Pictured from left are Crystal Surdyk, Mayor Sam Teresi, Ashley Senske, Karen Livsey, Russell Diethrick Jr., Julia Ciesla-Hanley, and John Williams, city parks manager. P-J photo by Jay Young

Those enjoying the paths of the Greater Jamestown Riverwalk will now have plenty of new information to take in along the way, thanks to the newly-unveiled Riverwalk Kiosk Historic Photo Project.

Mayor Sam Teresi and new Jamestown city historian Ashley Senske gathered on Friday afternoon with other contributors to the project at the Brooklyn Square kiosk on North Main Street for an unveiling ceremony.

The new kiosks feature historical photographs and information on various important locations along the Riverwalk, giving visitors a chance to take a look back at Jamestown over the years.

“They pretty much tasked me with finding old historical photos of each area, and there are six kiosks placed along the Riverwalk,” Senske said. “Then writing just a little blurb about what someone who is standing here might have seen at the time. Most of the photos are of the late 1800s, I worked closely with the Fenton (History Center) getting a lot of my research, and a lot of the photos are from the Fenton or the (Chautauqua) County Historical Society.”

A full map of the Riverwalk can be found at jamestownny.net, which gives visitors a chance to plan their routes.

“You can click on the link for the map of the Greater Jamestown Riverwalk. You can use that on your smartphone, you can download and print it off in PDF form and basically have a map of the Riverwalk at your fingertips,” Teresi said. “The funding that we received once we restarted the program about 15-18 years ago, part of the notion was we wanted to create a connection with local history.”

The Riverwalk basically follows the path of the creation of the city, the founding, the development, the rebirth of the city. The idea came with these information kiosks to also include historical storyboards that basically tells the past story and gives you a glimpse of what use to be here before we were standing here.”

For Teresi, the unveiling served as a memorable conclusion on his final working day as mayor.

“This is very meaningful for me on my last working day in the office, that two of my favorite things come together. Local history and education and parks and recreation coming together in the same project here, so it is very meaningful to me,” he said.