Salamanca (New York)

It's no stretch to say that Salamanca would not exist today but for the railroads. The low-lying swampland on which the city was built was useless to the Seneca but vital as a transportation link through the hilly terrain of the local area, and by the turn of the century there were no fewer than three lines — the Erie, the Pennsylvania, and the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh — passing through town, by which tens of thousands of bundles of wood from the thick forests of southern Cattaraugus County were shipped every day to lumber markets nationwide. Today, the handsome old BR&P depot has been fully restored and reopened as a museum detailing Salamanca's railroad history through historic artifacts, old photos, and engaging video presentations.

The Seneca Iroquois National Museum trends more toward the dry/educational end of the spectrum than the engaging/entertaining, but if you have a more-than-passive scholarly interest in Seneca history, ethnology, religion, art, handicrafts, traditional medicine, etc. etc. ad nauseam, this museum's vast collection covers all those topics exhaustively. A special emphasis is placed on the 1965 construction of the Kinzua Dam downriver in Pennsylvania (more on that later), a tragic chapter in Seneca history whereby 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) of tribal land, including some of the most fertile farmland and important cultural sites on the reservation, were condemned and are now under the water of the Allegheny Reservoir. Outdoors there's an amphitheater where traditional cultural performances of various types are hosted.