Condemnation of Seneca land Construction of the dam condemned of the Allegany Reservation, nearly one third of its territory, which had been granted to the
Seneca nation in the
Treaty of Canandaigua, signed by
President Washington. That resulted in the loss of considerable fertile farmland and the displacement and forced relocation of 600 Seneca from their community within the reservation. In 1961, citing the immediate need for flood control, President
John F. Kennedy denied a request by the Seneca to halt construction. Following the relocation were major changes to the displaced persons' way of life. Until the mid-20th century, numerous Seneca tribe members, particularly those in the floodplain, had lived simply according to traditional ways, with no modern conveniences such as electricity. Two residential resettlement areas were constructed,
Jimersontown and an area south of
Steamburg, both of which included modern amenities. The forced modernization is one source of the still-simmering resentment that Seneca have toward the dam. In addition, the Seneca lost a 1964 appeal over the related relocation of a
four-lane highway through the remaining portion of the Allegany Reservation. That caused them to lose more land to the interstate, which divides the reservation territory. (The reservation was allowed to reclaim land around the old highway that the interstate replaced.) In Pennsylvania, the government also condemned most of the historic
Cornplanter Tract, a grant made by the state legislature to
Cornplanter after the Revolutionary War to him and his heirs "forever." The area included an historic cemetery containing the remains of Cornplanter and 300 descendants and followers, as well as a state memorial monument erected in 1866. The Seneca called the cemetery their "Arlington" in reference to the national cemetery near Washington, DC. Other remains were reinterred at a cemetery in Steamburg. Cornplanter's last direct male heir and great-great-great-grandson,
Jesse Cornplanter, an artist, had died without issue in 1957. By the 1960s, Cornplanter's indirect descendants had already moved to
Salamanca, New York, near the northern shore of the new Allegheny Reservoir.
Condemnation of Corydon, Kinzua, Quaker Bridge, and Red House The construction of the dam and the filling of the Allegheny Reservoir required the condemnation of several towns and communities in the reservoir's floodplain. Two townships,
Kinzua in Pennsylvania and
Elko (Quaker Bridge) in New York, dissolved their incorporations, while the Warren County portion of
Corydon was likewise subsumed. Others, such as the
McKean County portion of Corydon, Pennsylvania and
Onoville, New York, retained their government but lost much of their population when the cores of their communities were flooded. All residents were forced out by the government's use of
eminent domain and were required to relocate.
Red House, New York, was also indirectly affected by the changes. Although it was not directly flooded, the dam's first
stress test in 1967 submerged
New York State Route 17 west of Red House, and a new highway, the
Southern Tier Expressway, would have to be constructed. The path of the highway was run almost directly through Red House's population center, which combined with the dam and the expansion of Allegany State Park prompted the state and the Army Corps of Engineers to forcibly condemn most of the town. Some of the town's residents bought parcels in what was then the hamlet of Baystate, located in the town a mile south of the highway, and were able to thwart efforts to forcibly dissolve the town when Allegany State Park proposed to expand again in 1973. Red House (population 30 as of 2020) has maintained its incorporation, with a few remaining families still holding onto their properties. In preparation for the eviction, the Onoville, Quaker Bridge, and Red House post offices were closed in summer 1964, and as a result, the
ZIP codes for those towns were never officially used. To partially compensate for the loss of the communities, the government set aside 305 acres of land for Seneca resettlement upstream in two New York communities:
Steamburg (160 one-acre plots of land located south of the existing hamlet of the same name) and
Jimerson Town (145 one-acre plots of land located west of the city of
Salamanca, near the then-extant community of Shongo). Jimerson Town has become designated as one of the two capitals of the Seneca Nation. The dam project also forced the displacement of
Camp Olmsted, owned by the
Chief Cornplanter Council of the
Boy Scouts of America. The
campsite had been located on
bottomland along the Allegheny River, but the dam's construction forced it to be moved up the hillside. ==In other media==