Allegheny River
— — a river that crosses a state line twice.
Not only on a wall.
“A river that doubles back. The Allegheny rises in Potter County, Pennsylvania, climbs north into Allegany County, New York, swings west through Olean and Salamanca, then turns south again toward Pittsburgh. About five hundred and twenty kilometres of slow water through hardwood ridges. The New York reach runs along the quiet edge of Allegany State Park.
Allegheny River, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Allegheny rises in Potter County, Pennsylvania, flows north into Allegany County, New York, and runs west through Olean and Salamanca before crossing back into Pennsylvania. The river is roughly five hundred and twenty kilometres long and joins the Monongahela at Pittsburgh to form the Ohio. The New York reach is followed by Route 17 and the Southern Tier Expressway, and runs along the northern edge of Allegany State Park, the largest state park in New York at around twenty-seven thousand hectares of hardwood ridges and stream valleys.
The upper Allegheny is a cool, clean stream by the time it crosses into New York, classed as a wild trout fishery in several reaches above Olean. The Kinzua Dam, completed in 1965 just downstream in Pennsylvania, impounds the river into Allegheny Reservoir, which backs up across the state line into the Seneca Nation's Allegany Reservation. Smallmouth bass, walleye, and muskellunge take over below the dam. Canoe and drift-boat traffic is steady from May through October when water levels and weather hold.
Spring flow runs high from snowmelt through April; the river usually drops into prime canoe levels by mid-May. Summer is slow water, warm afternoons, and shaded riffles where smallmouth bass hold beneath the sycamores. The Southern Tier turns hard in October. Sugar maple and yellow birch in the Allegany hills hit colour around the second week, with leaf-drop by early November. Winters freeze the slack water above Kinzua; spring ice-out brings walleye runs into the tributary creeks each year.