Painted Post: A Name from the Seneca Trail
Near Watkins Glen, New York
The village of Painted Post takes its name from something that once stood at the confluence of the Chemung, Tioga, and Cohocton Rivers: a wooden post that marked a crossing of major Seneca trails. The Seneca word for the place meant simply 'land of the post.'
Early settlers found the post already there and painted it, adding color to what was likely a plain trail marker, though one origin story holds it was a burial marker for a Seneca chief named Captain Montour, placed above his grave around seventeen seventy-nine. The original post rotted at its base and was gone by about eighteen ten, and one account blames a flood. A replica stands in the village today.
Painted Post was incorporated in eighteen sixty and grew as a rail junction. The old trail crossing that gave it its name is now one of the busier highway interchanges in the Southern Tier.
