Castile, NY

Castile is a Wyoming County village in western New York, with 970 residents in the 2020 census. It was settled in 1816 and incorporated in 1877, growing around the roads and small businesses of the Genesee country. The village sits inside the larger Town of Castile, whose name reaches back to the Spanish region of Castile. Ziba Hurd became an early settler and postmaster, while his wife, Sally, is credited with choosing the name. The surrounding creek valleys once supported sawmills, a tavern, and other stops for travelers.

Letchworth State Park gives Castile a much bigger landscape than its village limits suggest. William Pryor Letchworth donated the land that became much of the park, and the Castile entrance leads toward the Humphrey Nature Center, Lower Falls, cabins, and trails along the Genesee gorge. The village also carries a medical history: Castile’s Water Cure opened in 1849 under Jabez Greene and continued under Dr. Cordelia Greene, an early woman physician and suffrage advocate. The Greene family ran the institution for 108 years before it was sold in 1957. Castile is a small New York village with a Spanish name, a Genesee valley, a famous park nearby, and a surprisingly rich record of early settlement and reform.