Erwin and Painted Post

Erwin and Painted Post are home to major facilities of Corning, Inc., formerly known as Corning Glass Works, a company that made a powerful impact on Erwin’s history. In Erwin, folks poured steel, tried out the exotic 1920s military vehicle seen on the cover, and attended family Christmas parties at Ingersoll-Rand. Many of these photographs come from before those high-tech and heavy-industry days, when men rafted lumber down to Gang Mills and farmers relied on equipment that required more horses than men. Over 200 years, Painted Post folks erected four figures of Native Americans. They all still exist and are captured in images here, as are Painted Post High School, the Townsend’s Grove Post Office, the Erwin family’s fine homes, and life in Cooper’s Plains, both then and now. A century and a half of railroading and a century of floods—including the catastrophic Hurricane Agnes in 1972—have altered the landscape. Images of Colonial Days, drill teams, old-time grocery stores, Costa’s Field, and even the Civilian Conservation Corps recall a bygone time in local history.