New York State has always been a gateway for immigrants, but the Erie Canal carried more westbound immigrants than any other trans-Appalachian canal. These new Americans brought different languages, customs, practices, and religions. [Read more…] about Martin’s Journey, Erie Canal at the Seneca River, 1848
Finger Lakes
Fall Bird Migration is Underway
Each fall, migrating birds can be seen flying south to their wintering grounds.
This is the ideal time of year for New York residents and visitors to head to Bird Conservation Areas across the state for great bird watching opportunities. [Read more…] about Fall Bird Migration is Underway
The Sewards of New York: A New Biography
The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family (Three Hills – Cornell University Press, 2025) by Thomas P. Slaughter shines a light on one of the most important and fascinating political families of the nineteenth century.
Through recently discovered family correspondence, Slaughter unveils the inner lives of the Seward family, tracing their joys and sorrows as the nation grappled with rapid expansion and deepening divisions on its path to the Civil War. [Read more…] about The Sewards of New York: A New Biography
Drought Watch Issued for 20 New York Counties
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has issued a Drought Watch for 20 New York counties because of a shortage of rainfall and declining levels of stream-flow and ground water. [Read more…] about Drought Watch Issued for 20 New York Counties
The Discovery of Rock Salt in New York: Some History
Before the creation of shaft salt mines, the production of salt in New York State required the evaporation of salt brine extracted from salt springs and wells – first by applying heat and later with large solar evaporators.
In the mid-19th century it had been thought by New York geologists that the Onondaga salt springs, known since the mid-1600s, must be supplied from the leaching of beds of rock-salt, and for a time efforts were made to find it in the immediate vicinity of Onondaga Lake. The various borings made on the State’s Onondaga Salt Springs Reservation [see map] in the 1820s and 1830s however showed conclusively that no rock salt was there. [Read more…] about The Discovery of Rock Salt in New York: Some History
New York State Birding Trail Adds 12 Locations
Twelve new locations have been added to the New York State Birding Trail. The new additions, in Central New York and Hudson River Valley, provide affordable opportunities for quality birding experiences.
The new additions provide a diversity of habitats that include forests, meadows, vernal pools, streams, and peat bogs. Although habitats vary across the locations, these sites offer great opportunities to observe seasonal migrating birds such as woodland warblers and flycatchers. [Read more…] about New York State Birding Trail Adds 12 Locations
Drilling For Salt: Salt Springs & New York’s Salt Industry Origins
As the presence of salt in New York was first made manifest through saline mineral springs it is proper to begin this discussion with the history of their discovery and utilization. The most important of these are in Onondaga County at Syracuse.
About the middle of the seventeenth century several of the Jesuit missionaries during their journeys among the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), in what is now the State of New York, heard local salt springs and related these experiences in the Relations of the Jesuit fathers. [Read more…] about Drilling For Salt: Salt Springs & New York’s Salt Industry Origins
The Cherry Valley & Great Western Turnpike: A Short History
In the early 1700s the Mohawk Turnpike and the Seneca Turnpike were improved from the rougher Indigenous trails whose routes they utilized into regular, if rough, wagon roads. But it wasn’t until the 1790s that New York State’s turnpike era took off.
This was good news to migrants and local travelers alike, as deep ruts along the former “Indian trails” made transportation impractical and slow. It took days just to go a few miles and the limited number of ferries, bridges and fords often caused wagons to go miles out of their way to get around a lake, river, or creek. [Read more…] about The Cherry Valley & Great Western Turnpike: A Short History
State Parks Announces 20 Nominations for State and National Registers of Historic Places
The Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks) has announced the most recent recommendations by the New York State Board for Historic Preservation to add 20 properties and districts to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.
The nominations include John Steinbeck’s writing cottage in Sag Harbor; Cluett, Peabody buildings in Troy; Lake George’s Mohican Point; a small surviving commercial historic district on Seneca Street in Buffalo; the architecturally significant post Vatican II St. Peter’s Church in Manhattan; the home of prominent Black community leaders George and Theodora Bragg in Elmira; as well as additional documentation of LGBT history for the Louis N. Jaffe Art Theater Building in New York City. [Read more…] about State Parks Announces 20 Nominations for State and National Registers of Historic Places
University Suburb, Founding the Village of Cayuga Heights in Ithaca
Early in the twentieth century, two Cornell University alumni created a suburb adjacent to the campus of their alma mater in Ithaca, NY, “far above Cayuga’s waters” in the Finger Lakes. Named Cayuga Heights at the suggestion of one of their workmen, a handful of professors turned what would otherwise have been just another faculty enclave in an American college town into an incorporated municipality that has thrived ever since.
