Pekin, Niagara County, New York

Pekin is perched on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment in Niagara County, NY. From here, you could:

• Jump in your car, if you've got a car and you can remember where you left the keys, and, in about 20 minutes or so, not counting key-searching time, drive into the City of Niagara Falls. You can't drive into the falls themselves, they've got that all fenced off. Just park near it and stroll about. There are stores and museums and you can even walk across the bridge to Canada, but you're there for the Falls, so go on over to Goat Island and get as close as you can get. In the summer the mist feels nice on your face, and in the winter the mist freezes on the trees so you feel like you're in a magic crystal forest.
• Hop on your bicycle and ride out to the community college for some formal education. Or maybe ride into the Tuscarora Indian Nation to see how native Americans live. If you're there during the annual Tuscarora picnic you'll get a load of the best picnic food you've ever had and, at night, you might catch a game of fireball. Just don't catch the fireball.
• Stroll out into the woods, close your eyes, listen, and get a feel for what it was like a few years ago when there were wolves and bears out here.
• Wait until dark, then go out and look north, out across Lake Ontario. If it's a clear night, you'll see the lights of Toronto on the horizon, far, far away. You'll also see, if you look up, the constellations wheeling around the North Star just like they've always done.
• Stay right where you are and relax. Aren't you tired of running around to relax when all you really need to do is stop running around?

Things are quiet in Pekin, but it wasn't always like this.

The train ran through here, ages ago, back when trains spat noise and smoke and cinders. But they rerouted the track through Sanborn, a couple miles up the road. Sanborn got the train, along with all the noise and the smoke and the cinders. The train still runs through there, and I suppose you might be able to hear it from Pekin at night if you've got good ears.

Another kind of train, the Underground Railroad, once ran through the heart of Pekin and made hardly any noise at all, except in the history books. That train has stopped running, too, but the people who rode it and the people who kept it running are honored on a monument at the station and, in one of the cemeteries here, on a monument to Pekin's Civil War dead.

That was long ago, and it's quiet here in Pekin. That's what makes it beautiful: it's far enough from everything you don't want and close enough to everything you need. Maybe you don't quite like the way things are going where you live now? Move out to Pekin and forget all that.

Downtown Pekin

Well, there is no town of Pekin, NY, strictly speaking, in that Pekin isn't incorporated, so there is no town to be up or down in. Pekin might better be referred to as a hamlet, or maybe just a crossroads. The center is where Route 429 (Lewiston-Cambria Town Line Road) cuts through the escarpment and under Upper Mountain Road. That's Pekin Cut.

Some places near the center of Pekin.

• Hope United Methodist Church
  One of a number of fine Methodist churches out this way.

2914 Upper Mountain Rd
(716) 731-9737


• Schimschacks Restaurant
  New York Yankees great Joe DiMaggio retired in 1951. By 1952, he was dating Marilyn Monroe, who was then just 26 and the biggest sex symbol in Hollywood. When Marilyn went to Niagara Falls that year to shoot Niagara, Joe followed her there. And while they were there, the famous couple would sneak away to Schimshacks for dinner. That's right, Joltin' Joe and Marilyn Monroe, back when they were still in love, eating quiet dinners in Pekin. (Did I tell you this was a speakeasy, too? But that's another story.)

2943 Upper Mountain Rd
(716) 731-4111


• Pekin Fire Company
  These people will help you out if your barbeque gets a little out of hand. They will help you eat it if you've made too much. You might want to join them, too, if you've ever seen yourself driving a fire truck or dressing up in rubber.

3024 Upper Mountain Rd
(716) 731-4777


• Former Root Home
  This house was a station on the Underground Railroad: Even though slavery was outlawed in the north of the United States, the Fugitive Slave Laws permitted slaveowners to capture escaped slaves as if they were recovering stolen property. This meant that an escaped slave wasn't safe anywhere in the US and had to hide in a series of safe houses ("stations") on the so-called "Underground Railroad" to Canada and freedom.
  As the web site stresses, this is a private home, so don't go tromping around their back yard without asking first.

3106 Upper Mountain Road


• St Andrew Lutheran Church
  If you're Lutheran, this is the place for you, and even if you're not, I think you'll like the people.

3229 Upper Mountain Rd
(716) 731-5863

North

That's down Pekin Hill. Town Line Road takes a long drop, then levels off and crosses Lower Mountain Road, and then takes another long drop before it levels off again and heads out to Ridge Road (Route 104). Don't go down there if the road's too icy, or you'll have to sleep at the Immaculate Conception Church at the bottom of the hill. In the summer, you can ride your bicycle down the hill so fast you'll get a permanent blown-back hair style, which you can marvel at as you ride back up the hill at about two miles an hour.

• Immaculate Conception Church.
  The Catholic church at the bottom of the hill.

4671 Town Line Road
(716) 731-4822

South

A couple of miles south on Town Line Road you'll find Sanborn, which has an actual post office. And more.

• Niagara County Community College

3111 Saunders Settlement Rd
(716) 731-6222


• Sanborn-Pekin Free Library
  The largest public collection of pornography in North America. No. No. No. A joke. This is the nicest, mildest library you will ever find. Drop in, get your card, and start catching up on everything you never had time to read. If you're after something they don't have, just let them know and they'll borrow it from another library for you.



• R L Treichler

East

No man's land? No, that's just the way to Lockport.

• Tuesday's Place (formerly Hillside Inn)



• Cambria Town Hall

West

Out toward and into the Tuscarora Nation.

• The Tuscarora Nation online!

Pekin in history:

• Read here to discover that Pekin is the birthplace of Free Methodism. (I've never done free meth myself.)

Also, there's a guestbook you could sign or read. Not that you should feel any pressure to do so, but there it is if you're the guestbook-signing type of person.