During the American Revolutionary War, four of the then six Iroquois nations helped the British attempt to crush the revolution, although bands made decisions on fighting in a highly decentralized way.

[7] That same year Abraham Bloodgood of Albany obtained a patent from the state for 1,400 acres, which included all of the present downtown west of Tioga Street.

It was originally granted to a member of the state militia, Martinus Zielie, as a bounty under a different law for recruiting men to enlist in the Continental Army.

Simeon commissioned his first cousin, Moses De Witt, after whom DeWitt, New York, is named, to survey the area around the south end of Cayuga Lake.

In 1834, the Ithaca and Owego Railroad's first horse drawn train began service,[8] connecting traffic on the east–west Erie Canal, which was completed in 1825, with the Susquehanna River to the south to expand the trade network.

In the decade following the American Civil War, railroads were built from Ithaca to Auburn, Geneva, Cayuga, Cortland, Elmira, and Athens, Pennsylvania, mainly with financing from Ezra Cornell.

In 1892, when the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based Lehigh Valley Railroad built its main, double-track freight line from Van Etten Junction to Geneva and on to Buffalo, New York, it bypassed Ithaca and Auburn to the west, running via Burdett and eastern Schuyler County on easier grades, just as the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad had done a decade earlier, in 1882, with its own, new Binghamton-Buffalo mainline extension to the south and west, via Owego, Waverly, Bath, and Dansville.

On May 25, 1959, the overnight "Maple Leaf" train was shifted back to the Ithaca Branch from the main line via Burdett, and operated on this route until the Lehigh Valley Railroad discontinued this last passenger service on February 4, 1961.

The original factory was located in the Fall Creek neighborhood of the city, on a slope later known as Gun Hill, where the nearby waterfall supplied the main source of energy for the plant.

The largest industrial company in the area was Morse Chain, elements of which were absorbed into Emerson Power Transmission on South Hill and Borg Warner Automotive in Lansing, New York.

After World War II, the Langmuir Research Labs of General Electric developed as a major employer; the defense industry continued to expand.

The former Morse Chain company factory on South Hill, now owned by Emerson Power Transmission, was the site of extensive groundwater and soil contamination from its industrial operations.

[27] Emerson Power Transmission has been working with the state and South Hill residents to determine the extent and danger of the contamination and aid in cleanup.

[31] Kuehl had collaborated with fellow students Alderperson Tiffany Kumar and Alderperson-elect Clyde Lederman and canvassed for several months but did not publicly express his intent to run for the seat until the evening of election day.

Winter is typically characterized by freezing temperatures, cloudy skies and light-to-moderate snows, with some heavier falls; the largest snowfall in one day was 26.0 in (66 cm) on February 14, 1914.

The phenomenon of mixed precipitation (rain, wind, and snow), common in the late fall and early spring, is known tongue-in-cheek as ithacation to many of the local residents.

In 2004, Gayraud Townsend, a 20-year-old senior in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, was sworn in as alderman of the city council, representing the fourth Ward.

[53] This contrasts with the more conservative leanings of the generally rural Upstate New York region; the city's voters are also more liberal than those in the rest of Tompkins County.

Ithaca has two networks for supporting its home-schooling families: Loving Education At Home (LEAH) and the Northern Light Learning Center (NLLC).

Ithaca has many of the businesses characteristic of small American university towns: bookstores, art-house cinemas, craft stores and vegetarian-friendly restaurants.

Although it was sold in 1991 to American Telephone and Telegraph and later acquired by Cognitive TPG, it remains a major tenant of the South Hill Business Campus, which is now owned by a group of private investors.

[61] Ithaca, home to the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has a deep connection to Central New York's farming and dairy industries.

[76] The Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts supports New York State artists and writers through two key programs: free stipend-supported, juried residencies and a self-directed, non-juried, low-cost retreats.

The Community School of Music and Art uses an extensive scholarship system to offer classes and lessons to any student, regardless of age, background, economic status or artistic ability.

[84] A number of musicians call Ithaca home, most notably Samite of Uganda, The Burns Sisters, The Horse Flies, Johnny Dowd, Mary Lorson, cellist Hank Roberts, Anna Coogan, John Brown's Body, Kurt Riley, X Ambassadors, and Alex Kresovich.

[85] In 2009, the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area (MSA) ranked as the highest in the United States for the percentage of commuters who walked to work (15.1 percent).

OurBus provides limited holiday services to Allentown, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.. Cornell University runs a premium campus-to-campus bus between its Ithaca campus and its medical school in Manhattan, New York City, which is open to the public.

Delta Connection provides service to and from John F. Kennedy International Airport, operated by its commuter partner Endeavor Air, using the Bombardier CRJ200 commuter-jet.

United Express offers daily flights to its hub at Newark Liberty Airport, operated by its commuter partner GoJet Airlines, using the two-class Bombardier CRJ550 commuter-jet.

Simeon De Witt renamed the town Ithaca for Odysseus' home island in the early 19th century, though nearby Robert H. Treman State Park still contains Lucifer Falls.