Cattaraugus, NY

Cattaraugus is a village in the hills of western New York, north of Salamanca and within the town of New Albion. Its earliest settler story reaches back to 1818, but the village truly changed when the Erie Railroad arrived in 1851. Joseph Plumb gave the railroad a right-of-way and depot site, and the new line turned Cattaraugus into a shipping and trading center for cheese, butter, apples, lumber, and other products. The rail boom pulled hotels, schools, stores, factories, and stage lines into the valley, and President Millard Fillmore was on the first train through.

The village still carries the shape of that railroad era. A fire destroyed much of the business district in 1888, so brick buildings replaced many of the earlier wooden ones. Today the Cattaraugus Village Commercial Historic District preserves nineteen downtown buildings, while the Pat McGee Trail follows a former rail bed toward Salamanca. Cattaraugus-Little Valley Central School is the largest local employer, and the village's brick commercial center remains the best place to read the old boomtown story. Cattaraugus is a Southern Tier village where railroads, farm commodities, historic brick, and a trail built from a former track all meet.