Finally, work had begun on improving New York State Route 17 corridor in the Livingston Manor area. The demand upon the road’s usage, the major route used to get to Sullivan County as well as a through road used by motorist traveling downstate to upstate, made the twisty and winding two-lane highway a nuisance to the travelling public. In particular, the Manor segment of Rt. 17 had one of the most notorious, and deadliest, curves along the whole route, locally known as Mussman’s Turn. 

The planning of the so-called Manor Bypass, as it had become known, had long been on the drawing board. As early as 1948, state highway engineers proposed and designed a four-lane highway that did nothing to bypass the Manor. Drawn up as work was to begin on constructing the four-lane bypass of Parksville, the Manor segment was to leave the two-lane Route17 at the flats adjoining the Manor airport, pass over Pleasant Street, cross Main Street and run down River Street to Mott Flat. Though this design did not alleviate Mussman’s turn, it did do away with the dangerous curve at the intersection of Pearl Street and Rock Avenue, and the long-outdated Jacktown iron bridge. But it also proposed to do away with a large segment of the village, to which local officials objected.

A new plan proposed in 1951 again had the four-lane road leave old Route 17 along the flat before the airport, continue to and down Pearl Street, cross over Main Street and the Willowemoc Creek, onto the central school’s athletic fields before rejoining the two-lane road at Deckertown. This, as can be imagined, was even more vehemently opposed by the local business and school officials.

The valley route through Livingston Manor, along with the proposed future extension of the four-lane highway down the Willowemoc Valley to Roscoe and into Delaware County also drew the ire of local and national sportsmen groups. With the fear that the numerous river crossings by the highway would degrade the river and its fisheries, the battle for keeping the proposed four-lane out of the valley would continue-on for the next decade. Another alternate, and final, Manor Bypass segment met with little opposition [except for a landowner or two] as it actually did bypass the Manor and stayed away from the Willowemoc. Beginning at the end of the then finished Parksville Bypass at the Rockland-Liberty town line at Morsston, the proposed highway climbed in elevation and skirted the backside of Roundtop, rejoining the old two-lane 17 between Jacktown and Deckertown,