Tag Archives: Arkport

Join Us for a Historic Walk in Arkport!

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In the beginning, there was – muck!
“Muck” is the western New York name for a rich, silty soil that’s really good for raising crops. In Steuben County it’s mostly in the northwest corner, then extends on into Allegany, Livingston, and beyond.
Which helps explain why Arkport became a community, and how it got its name. Arkport’s “Old Main Street” was a well-traveled Native American footpath in the days before white people muscled in. (Today’s Route 36 roughly follows that old trail.) A community was created here because it was on the land route, but ALSO because it was the head of navigation on the Canisteo River.
In other words this is far as you can go upstream, and still be able to launch large “arks.” And large they were – hundred-foot monstrosities, built with the abundant local timber, laden with a year’s produce, and then poled or drifted as far down as Maryland. They’d sell their goods wherever the got a good enough price for them… then sell the “ark” for the lumber… and walk back home.
Dozens of arks would lie up, waiting for the spring freshets to raise the river, and speed the flow, so they could make their “returnless journey.” The Wadsworth brothers hauled their produce down from Geneseo to the “ark-port,” and so did just about everyone else in the region.
All well and good until the Erie Canal opened in 1825, killing the need for river traffic and impoverishing the Southern Tier. Arkport folks took advantage of a bad situation to move the river a quarter-mile westward – formerly a mighty highway, it had become only a source of floods.
So things lay fallow (not to mention quiet) until the Erie Railroad came through in the 1850s. Arkporters again had an easy outlet for their produce, not to mention passenger travel to Buffalo on one end, and New York City on the other. A hundred years later, rail traffic was less important because HIGHWAY travel, with individual motor vehicles, had taken over. The state created the new Route 36, and while Arkport continued as a farming and retail center, it also became a bedroom community, fit for the baby boom.
We’ll get a glimpse of this on Friday, September 16, when Steuben County Historical Society and Canisteo Valley Historical Society team up to lead a historic walking tour through the village. Among other things we’ll get a look at the Hurlbut House, which is about 220 years old, making it one of the oldest houses… more, one of the oldest STRUCTURES… in Steuben County.
Along with this we’ll see “Queen Anne” style houses along East Avenue, where the village started to extend about 1880. In keeping with the post-Civil War economic boom, this is a playful style – often asymmetrical, sometimes with different materials for different sections of the house, often with repeated features – such as windows – varying from floor to floor.
Farther out on East Ave is Arkport Central School, built in 1937 with help from the state (financially encouraging centralization), and from the New Deal in Washington, designed to put people back to work on construction projects. It’s been expanded and renovated repeatedly in the past 85 years, but it’s still a busy public school – a pretty good use of that money, back in the Great Depression!
After taking in some baby boom architecture, we plan to stop at “The Grove,” site of picnics, sports, Chautauquas, band concerts, and all the other joys of small-town life in the nineteenth century – and in the twenty-first, too. The free walk starts 4 PM at the village hall on Park Avenue. We hope we’ll see you in Arkport!

10 Local Women Were Killed in 1905 Accident

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From time to time over the past few months in this space we’ve looked at Steuben County’s worst train wreck (Gibson, 1912), highway wreck (Campbell, 1943), fire (Bath poorhouse, 1878), epidemic (Spanish influenza, 1918-19), and flood (June 1972).

*And certainly there were other very serious examples of each type of disaster. But there’s one tragedy worth noting that’s very difficult to classify. It’s not exactly a highway accident, and not exactly a railroad accident. Perhaps it’s the worst rail vehicle/road vehicle crash, and almost certainly the worst accident involving draft animals.

*The tragedy began to take shape on January 29, 1905, when Hornell’s First Universalist Church celebrated its first service in its new facility – still unfinished at the time. The Ladies Aid Society took advantage of leftovers from the celebration and moved up the date of planned sleigh ride. They would ride on February 1 to the home of Mrs. Martin Baldwin, outside Arkport, where their gathering would double as a 68th birthday celebration for Jane Graves.

*After a fine visit they left a little after six, as the dark was gathering, packed into two sleighs. South of Arkport a third sleigh fell into line, just by coincidence.

*At a railroad crossing occupants of the first sleigh saw a locomotive’s headlight, but the driver assumed that it was in the distant Shawmut rail yard. He crossed the tracks safely, but by then it had become clear that this was on oncoming train… in fact, the Angelica Express, steaming along at about 30 miles an hour.

*Those in the first sleigh shouted and waved for the second sleigh to stop. Maybe it was their unexpected noise and frantic activity, maybe it was the oncoming train, maybe something else known only to horses, but both animals drawing the second sleigh spooked. Driver Elijah Quick stopped them, then tried to get them moving again. But the inertia of a heavily-laden sleigh was too much. The train slammed right into the sleigh, finally managing to stop (inertia at work again) about a hundred yards down).

*The passengers had been able to see the train coming, but heavily bundled and packed tightly into the sleigh, none of them were able to jump out in time. The driver of the third sleigh raced to alert St. James Hospital, while someone from the first sleigh found a phone in a nearby farmhouse. Most of the dead and injured were lain in the baggage car and the train backed up to Hornell – with two women still trapped in the locomotive’s pilot.

*When all was said and done ten women died, including Mrs. Graves whose birthday it was. Three other women were injured, along with the driver. Both horses appeared unscathed.

*Ten such deaths would be devastating to any community, but in this case there was also the smaller church community. Back where I come from in Rhode Island, Christ Episcopal Church in Westerly lost ten members of its mothers’ group, plus a young boy who had gone along with his mother on their picnic, when the 1938 hurricane crashed in by surprise. The church still keeps their memory alive.

*And First Universalist would do the same, no doubt, if it could. Despite the loss they finished their edifice, installing a Tiffany window honoring the dead. But neither congregation nor edifice (which was diagonally across from the Baptist church) still exist today. The window was sold into private hands, but has lately been exhibited in a Chicago Museum.