Little York Lake Dwyer Park Vintage Bear Circus Train Car Editorial Photo

Little York is a deep lake located in South Eastern Fingerlakes in Cortland County near the Hamlet of Preble. It offers a diverse fishery with its deep cool water and plentiful shallow warmer water areas and has a two-story fishery with both cold and warm water gamefish present. Beginning in the 1890s, the lake became a source for the big business of harvesting and selling ice. Other legends surrounded the lake in later years, including the existence of a medicinal spring as well as tales of the ruins of an ancient civilization at the bottom of the lake. The Haudenosaunee who it is said had a legend about the nearby Mt. Onagarechny Mt. Toppin as the location where pumpkins, corn, and tobacco first grew and were discovered. The park with its magnificent pavilion was originally owned and operated by the Cortland County Traction Company which also ran the trolleys. The pavilion was planned and built in 1906. The pavilion is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and after over one hundred years is still used as the summer theater for Cortland Repertory Theatre.