The region around Auburn had been Haudenosaunee territory for centuries before European contact and historical records.

[5] According to historian Robin Bernstein, the Sullivan Campaign and its soldiers destroyed "at least forty Native communities.

[7] Hardenbergh settled in the vicinity of the Owasco River on Military Tract 47 with his infant daughter and two enslaved African-Americans, Harry and Kate Freeman.

[9] Originally known as Hardenbergh's Corners in the town of Aurelius, the settlement was renamed Auburn in 1805 when it became the county seat.

It was only a few miles from the Erie Canal, which opened in 1825 and allowed local factories to inexpensively ship goods north or south.

The only building from the Auburn Theological Seminary that stands today is Willard Memorial Chapel and the adjacent Welch Memorial Hall on Nelson Street, designed by Andrew Jackson Warner of Rochester, with stained-glass windows and interior decoration by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

A dam, owned and operated by the city, controls the outflow of the lake, which is used for drinking water and recreation.

The city is required to keep a sufficient amount of water in the river to deal with the effluent from its waste disposal treatment facility.

The race begins and ends in the area of Owasco Lake on the southern outskirts of Auburn.

A morning paper, published seven days a week, it has a circulation of 10,000 for the daily and Saturday editions, and 12,000 on Sunday.

Possibly the two best-known historical figures associated with Auburn are Harriet Tubman and William H. Seward.

Seward, who served as a New York state senator, the governor of New York, a U.S. senator, a presidential candidate, and then Secretary of State under presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, in which role he negotiated the 1867 purchase from Russia of Alaska, which became known as "Seward's Folly" – lived in Auburn from 1823 until his death in 1872, and was opposed to slavery.

In the 1850s, the Seward family opened their Auburn home as a safehouse to fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad.

In 1859 Seward sold a plot of land to abolitionist Tubman, who used it to create a safe haven for her family and friends and other black Americans seeking a better life in the north.

A number of properties in Auburn are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Auburn Button Works and Logan Silk Mills, the Belt-Gaskin House, Case Memorial-Seymour Library, the Cayuga County Courthouse and Clerk's Office, the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, William and Mary Hosmer House, St. Peter's Episcopal Church Complex, Sand Beach Church, Schines Auburn Theatre, Thompson AME Zion Church, Harriet Tubman Grave, Harriet Tubman House, the Old Post Office and Courthouse, Fort Hill Cemetery, Wall Street Methodist Episcopal Church, and Dr. Sylvester Willard Mansion.

The center guides visitors to the variety of historical sites in the region connected to the struggle for equal rights.