Red House, New York
| Red House, New York | |
|---|---|
| Town | |
 Red House
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| Coordinates: 42°2′25″N 78°48′19″W / 42.04028°N 78.80528°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | New York |
| County | Cattaraugus |
| Government | |
| • Type | Town Council |
| • Town Supervisor | Tamara A. Booth (D, R) |
| • Town Council |
Members' List
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| Area | |
| • Total | 55.9 sq mi (144.7 km2) |
| • Land | 55.7 sq mi (144.2 km2) |
| • Water | 0.2 sq mi (0.5 km2) |
| Elevation | 2,215 ft (675 m) |
| Population (2010) | |
| • Total | 38 |
| • Density | 0.8/sq mi (0.3/km2) |
| Time zone | Eastern (EST) (UTC-5) |
| • Summer (DST) | EDT (UTC-4) |
| FIPS code | 36-60950 |
| GNIS feature ID | 0979412 |
| Website | redhouseny |
Red House (Seneca: joë'hesta) is a town in Cattaraugus County, New York, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 38, making it the least populous town in the state. The town is on the south edge of Cattaraugus County, south of the city of Salamanca.
The area that would become the town was first settled by outsiders after 1827. The town of Red House was formed in 1869 from part of the town of Salamanca. It was named for its famous landmark, the Red House, a Civil War-era domicile located at the confluence of a small creek (later named Red House Creek) with the Allegheny River. The house was remarkable for its strange, dark crimson coloring and was originally constructed as a resting house for those traveling along the river.
According to an Internet rumor, it was initially occupied by the Frecks family, local landowners of some repute (for whom the hamlet of Frecks is named), whose extended family was torn apart by the ravages of the Civil War, both emotionally and through the loss of several members. As the story goes, when eldest son Johnny Frecks died in the Civil War, his widow began an affair with the next-eldest, James (a relationship said to have been carried on while Johnny was fighting in the war). Exiled by the family for their relationship, the lovers killed themselves, and their ghosts were said to haunt the house for the rest of its existence. Family patriarch Jonathan Frecks II died shortly after of mysterious causes, after which the family donated a great deal of money to the town and promptly moved to another residence out of the area. Several attempts were made to inhabit the Red House, but no one stayed there for any serious length of time as it was reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of the Frecks family.
Locals have expressed skepticism that the Frecks story has any historical basis, and a 1965 description of Red House's name origin lists the original owner of the house as being "unknown." Of the numerous ghost stories that are reputed in Red House, the Frecks story is not one of them. The house was a restaurant and hotel in its last years and, like most others in the town, was demolished in the early 1990s.
Harvesting trees for lumber and other products was a major early industry. The town's population peaked in the 1890s, the only time the town ever had more than 1,000 residents, and declined near-continuously from that point onward. In the mid-20th century, Red House was also an early center of the region's ski country industry, with two ski areas, the state-operated Bova ski resort and jumps (named after the Beauvais family who donated the land for the purpose) that ran from the 1930s until 1980, and the privately operated Big Basin ski area, which operated from 1951 to 1972.
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