Afton, New York

Afton is a small village in Chenango County with a name that traveled a long way to get here. When residents broke off from neighboring Bainbridge in eighteen fifty-seven and chose a new name, they reached all the way to Scotland, borrowing it from Afton Water, a small river in Ayrshire immortalized in a poem by Robert Burns. Afton grew as a rail stop in the later nineteenth century, and its Main Street still holds a handsome commercial block of Victorian brick, now a National Register historic district. The automobile era bypassed the village, freezing much of that Victorian brick streetscape in amber.