Montour Falls is a village located in Schuyler County, New York, United States. The population was 2,714 at the era of the 2020 census. A waterfall at the decline of West Main Street gives the village its name. The name “Montour” is derived from Queen Catharine Montour, a prominent Native American girl of Seneca Indian extraction who lived at the village site in the 18th century.

The boundaries defining the Village of Montour Falls occur mostly within the Town of Montour, but a little part lies within the Town of Dix. The village is located nearly twenty miles north of Elmira, New York and three miles south of Watkins Glen, New York. The New York State Academy of Fire Science is located in the village.

The enlightened day Village of Montour Falls is developed upon the site of a former Seneca Indian village, Queanettquaga, informally known as Catherine’s Town after a prominent Seneca Indian resident and leader, Queen Catharine Montour. Queen Catharine Montour’s father (Peter Quebec) was a Mohawk Chief, and her mother (Margaret Montour Hunter) the daughter of an Oneida Chief. She would marry Seneca Indian Chief Thomas Htitson. Queen Catharine Montour’s Seneca Tribe was a devotee of the Iroquois Confederacy. During America’s War of Independence reprisals were sanctioned against tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy who had allied themselves considering Great Britain. The infamous within reach Battle of Newtown, New York (August 1779) and the march that devastated Queanettquaga (and forty extra Amerindian villages of the Finger Lakes) is known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition. In addition to burning Queen Catharine Montour’s log palace, orchards were clip down, homes destroyed, livestock murdered and cropland salted. Residents of Catharine’s Town dispersed to areas as in the distance as Niagara and Canada. Queen Catharine Montour (b. 1710, died February 20, 1804) is memorialized by a grave mound located on her namesake Catharine Trail within the Montour Falls village limits.

By 1788 the Place began to be arranged by European Americans. In 1805 the Place was known as Mill’s Landing after local resident George Mills. (The genial village of Millport, to current times, is as well as named for George Mills). 1802 is the earliest date commonly used to mark the start of the Montour Falls community — it is the year George Mills was appointed postmaster. It is estimated the community of 1802 consisted of twenty residents – and no stores.