Local historian Beatrice Szekely tells this origin story in University Suburb, Founding the Village of Cayuga Heights in Ithaca, New York, which she published in 2024. [Read more…] about University Suburb, Founding the Village of Cayuga Heights in Ithaca
Major NYSCA Grant Advances Finger Lakes Museum Construction
The Finger Lakes Museum (FLM) n the north end of Keuka Lake has announce a grant award totaling $1.8 million from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to support the organization’s continued construction of the main exhibition hall. [Read more…] about Major NYSCA Grant Advances Finger Lakes Museum Construction
A New Lakeshore Park for the Village of Aurora
The Finger Lakes Land Trust (FLLT) and the Village of Aurora, NY announced the future creation of a new park featuring 1,100 feet of Cayuga Lake shoreline along with four acres of adjacent upland. Previously part of the now closed Wells College, this land was acquired by FLLT member Grace Bates with the intent of creating the park for public enjoyment. [Read more…] about A New Lakeshore Park for the Village of Aurora
Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-fashion Icon
Those who recognize the name Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894) usually do so because of bloomers, the clothing item named after her.
While she was a rational dress advocate for a time — calling on women to abandon rigid corsets and heavy petticoats and opt for long trousers, shorter skirts, and sensible boots — it was “but an incident” in the larger story of her life and impact.
Bloomer edited and published The Lily, one of the first newspapers for and by women. Founded to promote temperance, it soon broadened to include some of the most important issues to women in that day, including the right to vote, and included contributions from thinkers like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. [Read more…] about Amelia Bloomer: Journalist, Suffragist, Anti-fashion Icon
Birthplace of Sound Film Re-Opening for Public Tours
While attending Yale University, Theodore (Ted) Case explored his love of science through the transmission of light and the reproduction of sound, developing a method of photographing sound waves which he referred to as a “lightograph.”
Upon his return to Auburn, NY, Case would establish laboratories in the basements of the family homes on Genesee Street and Casowasco on the shores of Owasco Lake. When his father inherited the Willard Mansion, the two restructured one of the greenhouses on the property into a working laboratory: The Case Research Laboratory. [Read more…] about Birthplace of Sound Film Re-Opening for Public Tours
Barton Hall, Cornell ’77: A Legendary Grateful Dead Show
It was 46 years ago this week that one of the most notable Grateful Dead shows ever was performed at Barton Hall at Cornell University on May 8, 1977. One of the most revered and traded shows in the band’s history, the Barton Hall show is a thing of legend, a perfect way to introduce new fans to the band and a performance for the ages with stand out versions of numerous Dead songs.
The band played its first of three shows at Cornell (1977, 1980, and 1981) on May 8, 1977, and were booked by the Cornell Concert Commission after some troubles with booking live acts in the years prior. [Read more…] about Barton Hall, Cornell ’77: A Legendary Grateful Dead Show
Pricing the Land: The Buying and Selling of Frontier New York
Pricing the Land: The Buying and Selling of Frontier New York and Cayuga Reservation (Cornell University Press, 2024) reconstructs the complicated history of buying and selling land along the New York frontier after the American Revolution.
Scott W. Anderson focuses on the prices bid for lots in Central New York that had been set aside for veterans of the war (the New Military Tract) and within the Cayuga Reservation created by treaty in 1789, comprising a hundred square miles of land on both shores of the northern end of Cayuga Lake. [Read more…] about Pricing the Land: The Buying and Selling of Frontier New York
The Great Seneca Turnpike
Today’s State Route 5 crosses New York State from Buffalo to Albany and parallels state Route 20 and the New York State Thruway. The part of Route 5 between Utica and Canandaigua in Ontario County, some 105 miles, is still called the Seneca Turnpike.
Originally a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) path, the route has been referred to in various accounts as the Great Genesee Road, the Great Genesee Trail, the Genesee Turnpike, the Great Seneca Turnpike or Seneca Road. Previously it had been known as the part of the Great Indian Trail or Iroquois Trail. [Read more…] about The Great Seneca Turnpike
Upstate New York Museum Community Grant Losses: A List
From Reddit user Stoic Eeyore comes the following list of known Trump regime impacts on Upstate New York State museum and nonprofits in the cultural sector:
Several institutions have lost Save America’s Treasures grants, designed to conserve important museum items. The Greater Hudson Heritage Network (GHHN) received $269,038.00 from Save America’s Treasures in August, to conserve objects from 10 small and mid- size museums in New York State. [Read more…] about Upstate New York Museum Community Grant Losses: A List
Featured Outdoor Escape: Pharsalia Wildlife Management Area
Located in the northwest portion of Chenango County and about 10 miles southwest of Sherburne is Pharsalia Wildlife Management Area (WMA). Pharsalia is also the fifth highest elevation spot in the state and a designated Audubon Important Bird Area. [Read more…] about Featured Outdoor Escape: Pharsalia Wildlife Management Area
The John McGraw Game: ‘Greatest Sporting Event in the History of Cortland County’
The John J. McGraw Monument in Truxton, New York is a nice sculpture, dignified and uncomplicated.
Yet it captures a great deal of what might be described as the essence of baseball, with the man himself portrayed in bas-relief on a truncated obelisk wearing his New York Giants pinstriped flannels and cap. [Read more…] about The John McGraw Game: ‘Greatest Sporting Event in the History of Cortland County’