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It is formed near Painted Post in Steuben County, just west of Corning by the confluence of the Tioga River Cohocton rivers. It flows generally ESE through Corning, Big Flats , Elmira, and Waverly. It crosses briefly into northern Pennsylvania before joining the Susquehanna approximately 2 mi (3.2 km) south of Sayre.
The name of the river comes from an Iroquois languageThe Iroquois Confederacy is a group of First Nations/ Native Americans. Based in upstate New York at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, they now occupy territory in Ontario, Quebec, and New York. The spiritual union of the nations began before Euro word meaning "big horn" or "horn-in-the-water", possibly dating from the discovery of large mammothA mammoth is any of a number of an extinct genus of elephant, often with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They inhabited the northern regions of the world, in Europe, northern Asia, and North America. Many types of mamm tusks in the river bed. The LenapeThe Lenape or Lenni-Lenape (later named Delaware Indians by Europeans) were, in the 1600s, loosely organized bands of Native American people practicing small-scale agriculture to augment a largely mobile hunter-gatherer society in the region around the De called the river cononogue, which had a similar meaning.
In the colonial times the river valley was a major trade route through the hill country of western New York, first for the Iroquois and other Native Americans, and later for the EuropeFor the band of the same name, see Europe (band . Europe is a continent forming the westermost part of the Eurasian supercontinent. Europe is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the west by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Mediterranean Sean settlers.
In 1779Events The Iron Bridge is completed across the Severn river in Shropshire; the first all cast-iron bridge ever constructed. Boulton and Watt's Smethwick Engine, now the oldest working engine in the world, is brought into service. The city of Tampere is fo during the American Revolutionary War, Americans troops of the Sullivan Expedition defeated a combined force of Iroquois, their allies, Tories and British at the Battle of Newtown along the river southeast of Elmira. The victory opened the way for Sullivan to systematically destroy the Native American homeland of central and western New York.
The construction of the Chemung Canal in 1833 between the Chemung and the southern end of Seneca Lake allowed the shipment Pennsylvania anthracite coal, lumber and agricultural products to Erie Canal system, leading the growth of Elmira as a regional center of manufacturing. The canals were rendered obsolete by the coming of the railroads in the late 1840s and 1850s. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company , an early supermarket chain that has since been mostly disbanded, was later founded in Elmira. The community of Corning is renowned as the site of the Corning Glass Company .
In the later 20th century the valley, along with the rest of the Rust Belt, suffered economic decline with decline of manufacturing. Although the river is no longer used for transportation, it has become a popular destination for recreational canoeing and fly fishing, in particular for smallmouth and largemouth bass, trout, rock bass , sunfish, bluegill, and carp.
New York State Highway 17 follows the valley of the river for much of its course.The river has been subjected to periodic heavy flooding throughout its recorded history. In June 1972 the remnants of Hurricane Agnes stalled over the New York-Pennsylvania border, dropping up to 20 inches (50 cm) of rain into the Chemung Valley, which was among the worst hit areas by the resultant flooding. The flooding left widespread areas of the communities of Corning, Big Flats, and Elmira under water and destroyed many bridges.