Upstate New York
Upstate New York is a geographic region of New York State that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area of downstate New York. Upstate includes the middle and 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. Major cities across upstate New York from east to west include the state capital of Albany, Utica, Binghamton, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.
Before the European colonization of the Americas, the region of 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. Henry Hudson made the first recorded European exploration of the region in 1609, and the Dutch erected Fort Orange in 1624, which was the first permanent European settlement in New York. 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.
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, 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, as well as winemaking. 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 and drinking water. 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.
Definition
There is no clear official boundary between upstate New York and downstate New York. The most expansive definition of the upstate New York region excludes only New York City and Long Island, which are always considered to be part of downstate New York; this usage is common among New York City residents and significantly less farther north. This definition is used by the Department of Environmental Conservation. A cheeky joke among Manhattanites is that anything north of 14th Street is "upstate".Another usage locates the upstate/downstate boundary farther north, at the point where New York City's suburbs segue into its exurbs, as the exurbs do not generally fall within the Census Bureau-defined New York–Newark Urban Area. This latter boundary places most of the Lower Hudson Valley, or Westchester and Rockland counties and about one-third of Putnam County, downstate, while putting the northwestern edge of Rockland County as well as the northernmost quarter of Westchester County upstate. Conversely, area residents often use Interstate 84 to delineate a boundary between upstate and downstate New York.
Yet another usage follows the U.S. Census definition of the New York metropolitan area prior to 2010, which includes all of included Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties. This definition was used by the plaintiffs in the federal redistricting case Rodriguez v. Pataki.
In New York state law, the definition of the upstate boundary also varies: while Westchester is seemingly always considered downstate under state law, some definitions include Rockland and Putnam counties in the downstate region, and others also include Orange and Dutchess counties; all of these counties are served by Metro-North Railroad lines. Ulster County, and, in the largest state-defined extent of downstate, Columbia County, are also sometimes included. The division line between the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York places Sullivan County and Dutchess County in the Southern District, and Ulster and Columbia counties in the Northern District.
Residents of upstate New York typically prefer to identify with subregions, such as the Hudson Valley, the Capital District, the Mohawk Valley, the North Country, Western New York or Central New York.
Within New York, surveys have had difficulty determining a consensus. In a 2016 poll of New York voters in which respondents were asked to choose among four definitions of where upstate begins, three were about equally common, selected by between 25% and 30% of respondents each: north of New York City, north of Westchester County, and north of Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County. An informal 2018 poll found the Hudson Valley region is the most heavily disputed area regarding whether it is upstate or downstate.
A number of businesses and institutions in the area have "upstate" as part of their name. Examples of this include the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, the Upstate New York Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation serving 31 of New York's 62 counties, and the VA Healthcare Network Upstate New York, which includes all of New York State northward and westward from Kingston in Ulster County. Other organizations in New York with "upstate" in their name include the Upstate Collegiate Athletic Association, the Upstate Correctional Facility, the Upstate New York Club Hockey League, the Upstate New York Synod, and the Upstate Citizens for Equality.
History
Early history
Before the arrival of Europeans, the area was long inhabited by Iroquoian-speaking people, mainly west of the Hudson River and around the Great Lakes and Algonquian-speaking people, mainly east of the Hudson River. The conflict between the two peoples continued through the period of early European colonization, and the French, Dutch and English tended to ally with their trading partners among the indigenous peoples. The Haudenosaunee or Iroquois confederacy of the Five Nations was a powerful force in its home territory. The Mohawk referred to the present-day area as Kanienkeh, the Mohawk name for their homeland.The Five Nations' territory extended from the Mohawk River Valley through the western part of the state and into current Pennsylvania. From this home base they also controlled at various times large swaths of additional territory throughout what is now the northeastern United States. The Guswhenta, made with the Dutch government in 1613, codified relations between the Haudenosaunee and European colonizers, and formed the basis of subsequent treaties.
In the mid-17th century, during the Beaver Wars, the Iroquois were victorious and dominated the tribes of Neutral Indians, Wenrohronon and the Erie Indians in western New York. Survivors were mostly assimilated into the Seneca people of the Iroquois; some are believed to have escaped to South Carolina, where they merged with other Indian tribes.
The region was important from the first days of both French and Dutch colonization in the seventeenth century. The New Netherland colony encompassed the Hudson Valley from Manhattan island north to the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers, where Fort Orange was established in 1624. The fort at Schenectady was built in 1661. The upper Hudson Valley was the center of much of the colony's fur trade, which was highly lucrative, serving a demand for furs in Europe.
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. They found both trading and proselytizing difficult among the Haudenosaunee, as Samuel de Champlain had alienated the Haudenosaunee during military forays from New France. In the 1640s, three French Jesuit missionaries to New France—St. René Goupil, St. Isaac Jogues, and St. Jean de Lalande—were killed near the Mohawk village of Ossernenon, which was located at the confluence of the Schoharie and Mohawk rivers, where the modern hamlet of Auriesville was later developed. They are considered to be the first three U.S. saints.
England seized New Netherland by force in 1664, renaming it New York. The Dutch recaptured the colony nine years later, but ceded it to England under the Treaty of Westminster of 1674.
In the eighteenth century, the British consolidated their hold on the region. William Johnson, a Scottish trader, established an estate in the Mohawk Valley, living among the Mohawk, learning their language, and forging an alliance with them. He was appointed as the British Indian agent to the Iroquois. The British also encouraged settlement in the Mohawk Valley by other Europeans, including German Palatines beginning in the 1720s.
In what became known as the Albany Congress in 1754, delegates from seven of the thirteen British North American colonies met at Albany to pursue a treaty with the powerful Mohawk. Benjamin Franklin, a Pennsylvania delegate, proposed a plan for uniting the seven colonies that greatly exceeded the scope of the congress. The delegates spent most of their time debating this Albany Plan of union, one of the first attempts to form a union of the colonies "under one government as far as might be necessary for defense and other general important purposes". The delegates approved an amended version, but the colonies rejected it.
To counter the French militarily, the British established forts along Lake Ontario and at portages between the Mohawk Valley and the adjacent Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario watersheds. The region became the area for many conflicts of the French and Indian War, such as the Battle of Fort Oswego and the Siege of Fort William Henry, during the Seven Years' War.
The British conquered New France by 1760 with the fall of Quebec. France formally ceded New France to the British in the Treaty of Paris of 1763. 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."