How a salt town in upstate New York borrowed its name from Sicily
In 1820 a would-be post office town in central New York was refused the name Corinth because another village already had it. John Wilkinson, having read about Syracuse in Sicily, saw the same mix of salt and fresh water in his own lake and springs, and proposed the Greek city's name instead.
For centuries the land belonged to the Onondaga Nation, one of the five Haudenosaunee nations, whose village of Onondaga was the traditional seat of the confederacy's Grand Council. French Jesuits led by Simon Le Moyne arrived in the mid-17th century, founding a mission on Onondaga Lake and noting brine springs at its southern end. The Revolutionary War split the Haudenosaunee, most siding with Britain, and afterward settlers poured in from eastern New York and New England.
Brine flowing north from halite beds near Tully, 15 miles south, fed those springs, and the state's Onondaga Salt Springs Reservation turned them into an industry lasting from the late 1700s to the early 1900s, hence the nickname the Salt City. In 1884 the first American Solvay Process plant, making soda ash, opened on the lake's southwestern shore. It seeded a huge chemical complex and many jobs, but left Onondaga Lake the most polluted in the country.
As salt faded after the Civil War, manufacturing took over. The Franklin Automobile Company built the world's first air-cooled engine, and Smith Corona and Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Workshops were based here. The Erie Canal, running through Clinton Square from the 1820s, and later the New York Central Railroad made the city a crossroads, a role now played by the junction of I-81 and I-90.
Industry waned after the mid-20th century, and Syracuse turned to education, research and services, anchored by Syracuse University, SUNY Upstate Medical University and SUNY ESF. With 148,620 residents and a metro area of 662,057, it is Central New York's largest city, and its Destiny USA is the biggest shopping mall in the state.
Source: Syracuse, New York
