Salamanca: The City on Seneca Land

Salamanca is one of the most legally unusual cities in the United States. It sits almost entirely within the Allegany Reservation of the Seneca Nation, and the Seneca Nation owns the land beneath it.

The city grew up around railroad lines in the eighteen sixties and was renamed for a Spanish marquis who financed one of the rail lines. Residents and businesses built homes and storefronts on Seneca land under a ninety-nine-year lease that dated to eighteen ninety-two, with some rents set as low as one dollar a year. When that lease expired in February of nineteen ninety-one, the Seneca renegotiated from a position of genuine sovereignty, securing fair market rents and sixty million dollars in back compensation.

Salamanca remains one of the few American cities sitting almost entirely on Native American reservation land.