![]() ![]() Since World War II, Wellsville's economy has been dominated by skilled engineering and manufacturing with a cluster of multinational companies in the energy sector. The Sinclair Refinery was built in Wellsville at the beginning of the 20th century, not closing down until 1957 after two major fires and falling oil prices. The method uses water, so abundant in Wellsville, to force the oil from the "oil sands". A second boom occurred with the discovery of "Secondary Recovery", led by Bradley Producing, based in Wellsville. The first oil boom came later in Wellsville's history, several decades after the founding of the town and village when oil was discovered in Wellsville in 1879 by O.P. Wells was the major landowner of the real estate pieces, now the downtown Main Street section of Wellsville. Wellsville was named after a man named Gardiner Wells, who was, according to local history, the one person who didn't show up for the meeting when the residents were naming the town. Logging moved on to more densely forested areas in the latter part of the 19th century but the cleared ground quickly produced excellent grazing for a tremendous dairy industry which followed. Prior to this, the logs had been floated on the rivers and canals. The trains gave the lumbermen a new and more efficient means to get their product to market. This proved that Nathaniel Dyke's choice of location was the quickest, easiest and most practical way across Allegany County. The New York and Erie Railroad came through what would become Wellsville (then the outskirts of Scio) in 1851 as the quickest way west from New York City, crossing New York state. Next came the lumbermen and the railroad. Three large tanneries operated in Wellsville during the early 19th century. Wellsville's first industry was tanning, utilizing the bark of the hemlock tree for its tannins. His tombstone has the official memorial placed there by the Catherine Schuyler Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Dyke is buried in Elm Valley, just east of town. ![]() He began running a gristmill, a sawmill, and a tannery on a stream now known as Dykes Creek, by 1803. He married a Native American woman (Esther) and moved his family to the Wellsville area by 1795, while it was still owned by the Seneca Nation (two years before the Big Tree Treaty of 1797). Nathaniel Dyke, a native of Connecticut, and a captain in the Revolutionary War, serving under both General George Washington and General Warren of Bunker Hill fame, was the first of these in Allegany County. At the time, passenger pigeons filled the skies by the millions, and the tribes and bands came to the Wellsville area from all over western New York and northern Pennsylvania to Gistaquat to harvest the pigeons by the thousands.Įuropean settlers moved into the area before 1800. The Seneca referred to the Wellsville area as "the Pigeon Woods" and held annual festivals and encampments there to take advantage of the passenger pigeon (see memoirs of Captain Horatio Jones). The latest native people, the Seneca, named Wellsville Gistaguat, according to a map produced in 1771 by Guy Johnson, as the official map of New York state at the time, for then-Governor William Tryon. Wellsville was the location of encampments for thousands of years, including the Lamoka and Brewerton cultures. Originally an encampment for native peoples, Wellsville's settlement was driven, first, by the tanning and lumber industries and, later, the discovery of oil and natural gas. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. ![]()
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