Ithaca, New York

Ithaca Carshare has a fleet of vehicles shared by over 1500 members as of July, 2015 and has become a popular service among both city residents and the college communities.

Jesuit missionaries from New France in present-day Quebec had a mission to convert the Cayuga as early as 1657.

In 1788, eleven men from Kingston, New York, came to the area with two Lenape guides, to explore what they considered wilderness.

In 1789, the federal and state governments began granting land in the area, known as the Central New York Military Tract, to compensate veterans of the American Revolutionary War.

George Clinton) met in 1790.

Around 1791, De Witt surveyed what is now the downtown area into lots and sold them at modest prices.

Located in the township of Ulysses, or Tract 22, Ithaca was populated by white settlers in 1794 and formally established in 1821.

Ithaca's first frame house was erected in 1800 by Abram Markle.

In 1804, the village had a postmaster and, in 1805, a tavern.

This prompted construction in 1810 of the Owego Turnpike.

When the War of 1812 cut off access to gypsum in Nova Scotia, which was used for fertilizer, Ithaca became the center of trade in Cayuga gypsum.

== Media == The Ithaca Journal, founded in 1815, is a morning daily newspaper that has been owned by Gannett since 1912.

The Cayuga Steamboat Company was organized in 1819 and, in 1820, launched the first steamboat on Cayuga Lake, the Enterprise.

In 1821, the village was incorporated at the same time the Town of Ithaca was organized and separated from the parent Town of Ulysses.

In 1834, the Ithaca and Owego Railroad's first horse drawn train began service, connecting traffic on the east–west Erie Canal, which was completed in 1825, with the Susquehanna...

With the Long Depression of 1837, the Ithaca and Owego Railroad was re-organized as the Cayuga and Susquehanna Railroad.

However, easier early railroad routes were constructed that bypassed Ithaca, such as that of the Syracuse, Binghamton & New York, built in 1854.

Ithaca is a college town best known for hosting Cornell University, an Ivy League university founded in 1865, as well as Ithaca College.

Women first enrolled in 1870.

The Cornell Daily Sun is also published in Ithaca, operating since 1880.

In 1883, William Henry Baker and his partners founded the Ithaca Gun Company, which manufactured shotguns.

In 1885, Ithaca Children's Home was established on West Seneca Street.

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.

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 s...

=== 20th century === In 1900, Cornell University anatomy professor G.

In 1903, a typhoid epidemic resulting from poor sanitation infrastructure devastated the city.

The Star Theatre on East Seneca Street was built in 1911 and became the most popular vaudeville venue in the region.

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...

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...

The PRI was founded in Ithaca in 1932 and is the publisher of the oldest journal of paleontology in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1937, the company began producing the Ithaca 37, based on a 1915 patent by noted firearms designer John Browning.

Since 1941, the School of Music has been accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music.

At least two trains per day serviced Ithaca along the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad until 1942, or the Lehigh Valley Railroad.

Cayuga Heights, a village adjacent to the city on its northeast, voted against annexation into the city of Ithaca in 1954.

The South Hills Business Campus originally opened in 1957 as the regional headquarters of the National Cash Register Company.

Until September 15, 1958, the Lackawanna maintained Syracuse-Binghamton service through nearby Cortland, to the east.

Two of three daily New York City-Buffalo roundtrip passenger trains served Ithaca on the older, original Lehigh Valley Ithaca Branch between Van Etten Junction and Geneva, until...

came to speak twice in Ithaca, in 1960 and 1961”.

Extreme temperatures range from −25 °F (−32 °C) as recently as February 2, 1961, up to 103 °F (39 °C) on July 9, 1936.

This topic had been previously discussed in 1963 and 1969.

Moosewood Restaurant, founded as a collective in 1973, published a number of vegetarian cookbooks.

Opened in 1975 in a renovated municipal airport hangar, the Hangar hosts a summer season and brings a range of theatre to regional audiences including students, producing a scho...

The city's voters are also more liberal than those in the rest of Tompkins County, although the county was last carried by a Republican presidential candidate in 1980.

In 1981, the Cayuga Nature Center was incorporated as an independent, private, non-profit educational organization, offering environmental education to local school districts.

== Arts and culture == Founded in 1983, the Sciencenter is a non-profit hands-on science museum, accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM).

In 1987, however, the series broke with tradition to present Ravi Shankar and has since grown to encompass a broader spectrum of the world's great music.

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 o...

Founded in 1992, the Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca is the North American seat of the Dalai Lama's Namgyal Monastery.

Saltonstall was founded in 1995 and is located eight miles outside Ithaca.

Between 1996 and 2008, the Saltonstall Foundation provided grants to individual artists and writers from central and western New York counties.

In 1997, Utne Reader named Ithaca "America's most enlightened town".

As of the census of 2000, there were 29,287 people, 10,287 households, and 2,962 families residing in the city.

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 Museum of the Earth is a natural history museum created in 2003 by the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI).

As of 2004, the PRI is now formally affiliated with Cornell.

In December, 2005, the City and Town governments began discussing opportunities for increased government consolidation, including the possibility of joining the two into a singl...

As of 2006, Ithaca has continued to have one of the few expanding economies in New York State outside New York City.

As of 2007, according to ePodunk's Gay Index, Ithaca has a score of 231, versus a national average score of 100.

In 2008, Barack Obama, running against New York State's US Senator Hillary Clinton, won Tompkins County in the Democratic Presidential Primary, the only county that he won in Ne...

== Transportation == 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 ...

In 2011, Svante Myrick, a 2009 Cornell University graduate, was elected as the youngest mayor of the city of Ithaca.

In 2013, the Ithaca MSA ranked as the second-lowest in the United States for percentage of commuters who traveled by private vehicle (68.7 percent).

Tioga County Public Transit operated three routes to Ithaca and Cornell, but ceased operations on November 30, 2014.

In March 2015, the Common Council unanimously adopted a resolution recognizing freedom from domestic violence as a fundamental human right.

The Cherry Arts was founded in 2017, operating a flexible theatre, the Cherry Artspace.

In 2018, there were 23,600 students enrolled at Cornell and 6,700 at Ithaca College.

Starting in September 2019, intercity buses began serving Ithaca from the downtown bus stop at 131 East Green Street after the former Greyhound bus station on West State Street ...

At a referendum in 2022, city voters approved a city charter amendment adopting from a council–manager government in place of a mayor–council government.

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 alum...

The city's first city manager, Deb Mohlenhoff, took office on 1 January 2024.