erect luxury condominiums on two rezoned acres along the shore. As the proposed 53-foot-high, 26-unit complex inches toward reality, citizens' groups have shifted their hopes toward safeguarding 11 adjoining acres of abandoned railroad property.

If they can round up $1.35 million to buy the wilderness plot by a July 31 deadline - they've raised only $135,000 so far - they plan to turn it into a waterfront park.

“What Curtiss did for the world is so phenomenal, it so dwarfs small-town politics,” said Geoffrey Grimsman, a part-time resident who reinvigorated the decade-old conservation campaign in 2004 by suggesting the park be named for Hammondsport's fabled, if little trumpeted, son.

“Hammondsport is largely unscathed by modernity, it still looks much as it did in Curtiss' time, and we'd like to keep it that way,” Grimsman said. “Places that have made efforts to hold the line on modernism - St. Augustine, Gettysburgh, Charleston Battery - have all been glad they've done it.”

Michael Doyle, a large-scale landowner and winery operator who acquired the contested land in the 1990s, views the condominiums as a vital ingredient in shoring up the village's tax base and keeping wealthy locals from moving to lake or mountain resorts elsewhere in the Finger Lakes wine country and beyond.

“I don't think I'm a dark character,” Doyle said. “You can disagree or agree with condos on the lakefront but the fact is there's economics involved. Nobody's going to be able to afford to stay living here.

“It didn't start out as a Glenn Curtiss memorial - it started out as 'let's condemn that land so that it can't be something else,”' he said. “It's a fairly shrewd move because a lot of people have said ‘Oh yeah, we want to support Glenn Curtiss.' It's kind of like motherhood and apple pie.”

Doyle, a Curtiss devotee himself, serves on the board of the Curtiss Museum, which is tucked away in an old winery warehouse a mile outside this village in rural western New York. But he disputes arguments that this community of 2,500 doesn't have enough public lakefront and doesn't do enough to honor Curtiss.

America held its breath on July 4, 1908, when Curtiss soared over the vineyards in his bamboo-and-fabric June Bug in the nation's first officially recorded flight of more than 1 kilometer (0.6 mile). In 1911, he created the world's first seaplane, earning renown as “the father of naval aviation.” And from 1915 to 1918, he turned little Hammondsport into the airplane manufacturing capital of America, if not the world.

The village looks a lot like it did then - tiny Pulteney Park green in the heart of town is lined with quaint 19th-century buildings. But physical reminders of its taciturn titan, who died in 1930 at age 52, are hard to find.

Gone are the house he grew up in, the airplane factories, the bicycle and motorcycle shops. Left behind are an eponymous street and school and a modest family plot in a cemetery dotted with maples and cedars. On the opposite corner of the lake, in a park run by the town of Urbana, is a granite obelisk listing his major feats and a half-scale biplane on a metal perch a short distance from shore.

Beginning in 1999, the town sought to turn Doyle's 11 acres into a park. The eminent domain seizure was upended last summer when voters narrowly rejected raising $1.3 million in bonds. Doyle will get the land back in late summer if the private fundraising campaign fails, and opponents fear what will follow.

“What use would you have for the land if you're not going to build something on it?” asked town Supervisor Richard Gardiner, who regards the sleepy Pleasant Valley region as a tourist gem that would be better served if, like many small towns, it celebrated its historic claims.

Doyle won't say if he plans to build on the 11 acres. “If there's money out there, it would be much nicer to have it go to the Curtiss Museum, which is always struggling,” he said.

As for park space, he thinks there's plenty. But two-acre Depot Park, teeming with sunbathers and swimmers each summer, is now the only public sliver of lakefront land within the village's boundary.

Environmentalist Marcia States thinks an adjacent memorial park “would be sensational at a time when Curtiss is receiving more recognition. So many people I talk to, they're like ‘Why would we come back to this beautiful, unique community if you're going to make it like everywhere else in this country?”'

Protesters still hope against hope that the condominiums can be stopped.

In a first step toward construction, a drain system was installed in December to dry up the tract, a former wetland used as a dump through the 1950s. Drainage could take months or even years before passing a building code inspection.

The museum is planning a motorcycle extravaganza in 2007 to mark Curtiss' speed record of 136.4 mph, set on Ormond Beach, Fla., in 1907. And its June Bug replica might take to the skies in 2008, said museum director Trafford Doherty.

While no longer a household name, Curtiss did more than anyone in his era to make flying machines a commonplace contrivance, just as Henry Ford did for automobiles and Thomas Edison for electric light.

But making him better-known is “in an age of historical sound bites” is “a hard sell,” Doherty said.

School history books “tend to simplify things,” he said, “and that's one of the reasons why everybody knows about the Wright brothers and no one knows about Curtiss,” he said.