Of all the interesting and strange place names around Western New York, it might be the one you’d guess was made up – or at least not official.
But there’s a part of eastern Lancaster which was officially Looneyville for about 60 years.
The hamlet, which boasted both a train stop and a post office, was named after Robert Looney. He was a lumberman who operated sawmills on his vast swaths of property along the Lancaster/Alden border starting in 1852.
He had a barrel factory there and a stove business as well. He had hoped to develop Looneyville into a village, having built a school, a general store, and a tavern, but after his early death, the village never materialized.
Around the turn of the century, people grew weary of the name, and the only place it officially survived was on the post office, which first opened under the name Looneyville in 1855.
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Postmaster Ely Snyder, who was born in a log cabin in Looneyville in 1854, was the man who spearheaded efforts to have his hometown post office renamed Dellwood in 1908.
In 1919, the Dellwood, formerly Looneyville, post office was absorbed into the Alden post office.
The line that runs through Looneyville on the map was the New York Central Railroad. It is now the Lancaster Heritage Trail.