Allegany Indian Reservation - Geography

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the Indian reservation has a total area of 43.7 mi² (113.1 km²). 36.4 mi² (94.2 km²) of it is land and 7.3 mi² (18.8 km²) of it (16.65%) is water.

The reservation borders both banks of the Allegheny River and is within several of the towns in the south part of the county (South Valley, Cold Spring, Salamanca, Great Valley, Red House, Carrollton, and Allegany). The City of Salamanca, with the exception of a northern spur along U.S. Route 219, is also within the reservation.

The governmental headquarters for the Allegany Reservation are located in a small community known as Jimerson Town, an unincorporated hamlet located west of Salamanca on a stretch of dead-end road that formerly was part of New York State Route 17. The government rotates between Jimerson Town and Irving on the Cattaraugus Reservation every two years, its current term began in November 2010 when Robert Odawi Porter took office.

Historically the reservation was adjacent to the Cornplanter Tract, a 1500-acre perpetual land grant given to Seneca chief Cornplanter and his descendants that extended into Pennsylvania. The Cornplanter Tract constituted the only reserved native lands in the state of Pennsylvania. By 1957, the year Cornplanter's last direct descendant (Jesse Cornplanter) had died, the Cornplanter Tract had only a seasonal population. Both the Cornplanter Tract and the western portion of the Allegany Reservation were flooded and mostly made uninhabitable as a result of the construction of the Kinzua Dam.

Read more about this topic:  Allegany Indian Reservation

Famous quotes containing the word geography:

    Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)