Allegany County, New York

AT A GLANCE ALLEGANY COUNTY, NEWYORK WHAT: A county of 47,000 WHERE: The southern tier of western New York State WEBSITE: www.alleganyco.com ALLEGANY COUNTY , NEW YORK County’s economy is driven by dairy and mixed farming; apples do well, while the humble potato is one of its main products, next to milk and hay. The discovery of a great oil pool beneath the surface of the County was perhaps the most momentous occasion in its history. In fact, the first petroleum in the United States was noted by Roche-d’Allion, a French Jesuit, in 1627, near the current town of Cuba. But it wasn’t until the coming of the famous Old Triangle No. 1 well drilled in nearby Allentown in 1879, that anything came of the priest’s find. Although the oil boom has long since passed, a fabulous amount of money came into the County in the late 1880s, and there were towns growing overnight. For fifteen years, the oil brought to the surface had more value than all the rest of the County’s products combined. It could not last, at least on the scale at which it had