Upstate New York
Upstate New York is a geographic region of New York that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area of downstate New York.[1][2] Upstate includes the upper Hudson Valley, the Capital District, the Mohawk Valley region, Central New York, the Southern Tier, the Finger Lakes region, Western New York, and the North Country.[3][4] Major cities across upstate New York from east to west include the state capital of Albany, Utica, Binghamton, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.[4][5]
Before the European colonization of the United States, upstate New York was populated by several Native American tribes. It was home to the Iroquois Confederacy, an indigenous confederation of six tribes, known as the Six Nations.[6] Henry Hudson made the first recorded European exploration of the region in 1609,[7] and the Dutch erected Fort Orange (present-day Albany) in 1624, which was the first permanent European settlement in New York.[8][9][10] The region saw many battles during the American Revolutionary War, with the Iroquois split between supporters of the loyalists and supporters of the revolutionaries. After the war ended, the 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix kicked off a series of treaties and purchases that saw the Iroquois cede the vast majority of their land in upstate New York to the newly formed United States.[11]
The 1825 opening of the Erie Canal across upstate New York transformed the economy of the region and the state. The canal greatly eased the movement of goods from across the upper Midwest and the cities along the Great Lakes through upstate New York and to the port of New York City. As a result, upstate New York became a hotbed for manufacturing during the Second Industrial Revolution, giving birth to such firms as General Electric, IBM, Kodak, and Xerox. The rapid industrialization led to a large influx of immigrants seeking jobs at factories across the region. Since the mid-20th century, American deindustrialization has contributed to economic and population decline,[12][13] and the region is largely considered part of the Rust Belt.
There are a wide variety of land uses in the region, including urban, suburban, forested preserve, and rural landscapes. Due to its vast areas of rural land, upstate also supports a strong agricultural industry, and is notable for its dairy, maple syrup, and fruit production (especially apples), as well as winemaking.[14] Upstate New York includes a number of notable waterways, with the Susquehanna, Delaware, and Hudson Rivers all originating in the region, and is bordered on its northern and western edges by the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. As a result, the region is a significant source of hydroelectric power (going back to the creation of the world's first hydroelectric dam by Nikola Tesla at Niagara Falls) and drinking water (with multiple reservoirs serving New York City). Upstate New York is home to numerous popular tourist and recreational destinations, including Niagara Falls, the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains, the Thousand Islands, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Finger Lakes.
The other regions of New York are culturally and economically distinct from the New York City area and in many ways from each other. By area, most of New York is characterized by agricultural and forested rural communities, and by small and medium-sized cities and their surrounding suburbs located along major transportation corridors. The state's major metropolitan areas outside of New York City are Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany-Schenectady-Troy, each of whose population exceeds 500,000.
The different regions of New York are influenced by and have affinities with other adjacent regions. Western New York has cultural and economic ties to the other Great Lakes states as well as Southern Ontario and is effectively, along with Northwestern Pennsylvania, an eastward extension of Midwestern United States culture. The Capital District, the Hudson Valley, the Mohawk Valley and the Plattsburgh area have ties to New England. The North Country, the extreme northern portion of the state, also has strong cultural, economic, linguistic and familial ties to Quebec and Eastern Ontario. Thus, Plattsburgh has close ties to its neighbors in the Montreal area as well as Vermont. Much of New York receives television and radio broadcasts from Canada, and there are often other cross-border ties, both historical and familial. A similar relationship can be seen in northern New England.
Upstate New York from Western New York east to Utica is linguistically part of the Inland North region of American English dialectology, a region which includes Midwestern cities as far west as Chicago and Milwaukee. The Hudson and lower Mohawk Valley regions have more in common dialectologically with western New England and New York City.[99] The boundary between the use of the words pop and soda to refer to soft drinks falls farther west than the edge of the Inland North, running just to around the city of Rochester. Buffalo and areas west of Rochester use pop, like the rest of the Inland North to the west, whereas areas east of Rochester, like Syracuse and Binghamton, use soda, like New England and New York City. In Ithaca and Elmira, the border is less clear, with some people having grown up with pop and some with soda; however, current trends see Ithaca, at least, turning to mostly "soda".
Foodways indigenous to regions of upstate New York include:[100][101][102]
Although legends lay claim that the potato chip was invented in Saratoga Springs, it has achieved such universal popularity that it is no longer identified with the region. Winemaking is a growing industry in the Finger Lakes as well as in Chautauqua County, where Welch's operates one of the oldest extant grape juice factories in the United States. In the center of the Finger Lakes region, Ithaca is known for the Bo Burger, a cheeseburger with a fried egg on top.
Two of the most important rock festivals of the 20th century were held in upstate New York. In 1969 the Woodstock Festival was held in Bethel, New York, while in 1973 another multiday festival was held at the Watkins Glen International Raceway.
Some literary, documentary and cinematic depictions of upstate present a sense of small town, simple lifestyles, such as It's a Wonderful Life, set in a small upstate town (probably based on Seneca Falls) in the 1940s.
Major universities and colleges[edit]
Public[edit]
State University of New York (SUNY)