Hamburg—Springville—Salamanca—(Bradford, Pa.); US 219.
Hamburg to Pennsylvania Line, 61.4 m.
Two-strip macadam and concrete road.
The Baltimore & Ohio R.R. parallels southern half of the route; Erie R.R. between Salamanca and Pennsylvania line.
US 219 traverses a pleasant, hilly farming region to Salamanca, east and south of which it cuts through the Allegany Indian Reservation along the eastern border of Allegany State Park, serpentining along the course of the Allegheny River and Tunungwant Creek.
Southeast from HAMBURG, 0 m. (826 alt., 5,428 pop.) (see Tour 37), the route follows Eighteenmile Creek. BOSTON, 8.3 m. (960 alt., 400 pop.), once manufactured cowbells. Ellen Beach Yaw, opera singer of the nineties who now lives in Covina, California, was born here in 1871. ST. PAUL’S EVANGELICAL CHURCH (R), was erected in 1834 by settlers from New England, who hauled the timbers from Gowanda.
SPRINGVILLE, 17.2 m. (1,341 alt., 2,832 pop.), was early known as Fiddlers’ Green. David Leroy, ‘famous and inveterate fiddler,’ settled here in 1812, and he and other amateurs made it a habit to meet on the green and strike up popular tunes. Back from the road (R) is the BIOLOGICAL STATION OF THE GRATWICK LABORATORIES (New York State Institute for the Control of Malignant Diseases, Buffalo), in which cancer research is conducted on living tissue.
In Springville is the junction with State 39 (see Tour 34).
ELLICOTTVILLE, 36.6 m. (1,549 alt., 978 pop.), makes last blocks for the shoe trade, condensed milk, baskets, and prefabricated garages. The place was named for Joseph Ellicott, Holland Land Company surveyor. In 1859 three Franciscan Fathers, Pamfilio, Milian, and Sextus, established themselves here to administer to the spiritual needs of the Irish railroad workers. They remained for three years and then moved to Allegany, where they founded St. Bonaventure’s College in 1859. In the belfry of ST. JOHN’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, corner of Washington and Jefferson Sts., hangs a bell cast in 1708 in Malaga, Spain, and brought to the village in 1838.
In GREAT VALLEY 41.2 m. (1,460 alt., 214 pop.), is the junction with a dirt road.
Left on this road 2.4 m. to the BREATHING WELL HOMESTEAD (open). The ‘Breathing Well’ in the yard is a natural curiosity dating back to 1841. The phenomena of ‘inhaling’ and ‘exhaling’ are explained by the existence of a chain of subterranean caverns connecting with the well and ending at an as yet undiscovered outlet; variations in barometric pressure are said to cause the ‘breathing.’
SALAMANCA, 47.8 m. (1,380 alt., 9,654 pop.) (see Tour 3), is at the junction with State 17 (see Tour 3).
At LIMESTONE, 59.6 m., in the valley of Tunungwant Creek, oil operations were started in the sixties when a well was sunk by Dr. James Nichols. A boom followed in the seventies, with 250 wells, some of them producing more than 170 barrels a day. It is said that the oil men planned to make Limestone their headquarters but exorbitant real estate prices drove settlers across the line to Bradford.
The road crosses the PENNSYLVANIA LINE, 61.4 m., 3.9 miles north of Bradford, Pennsylvania.