Upstate New York
[3][4] Major cities across upstate New York from east to west include the state capital of Albany, Utica, Binghamton, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.
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.
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.
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.
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.
North and west of New Netherland, the French established trading posts along the St. Lawrence River and as far south as the shores of Onondaga Lake.
The same year, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which established the western and northern boundary of the Province of New York at the limits of the Hudson, Mohawk and Delaware River watersheds.
The area between that boundary and the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River, including west of the Appalachian Mountains, was to be the "Indian Reserve."
Between 1774 and 1783, deeply divided colonists waged civil war on each other directly and by proxy, through attacks such as the Seneca-led Cherry Valley and the Mohawk-led Cobleskill massacre.
In 1779, the Sullivan Expedition, a campaign by the Continental Army ordered by General George Washington, drove thousands of the Haudenosaunee from their villages, farms and lands in the region in an effort to both avenge and prevent such attacks.
Thousands emigrated to colonies that remained under British rule, such as Nova Scotia and the newly established Upper Canada (now Ontario).
The British Crown granted a large tract of land in Upper Canada to their Haudenosaunee allies, who established the Grand River settlement.
In the federal Treaty of Canandaigua, the new United States recognized the title of the remaining Haudenosaunee to the land north and west of the Proclamation Line of 1763.
Although routes for travel on foot and by canoe had existed across the region for hundreds of years, transportation of agricultural goods to market was expensive and slow.
Several times in the nineteenth century, upstate New York served as a staging area and refuge for Canadian rebels against Great Britain, as well as Irish-American invaders of Canada, straining British–American relations.
In the pre–Civil War era, upstate New York became a major center of radical abolitionist activity and was an important nexus of the Underground Railroad.
By the 1870s, business leaders, concerned about the effect of deforestation on the water supply necessary to the Erie Canal, advocated for the creation of forest preserves in the Adirondacks and the Catskills.
This regional advantage faded as many local firms relocated certain operations to other states, or downsized in the face of foreign competition, similar to events in other areas in the American Rust Belt.
[31] Since the late 20th century, with the decline of manufacturing and its jobs, the area has generally suffered a net population loss, most heavily in Western New York.
[citation needed] By contrast, many Amish and Mennonite families are recent arrivals to the area and have helped revive agriculture as part of the economy.
Additionally, upstate New York continues to boast low crime rates, high educational prospects, and readily affordable daily essentials, earning Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, Schenectady, and Buffalo spots in the Forbes magazine list of top ten places to raise a family in the United States.
By contrast, Northern New York contains the Adirondack Mountains, which are sometimes mistaken as part of the Appalachians but are in fact a southern extension of the Canadian Shield.
The villages of Old Forge and Saranac Lake, both in the Adirondacks, often vie on winter nights with places like International Falls, Minnesota, and Fargo, North Dakota, for the coldest spot in the nation.
[33] Many of the features of upstate New York landscapes, such as the Finger Lakes and the drumlins that dot the region, are the result of glaciers during the Ice Age.
[72][73] A number of agricultural products are grown in upstate New York, including dairy, corn, hay, fruits, cabbage, and potatoes.
[84] In the late nineteenth century, the region was considered one of the centers of glassmaking in the country, earning Corning the name "The Crystal City".
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 North Country, the extreme northern portion of the state, also has strong cultural, economic, linguistic and familial ties to Quebec and Eastern Ontario.
[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.
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.
