17th century gorge of Ithaca Native Americans lived in this area for thousands of years. When reached by Europeans, this area was controlled by the
Cayuga (), one of the five tribes comprising the
Iroquois Confederacy (Haudenosaunee).
Jesuit missionaries from
New France in present-day
Quebec had a mission to convert the Cayuga as early as 1657.
18th century Saponi and
Tutelo peoples, Siouan-speaking tribes, later occupied lands at the south end of
Cayuga Lake. Dependent tributaries of the Cayuga, they had been permitted to settle on the tribe's hunting lands at the south end of Cayuga Lake, and in Pony (originally Sapony) Hollow of present-day
Newfield, New York and
Cayuta, New York. Remnants of these tribes had been forced from
Virginia and
North Carolina by tribal conflicts and European colonial settlement. Similarly, the
Tuscarora people, an Iroquoian-speaking tribe from the Carolinas, migrated after defeat in the
Yamasee War; they settled with the
Oneida people and became the sixth nation of the Haudenosaunee, with chiefs stating the migration was complete in 1722. 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. Conflict with the rebel colonists was fierce throughout the
Mohawk Valley and
Western New York. In retaliation for conflicts to the east and resentment at the way in which the Iroquois made war, the 1779
Sullivan Expedition was conducted against the Iroquois in the west of the state, destroying more than 40 villages and stored winter crops and forcing their retreat from the area. It destroyed the Tutelo village of
Coreorgonel, located near what is now the junction of state routes
13 and
13A just south of Ithaca. Most Iroquois were forced from the state after the Revolutionary War, but some remnants remained. The state sold off the former Iroquois lands to stimulate development and settlement by non-indigenous Americans; lands were also granted as payment to veterans of the war. Within the current boundaries of Ithaca, Native Americans maintained a temporary hunting camp at the base of Cascadilla Gorge. In 1788, eleven men from
Kingston, New York, came to the area with two
Lenape guides, to explore what they considered wilderness. The following year Jacob Yaple, Isaac Dumond, and Peter Hinepaw returned with their families and constructed log cabins. In 1790, the
federal government and
state began an official program to grant land in the area, known as the
Central New York Military Tract, as payment for service to
Continental Army soldiers of the Revolutionary War, when the newly established federal government was cash poor. Most local land titles trace back to these Revolutionary war grants. However, the Bloodgood tract was not part of the state bounties to veterans. 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. As part of this process, the
Central New York Military Tract, which included northern Tompkins County, was surveyed under the direction of
Simeon De Witt, Bloodgood's son-in-law and the Surveyor General of New York. 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. Both Simeon and Moses were first cousins of
DeWitt Clinton through his mother, Mary De Witt, who married James Clinton, brother of Governor
George Clinton. The Commissioners of Lands of New York State (chairman Gov. George Clinton) met in 1790. The Military Tract township in which Ithaca is located was named the
Town of Ulysses. A few years later De Witt moved to Ithaca, then called variously "The Flats," "The City," or "Sodom"; Among the treaty's numerous provisions, the
Cayuga agreed to officially cede their right to all land in present-day Tompkins County in exchange for an approximately 64,000 acre reservation at the north end of
Cayuga Lake. Today, the
Cayuga Nation of New York, the Cayuga signatories' ancestors, still point to the Treaty of Canandaigua as evidence of their legal sovereignty. Ithaca's first frame house was erected in 1800 by Abram Markle.
19th century gun in 1916 Ithaca became a transshipping point for salt from curing beds near
Salina, New York, to buyers south and east. This prompted construction in 1810 of the Owego Turnpike. In the late 19th century, more industry developed in Ithaca. In 1883, William Henry Baker and his partners founded the
Ithaca Gun Company, which manufactured shotguns. 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 company became an icon in the hunting and shooting world, and its shotguns were known for their fine decorative work. Wooden gunstocks with knots or other imperfections were donated to the high school woodworking shop to be made into lamps.
