Read aloud by your device's voice. It sounds different on each device.
Sehgahunda
The Seneca called the gorge the vale of the three falls
The territory of the park was long part of the homeland of the Seneca people. They called the land around the canyon Sehgahunda, the "Vale of the three falls". The Middle Falls, called Ska-ga-dee, was believed to be so wondrous it made the sun stop at midday.
“Vale of the three falls”
the Seneca name for the gorge, Sehgahunda
1859
William Pryor Letchworth bought land by the falls in 1859
Letchworth first viewed the gorge from a train on the nearby railroad trestle in 1858. In 1859 he bought an initial 190 acres near the Portage Falls and began work on his Glen Iris Estate. By buying the land he halted plans for a hydroelectric dam in the gorge that would have altered the flow of the river and diminished flows over the large waterfalls.
The bridge
The world's longest and tallest wooden bridge burned in 1875
The Erie Railroad built a wooden trestle over the Genesee River just above the Upper Falls. It opened on August 16, 1852, and at the time it was the longest and tallest wooden bridge in the world. In the early morning hours of May 6, 1875, it was destroyed in a fire. An iron bridge was begun on June 8, 1875, and the Portage Viaduct opened for traffic on July 31, 1875.
1906
Letchworth gave the estate to New York in 1906
In 1906 Letchworth granted the Glen Iris and the surrounding 1,000 acres to the State of New York as a public park, intending to deter commercial businesses from damaging the fragile nature of the gorge and surrounding woodlands. He required that the land be managed by the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. He remained at the Glen Iris until December 1, 1910.
The Seneca
The Seneca were largely forced out after the Revolutionary War
The Seneca people were largely forced out after the American Revolutionary War, as they had been allies of the defeated British. Mary Jemison was captured at the age of 12 by a French and Shawnee raiding party and adopted by a Seneca family. She chose to live with the Seneca for the rest of her long life. Her remains were reinterred at a Seneca Council House, relocated to the site by Letchworth and rededicated in 1872.
In this plan
It is one of the stops on this plan.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Letchworth State Park, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.