Buffalo—East Aurora—Yorkshire—Olean—(Bradford, Pa.); State 16, 16A.
Buffalo to Pennsylvania Line, 80 m.
Two-lane, macadam or concrete.
Pennsylvania R.R. parallels route.
Southeast of Buffalo is muck land worked by truck farmers; and beyond this black soil, as the land rises, are dairy and stock farms. Finally, near the Pennsylvania line, oil companies are still harvesting a crop which grew in a tropical jungle millions of years ago.
In the suburbs of BUFFALO, 0 m. (600 alt., 575,150 pop.) (see Buffalo), State 16 passes rows of peas-in-the-pod bungalows, viaducts, soot-stained rookeries at railroad sidings.
SPRINGBROOK, 11.6 m. (774 alt., 210 pop.), is a garden-farm community. Here and there are deep-retreating country estates, greenswards neatly edged, where gentlemen farmers raise blue-blooded horses.
In the 1860’s a German nobleman, age 19, sought to emulate James Fenimore Cooper and came here to write a book about the frontier. For weeks he roamed the countryside with pencil and notebook. In 1868 appeared in Buffalo a book entitled Hunt of the Buffaloes or A True Rapport of Perils with the Indians Whose Habitat is Near & Around Buffalo, by Alexis Ferdinand von der Hoehe. There were few dull moments in the narrative: ‘. . . suddenly I hear a screech such as will by great necessity and suddenly curdle the blood of the veins in the human anatomy. I see a tall Indian rush out of the log cabin with a baby in arm and behind, crying with the most heart terrorizing sobs of the whole body the mother of the child, Mrs. Benson. “Thunder-lightning” I cry. “Stand still your pace in your tracks, you impudent fellow!” . . .’
In EAST AURORA, 15.5 m. (926 alt., 5,239 pop.), is the junction with US 20A (see Tour 8A).
South of East Aurora the monotony of the flatlands is broken by parallel lines of hills extending southward and covered with beech, basswood, and maple.
In YORKSHIRE, 37 m. (1,438 alt., 306 pop.), is the junction with State 39 (see Tour 34).
DELEVAN, 39.7 m. (1,442 alt., 558 pop.), is a favorite training place for pugilists and wrestlers. Many Buffalo fighters have trained here, among them the former heavyweight wrestling champion, George Nichols. The place was named in 1892 in honor of Jack Delevan, a trainer and hotel keeper.
LIME LAKE (swimming, fishing, boating), 43.5 m. (1,640 alt., 51 pop.), is a scattered summer resort along the irregular shore of Lime Lake.
At 45.9 m. is the junction with State 98.
Left on State 98 to FARMERSVILLE, 3.9 m. (1,837 alt., 50 pop.), at the watershed between the Allegheny River on the one hand and Cattaraugus Creek and a branch of the Genesee River on the other. Oldsters are fond of saying that there is a spot in the town where a man can, without moving, spit in the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The place was settled in 1816–17 by a group of men, all bachelors but one; in the true pioneer spirit the bachelors drew up and signed the following agreement: ‘If any woman who is over fourteen years of age, shall come to reside in our village, and no one of this confederacy shall offer her his company, within a fortnight thereafter, then in such case, our board shall be called together, and someone shall be appointed to make her a visit; whose duty it shall be to perform the same, or forfeit the disapprobation of the company, and pay a fine sufficiently large to buy the lady thus neglected, a new dress.’
Factories in FRANKLINVILLE, 51.4 m. (1,594 alt., 2,021 pop.); produce kitchenware, cans, and cheese and other milk products. The place was settled shortly after 1800 by Joseph McClure, who surveyed for the Holland Land Company many of the early roads of Cattaraugus and Allegany Counties and was ‘somewhat noted for his faculty of making them terminate at the settlement he had commenced.’
The new FRANKLINVILLE HIGH SCHOOL, N. Main St., which includes experimental agriculture in its curriculum, occupies the site of the old Ten Broeck Academy, once a dignified group of stone buildings on a four-acre campus, donated in the sixties by Peter Ten Broeck to provide free education, including astronomy.
ISCHUA, 59.1 m. (1,585 alt., 350 pop.), is in a pocket along Ischua Creek among quarried hills. In 1845 the settlers rose up against the Holland Land Company in the ‘Dutch Hill War,’ a bloodless affair. Farmers took to arms to defy ejection; one settler, an Irishman, accidentally discharged a gun as the militia, called by the company, approached. But that was all, and the agitated farmers returned home. The incident has been called the ‘first agrarian strike in America.’
At 64.2 m. is the junction with State 63.
Left on State 63 to CUBA (1,500 alt., 1,422 pop.), 6.8 m.; left from Cuba on State 94 to the junction with a macadam road, 1.7 m.; left here 2.2 m. to CUBA LAKE (bathing, picnicking, dancing, amusements), an irregularly shaped body of water locally popular as a summer resort. On the same road, at the southwestern tip of the lake, is the CUBA RESERVATION, 4.7 m., one square mile, which includes the first observed petroleum spring in America, discovered in 1627 by Joseph de la Roche D’Allion, a Franciscan friar. A stagnant, brush-grown pool, the spring is 18 feet in diameter and of unknown depth. An iron-bound cask, preserved by the oil, has occupied the center of the spring as long as anyone can remember. Indians used the oil for medicinal purposes. The spring and adjacent land was reserved in perpetuity to the Seneca Indians by the Big Tree Treaty of 1797; in 1937 but one lone Seneca lived in its confines.
At OLEAN, 71.3 m. (1,440 alt., 21,790 pop.) (see Tour 3), is the junction with State 17 (see Tour 3), and the junction with State 16A, which (straight ahead) becomes the main tour. South of Olean, State 16A passes through part of the New York State oil field (see Tour 3).
ROCK CITY (R), 76.3 m., is a natural mass of conglomerate rock criss-crossed by fissures, producing the effect of a built-up city with regular street blocks. Near by are caves, some of which are large enough to shelter 30 people.
At 80 m. State 16A crosses the PENNSYLVANIA LINE, 10.3 miles northeast of Bradford, Pennsylvania.