Allegany County is a county in the southern tier of the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 48,946. Its county seat is Belmont. Its name derives from a Delaware Indian (Lenape) word, applied by European-American settlers of Western New York State, to a trail that followed the Allegheny River and then used for the county.The county is bisected by the Genesee River, flowing north to its mouth on Lake Ontario. During the mid-nineteenth century, the Genesee Valley Canal was built to link southern markets to the Great Lakes and Mohawk River. The county was also served by railroads, which soon superseded the canals in their capacity for carrying freight. Part of the Oil Springs Reservation, controlled by the Seneca Nation, is located in the county.HistoryFor centuries, Allegany County was the territory of the Seneca people, at the westernmost nation of the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee, a confederacy of Iroquoian languages-speaking peoples. European-American permanent settlement did not take place until after the American Revolutionary War and the forced cession by the Seneca of most of their lands in western New York. New York State sold off the lands cheaply to attract new European-American settlers and agricultural development.
