Little Valley (village), New York

The village's name is a relative comparison of two tributaries (the other being the neighboring Great Valley) of the Allegheny River.Prior to 1868, the village of Ellicottville was the county seat, but the presence of a railroad line in Little Valley prompted a move.The Little Valley post office is the only village structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Ira Joe Fisher, a daytime television personality and weather reporter, spent most of his childhood in Little Valley.[4] According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 1.0 square mile (2.6 km2), all land.[5] Little Valley Creek, a tributary of the Allegheny River, flows past the northeast side of the village.The Pat McGee Trail runs through Little Valley and has a major stop at a former rail depot (now a pavilion) in the village.It has historically hosted an annual "Freedom Daze" Fourth of July festival, horse shows and other miscellaneous events, and from 1997 to the late 2010s, operated as Little Valley Speedway, a motorsports stadium.Due to the hilly terrain, strong rooftop directional antennae are required to receive over-the-air television since the digital transition in 2009.W. R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co. was spun off from Cattaraugus in 1905, and that company remains in business, now based in Bradford, Pennsylvania.Three weekly newspapers have operated out of Little Valley; the first was the Cattaraugus Republican (founded 1867, originally based in Ellicottville, but later acquired by the Salamanca Press), the second was The Little Valley Hub (operated from 1881 to 1968), and the most recent was the County Chronicle, which printed from 1992 to 2007, with some of the earlier years being based in Salamanca.The Thunder folded in 2015; that year and the next, a slow-pitch softball team represented the village in a local league also based in Cattaraugus.Memorial Park encompasses a public swimming pool, a walking trail, beach volleyball court and Little League Baseball diamond.