John Philip Sousa and
trick-shooter Annie Oakley favored Ithaca Gun Company guns. In 1937, the company began producing the
Ithaca 37, based on a 1915 patent by noted firearms designer
John Browning. Its 12-gauge shotguns were the standard used for decades by the
New York City Police Department and
Los Angeles Police Department. In 1885, Ithaca Children's Home was established on West Seneca Street. The orphanage had two programs at the time: a residential home for both orphaned and destitute children, and a day nursery. The village established its first trolley in 1887. Ithaca developed as a small manufacturing and retail center and was incorporated as a city in 1888. 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. Ithaca claims to be the birthplace of the
ice cream sundae, created in 1892 when fountain shop owner
Chester Platt "served his local priest vanilla ice cream covered in cherry syrup with a dark candied cherry on top. The priest suggested the dessert be named after the day, Sunday, although the spelling was later changed out of fear some would find it offensive." The local
Unitarian church, where the priest, Rev. John Scott, preached, has an annual "Sundae Sunday" every September in commemoration. Ithaca's claim has long been disputed by
Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Also in 1892, the
Ithaca Kitty became one of the first mass-produced stuffed animal toys in the United States.
20th century production still In 1900,
Cornell University anatomy professor
G. S. Moler made an early movie using frame-by-frame technology. For
The Skeleton Dance, he took single-frame photos of a human skeleton in varying positions, giving the illusion of a dancing skeleton. During the early 20th century, Ithaca was an important center in the
silent film industry. These films often featured the local natural scenery. Many of these films were the work of
Leopold Wharton and his brother
Theodore;
The Wharton Studio was on the site of what is now
Stewart Park. In 1903, a
typhoid epidemic resulting from poor sanitation infrastructure devastated the city. Not having access to unpolluted water was one suspicion to the cause of the outbreak because "[r]efuse and the contents of the early sewer system dumped directly into the inlet". One out of ten citizens fell ill or died. Local residents lost fifty-one people to the illness that year, but there was "an average of thirty-nine cases each year" for the consecutive ten years following. The Star Theatre on East Seneca Street was built in 1911 and became the most popular vaudeville venue in the region. Wharton movies were also filmed and shown there. After the film industry centralized in Hollywood, production in Ithaca effectively ceased. Few of the silent films made in Ithaca have been preserved. Ithaca had film studio activity during the silent film era including
Wharton Studio. After
World War II, the Langmuir Research Labs of
General Electric developed as a major employer; the defense industry continued to expand. GE's headquarters were in Schenectady, New York, to the northeast in the Mohawk Valley. Although Ithaca has a history of
Ku Klux Klan activity, including a cross-burning in 1923 and 1924, "the peak years of Klan activity in Ithaca were 1923-1925" and it represented only a fraction of the population. Ithaca is known for its political activism regarding civil rights and environmental issues. “Martin Luther King Jr. came to speak twice in Ithaca, in 1960 and 1961”.
21st century at Cayuga Street The
Ithaca Gun Company tested their shotguns behind the plant on Lake Street; the shot fell into the
Fall Creek gorge at the base of
Ithaca Falls. Lead accumulated in the soil in and around the factory and gorge. A major lead clean-up effort sponsored by the United States
Superfund took place from 2002 to 2004, managed through the
Environmental Protection Agency. The old Ithaca Gun building has been dismantled, though its iconic smokestack remains standing. It was scheduled to be replaced by the development of an apartment complex on the cleaned land. 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. 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. 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: the first black man to be elected to the council and the youngest African American to be elected to office in the United States. He served his full term and has mentored other student politicians. In 2011,
Svante Myrick, a 2009
Cornell University graduate, was elected as the youngest mayor of the city of Ithaca. In 2023, President of the Cornell Student Assembly Patrick Kuehl launched a secret write-in campaign and succeeded in unseating Alderperson Jorge Defendini, another Cornell alumnus, from the Ithaca Common Council. 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. Kuehl received an inordinate number of
provisional ballots and
absentee ballots from residents of the
Sigma Phi and
Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity houses. Various Ithaca and Cornell groups condemned the secret campaign as undemocratic. ==Geography==