The one hundred fifty mile-long Genesee River rises in Pennsylvania and flows northward into Lake Ontario. Though relatively a small stream except in flood stages, it has cut in its middle portion a deep gorge with walls rising six hundred feet above foaming waters, and this spectacular section in Letchworth Park has been called “The Grand Canyon of the East.” The Genesee then courses into a broad, level intervale before again tumbling over a series of falls at Rochester, where the river’s water contributed greatly to Rochester’s development. Genesee meant “beautiful valley” to the Seneca Indians who occupied several villages here. To the Genesee in seventeen eighty-two came the captive Mary Jemison, who lived with the Senecas for seventy-one years. The Big Tree Treaty at Geneseo, in seventeen ninety-seven, ended Indian occupation, and the Wadsworths by eighteen thirty-five bought much of the best arable land in the valley. Fertile land made the Genesee famous for growing wheat in the nineteenth century. The Genesee Valley Canal connected Rochester with Olean and Dansville; started in eighteen thirty-six, it was abandoned in eighteen seventy-eight, and a railroad later followed much of the canal’s route. Dairying, corn growing, and fruit cultivation are now leading agricultural activities, and the world’s largest underground salt mine is located in the area.
