We were looking back at an issue of the Olean Times Herald from 10 years ago this week when we ran across an item about Olean’s lost Kittanning Avenue.

Wait. What?

Indeed, South Union Street beyond the bridge over the Allegheny River (Route 16 South) was once called Kittanning Avenue. A decade ago, local historian Dave Deckman offered up a clipping from the former Olean Evening Herald that provides the story.

The headline and subheadline of the article, printed in the June 10, 1931, Herald, read: “Kittanning Avenue Name Lost By Unknown Means: Just How Olean’s One Truly Historical Street Was Ever Changed to South Union Street Is Mystery.”

Local resident Katherine E. Bradley had submitted a letter to the paper, explaining that the portion of the road south of the bridge was named Kittanning Avenue, and that the name served as one of Olean’s few links to wartime activities during the Revolutionary War. Continental soldiers had built a road north from their Kittanning, Pa., outpost to what is now Olean, in part to possibly create a road link to American Gen. John Sullivan’s expedition in the summer-fall of 1779 against Iroquois nations that were aligned with the British.

The Sullivan expedition, which approached Iroquois lands up the Susquehanna River Valley to the east in New York, resulted in the destruction of several villages and, worse for the Iroquois, much of the summer’s crops that would sustain the tribes in the coming winter.

The Herald article makes it clear that some were unhappy with the apparent erasure of part of Olean’s history, perhaps for the sake of clerkly order in City Hall. After all, a linear thoroughfare that has a name change might, if nothing else, be considered confusing. It also might be considered irregular to someone less concerned with historical significance.

The Herald article reads: “A letter received at The Herald office today calls attention to the fact that Olean has lost her only truly historical street name, through the efforts of someone to make the maps conform to his personal idea of fitness.

“Kittanning Avenue has evidently ceased to be. That portion of the highway in South Olean leading from the river bridge to the city line was formerly so designated even on recent maps. Lately, however, it has become customary to refer to the street as South Union Street. It is so marked and the name ‘Kittanning Avenue’ has disappeared from the Olean directory. It could not be learned today if the name was officially changed by the Common Council.”

In her letter, Bradley noted that she had discussed “the old Kittanning Road” with E. Morse, the former park commissioner of Olean, and they had “agreed that Olean is fortunate in having been the northern terminal of this historic highway which was built by Revolutionary soldiers.”

The Herald article reads: “The Olean-Rock City highway always has been known as the Kittanning Road — when it was not called the Wildcat Road — but few have been aware of the reason.

“Union Street proper, as laid out originally on the Gosselin map, ended at the Allegheny River, which was the southern boundary of the Village, and later the City, of Olean.”