Elmira

Southern Tier river city where Mark Twain spent summers writing some of his best-known books.

Elmira sits in the Southern Tier of New York State, along the Chemung River in the Finger Lakes region. It is best known as the place where Mark Twain spent his summers for over twenty years, writing many of his most famous works -- including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- in an octagonal study on the Elmira College campus.

Beyond its literary connections, Elmira has one of the largest concentrations of Victorian domestic architecture in New York State. The Near Westside Historic District covers 22 blocks of Federal, Italianate, Gothic Revival, Second Empire, and Queen Anne homes, many beautifully restored. It is a genuinely impressive neighbourhood to walk through.

Elmira is not a tourist town, and that is part of its appeal. The Mark Twain sites are well maintained but uncrowded -- you can visit his study and his grave at Woodlawn Cemetery on the same afternoon without rushing. The Arnot Art Museum downtown is a pleasant surprise, with a solid collection of European old masters in a nineteenth-century mansion. The local restaurants are unpretentious, and the surrounding Finger Lakes countryside is lovely.

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Eating Out

Elmira is not a food destination, but it has a handful of long-standing local favourites worth knowing about. The cuisine is straightforward American comfort food.

M & M Red Hots on Baldwin Street is an Elmira institution, famous for their hot dogs with a rich house-made meat sauce. Regulars buy pints of the sauce to take home. The cheese dogs are particularly good -- they warm the cheese on the grill before adding it to the dog. Note that they are only open Monday through Friday.

Pudgie's Pizza has several locations around town and is a local chain founded in Elmira. The pizza has a distinctive thick crust and a well-spiced sauce. They also do decent Italian subs.

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Getting There

Elmira is served by the Elmira/Corning Regional Airport (ELM), a small airport about 12 miles west of downtown with connecting flights via Philadelphia and Washington Dulles on American Eagle and United Express. If you are flying from elsewhere in the country, you will likely connect through one of these hubs.

By road, Elmira sits at the intersection of Route 17 (the Southern Tier Expressway) and Route 15, roughly two hours south of Syracuse and three hours from New York City or Buffalo. The drive through the Finger Lakes and the Southern Tier is pleasant.

Greyhound and Trailways serve Elmira with bus connections to New York City, Binghamton, and other regional centres. The bus station is downtown near the Clemens Center.

There is no Amtrak service directly to Elmira. The nearest Amtrak stations are in Binghamton (40 miles east) or Ithaca (30 miles north, with a stop at the Cornell University area), both of which connect to the main Northeast Corridor.

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Things to Do

Elmira's main attractions centre on Mark Twain, who married Olivia Langdon of Elmira in 1870 and spent summers here for over two decades. The city also has a remarkably intact Victorian residential district worth exploring on foot.