Cuba, NY

Cuba is an Allegany County town on New York's western border, with the village of Cuba inside its boundaries and the Seneca Nation's Oil Springs Reservation along the western town line. The 2020 census counted 3,154 residents. The town was formed in 1822, and its location on old roads, rail lines, and the Southern Tier Expressway has kept it a crossroads. Cuba Lake and the Seneca Oil Spring give the surrounding landscape two very different kinds of history: recreation and the beginnings of the region's oil industry.

Cheese is the town's signature piece of local memory. From the 1870s onward, small farm factories sent cheese toward Cuba, where prices were set and blocks were shipped by canal and railroad to New York City and other markets. Cuba Cheese Shoppe occupies an 1889 storage building, keeping that trade visible on Genesee Street. The Main Street and South Street historic districts, Empire City Farms, and the Genesee Valley Greenway add more stops around the village. Cuba is a western New York town where dairy history, a lake, a Seneca landmark, and old transportation routes still sit close together.