History of Syracuse, New York

French missionaries were the first Europeans to come to this area, arriving to work with and convert the Native Americans in the mid-17th century.

The mission was short-lived, as the Mohawk Nation hinted to the Onondaga that they should sever their ties with the French or suffer a horrible fate.

Ephraim Webster left the Continental Army to settle there in 1784 along with Asa Danforth, another Revolutionary War hero.

Brine from wells that tapped into halite (common salt) beds in the Salina shale near Tully, New York, 15 miles south of the city, were developed in the 19th century.

It is the north-flowing brine from Tully that is the source of salt for the "salty springs" found along the shoreline of Onondaga lake.

In 1861, he developed the ammonia-soda process for the manufacture of soda ash (anhydrous sodium carbonate—a rare chemical called natrite, to distinguish it from natural natron of antiquity) The process used sodium chloride (from brine wells dug in the southern end of the Tully valley) and limestone (as a source of calcium carbonate).

Since the discovery of large deposits of trona (natural sodium carbonate) in 1938 near Green River in Wyoming, the Solvay process became uneconomical.

[4] Syracuse became an active center of the abolitionist movement, due in large part to the influence of Gerrit Smith and a group allied with him.

They were mostly associated with the Unitarian Church and their pastor (the Reverend Samuel May) in Syracuse, as well as with Quakers in nearby Skaneateles.

[8] Syracuse was known as the "great central depot on the Underground Railroad" prior to the Civil War, due to the work of Jermain Wesley Loguen and others in defying federal law, .

In the aftermath, the Congregationalist minister Samuel Ringgold Ward had to flee to Canada to escape persecution because of his participation.

Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s numerous businesses and stores were established, including the Franklin Automobile Company (which produced the first air-cooled engine in the world),[9] the Century Motor Vehicle Company and the Craftsman Workshops, the center of Gustav Stickley's handmade furniture empire.

World War II sparked significant expansion in the area in the specialty steel, fasteners, custom machining industries.

However, these new Syracusans could not make up for the flow of residents out of Syracuse, either to its suburbs or out of state, owing to job loss.

Much of the city fabric changed after World War II, although Pioneer Homes, one of the earliest government housing projects in the US, had been completed in 1941.

The federal Urban Renewal program cleared large sectors which remained undeveloped for many decades, although several new museums and government buildings were built.