Cherry Valley, NY

Cherry Valley is an Otsego County village of 520 residents at the 2010 census, about thirteen miles northeast of Cooperstown. It began in 1740 as Lindesay's Bush, took the name Cherry Valley under Reverend Dunlop, and grew into a crossroads on New York Route 166 and Cherry Valley Creek. The village's age is visible in the Cherry Valley Historic District, an intact collection of buildings and streetscapes that follows the community from the Revolutionary era into the twentieth century.

The hardest part of the story is the Cherry Valley Massacre of November 11, 1778, when forty-seven residents were killed during a British and Iroquois raid. The Cherry Valley Museum holds artifacts from that event inside the White-Phelon-Sutliff House, built in 1812-13, along with household objects, portraits, Civil War pieces, and early firefighting equipment. A walk down Main Street turns the history into something you can see: old houses, the museum, the creek, and a village still carrying its old name.