The town is shedding the stigma of local governments that just pay the bills and stick with the minimum requirements, while it proactively takes measures to benefit its residents now and in the future.

The goal is to put together a comprehensive plan that the town could advertise as its mission so that grants will choose Persia. Along the way, the town portrayed the story the village of Gowanda, a major facet of Persia, and how the area transformed.

‘Juc Gowanda’

Travel into the village of Gowanda and no matter what road you take, there is a common trend: a downward slope. Indian Hill Road, Sandhill Road, Gowanda Zoar Road, Versailles Plank Road, and many others that all enter Gowanda and they all are hills diving down into the village.

Photo above courtesy of Gowanda Area Historical Society Gowanda's first fire department, pictured above in 1890, was located where its village municipal hall is today.

Thus, the origin of the name for Gowanda. According to the comprehensive plan committee, the village’s name comes from an early Native American description of the area, “Juc Gowanda.” The phrase means “a beautiful valley between the hills.” Juc was dropped and the village of Gowanda was formed in 1848.

The researched history in Gowanda still has its presence today. The first fire department, organized in 1884, was built downtown and moved back on its property. That building now is used by the Gowanda Ambulance Service behind the village municipal building at the bend of West Main Street and Buffalo Street.

In 1896, the Gaenslen, Fisher & Co. began the construction of a factory near the Cattaraugus Creek. In 1899, the Moench Tannery and Richard Wilhelm founded the Eastern Tanners Glue Factory in 1904. The currently unfinished historical report states that the building made “Gowanda the glue capital of the world in the 1930s.”

The factory was later named Peter Cooper Glue Factory, however, the factory later closed down. In 2016, Gateway Park to Zoar Valley now fills the land of the former glue factory on Palmer Street.

The history of Gowanda and Persia is needed for the comprehensive plan to be complete and the board is still putting the finishing touches on putting the past on paper.

Photos from Gowanda Area Historical Society Gowanda was known as the “glue capital of the world” as the pictured glue factory (left 1916) sat at the end of Palmer Street along the Cattaraugus Creek.

Looking ahead

In recent years, Persia has been going above and beyond the ‘small town, low budget’ bubble that plague many areas.

The business district in the village of Gowanda will soon have fiber optic wifi, but only in the town of Persia/Cattaraugus County side. The free internet could drive others to the businesses in the area and boost other’s experience of visiting the clusters of stores in downtown Gowanda.

The grant to pay the wireless internet is given by the Southern Tier West Regional Planning and Development Board.

“The whole area in downtown will be affected by it and I think it will help. I really do. Maybe more businesses will want to come here. You don’t know what will happen, but you have to do something so that people come,” Persia Town Supervisor Paula Schueler said. “That’s what we feel about (Gateway) Park that they put in, about the wifi, about the solar energy grant, everything. You have to try and change what you can and then maybe something will happen.”

The building was moved back and is now the current building for the Gowanda Ambulance Service.

Persia boasts that it had thriving times, however, those times were not in recent past. In the ’30s, due to the glue factory and other reasons, Gowanda was a booming place and “never felt the depression,” explained Schueler. But the slimming tax base, lack of activity and high taxes, have created depressions in Western New York economies.

Many, if not all, towns and villages are finding ways to be efficient, but not transferring funds for future benefit. In Persia, the town has already built electronic car chargers (EV charging stations) at the train station on the corner of Palmer and South Water streets, the wireless internet in the business district and the town received a grant of $50,000 to become more energy efficient – which will lower the overhead of running the town in the long run.

The comprehensive plan is not done, but looks to be finished by December, and yet the town and its officials are striving to improve and cut costs. In comparison, these changes simply aren’t something that many believe the town of Persia could do.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio approved the installation of LinkNYC in February 2017, which gives residents in many streets of New York City free wifi. Buffalo implemented free wifi in a program called Buffalo Connect in July 2015. Though there is a caveat of how much coverage those two cities span compared to the town of Persia, the intuitive act alone shows a down-the-line mindset with the citizen’s betterment in mind.

Despite the town’s early actions and many of whom that believe Persia can’t become a future site of prosperity, Schueler believes you’re wrong.

Photos from Gowanda Area Historical Society Gowanda was known as the “glue capital of the world” as the pictured glue factory (1948) sat at the end of Palmer Street along the Cattaraugus Creek.

“But we can, we can. We are going to do it,” Schueler said.

Email: Akuczkowski@observertoday.com

Twitter: @Kuczkowski95

Now the Persia Town Hall sits at the former bank.

Photo above courtesy of Gowanda Area Historical Society Bank of Gowanda is pictured above at the separation of Jamestown Street and West Main Street in 1914.