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Medina’s Heritage-
Two major resources of this area helped in creating the village on the path of the canal.
The water power furnished by the flow of the Oak Orchard Creek is the best between the Genesee and Niagara rivers. This great natural advantage was fully appreciated by the business men of the village by the amount of established mills, furnaces, and factories. Of scarcely less importance of the water power of Medina are its inexhaustible stone quarries, which have attracted attention abroad, and become a source of considerable wealth to the business interests of the village. It was the men who dug the canal who discovered the sandstone which was quarried and shipped all over the country. Because the sandstone was so near the surface and easy to mine, quarries sprang up along the canal and for about eighty years supported an industry that made the name Medina sandstone known in many lands. Medina rock can be found in the steps of the State Capitol at Albany, in the streets of Rochester, Cleveland, and Havana, Cuba, and was used in the construction of the Buckingham Palace. And most importantly everywhere in Medina you see the stone that made its name famous, from the City Hall to the sills of the business district. Arch Merrill, a Rochester journalist, once said, “Medina, child of the Clinton Ditch, is a house founded upon a rock.”
Medina is located on a bend in the canal that formed a natural basin or marina for boats on the canal to pull out of the flow of traffic. This bend is the halfway point of the canal between Buffalo and
Rochester. As a result of this, Medina developed as a weigh station for barges to collect needed supplies, and also a place for persons traveling along the canal to spend the night.
In 1832 the town of
Medina was incorporated into a village and both the canal and town began to flourish. In 1903 the State of New York decided to enlarge the canal.
Just on the East side of the bend was located one of the greatest engineering feats on the canal. It is here where the canal bridges the gorge where the Oak Orchard Creek flows by way of an aqueduct and an unusually long section of retaining wall.
The town of Medina continued to flourish until the Erie Canal ceased being the primary means of transportaion of goods across the state. The town did not fail however, and has continued to exist much the
same way it did at the beginning of the century. BACK
-text courtesy Kara Hartway
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