Index to Place
The plants and animals listed in this website do not exist in a vacuum. They were, and are still, part of a fabric of land and water, soil and air, insect, bird, micro-organism, mammal. In this index, we look at specific places and how they have changed over time. Basically we are looking for clues to the nature of the cultural landscape-- historical as well as current.
The historical landscape is of interest since its economy was local and tied to the local ecology, in contrast to today’s economy based on global markets. Some of these sites were part of a “once larger complex of gathering sites and traditional use areas along a trail network” (Storm 2002) that extended throughout what is now central New York.
Place names
A designated place name confirms that there was some kind of people-land relationship (Storm 2002). The name may not always imply what this relationship is, but it is important corroborating information for reconstructing the history of people and their place (Hunn 1996).
Place names can also, of course, describe a place in terms of its natural setting or ecological attributes. Not only indigenous but Euro-American place names can encode ecological information. Peat Street, Chestnut Hill, Elm Street are examples from the Syracuse area. Changes in Liverpool street names between 1807 and the present speak volumes about the degradation of Onondaga Lake fisheries.
1807 street names Today’s street names
Sturgeon Cypress
Trout Vine
Salmon Tulip
Pike Sycamore
Perch Balsam
Bass Bass
Lake First
Park Second
Sylvan Third
Here, add more info and examples cut & paste from class place names paper.
The Places
Cicero Swamp
The last stronghold for things wild and free in CNY, the swamp stands for the opposite of everything valued by the Euro-American settlers. One writer, in fact, considers the wetland a “disgrace” to the “immortal name” of the great Latin orator (Wibbe 1883). He writes:
This dismal forest, visited only by berry-pickers in the fall, and lumbermen in the winter, does not pay for the trouble and danger that it requires to attain access to it. Such plants as grow there (Woodwardia Virginica, orchids, Dalibarda, etc.) can be found easier in more accessible localities, and far from the numerous rattlesnakes of that green desert from out of which even an expert guide found his way only by listening for the sound of a locomotive whistle on the Central Railroad.
The negative attitude towards such wetlands is more remarkable when we realize that this piece appeared in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Society, whose authors might be expected to be somewhat more sympathetic to such wetlands.
Cross Lake. Cross Lake is not technically a “lake” but rather a slow-flowing, swampy section of the Seneca River. DeWitt Clinton describes it during his passage through the area in 1810:
Cross Lake is five miles long, and one broad; in some places it is very deep, and in others contains large reeds and high grass. It abounds with ducks, and is formed by the passing of the Seneca river through a large swamp. (Clinton 1849 p. 91)
According to one source, the Onondaga name for Cross Lake was Teu-nen-to, “at the cedars,” and referred to the lake’s position “just beyond a great cedar swamp” (Beauchamp 1893 p. 55). “Hemlock tops lying on the water” was another, earlier name for this place. Either way, the image of a swampy area, having a calcareous substrate and rich in waterfowl and plants, prevails. Acorus americanus, the native sweet flag, as well as other plants of interest once occurred at this site.
Note also the recent (2013) sightings of bald eagles at Cross Lake; 15 eagles were regularly seen there over the winter (J. Wright, pers. comm.). It’s quite possibly that one might remain to nest.
“Cross Lake”: See also William Beauchamp papers, Box 34, #6, p. 141. I think you’d actually have to go back to the archives to get this paper. I don’t think it’s online.
Indian Hill
Site of a large Onondaga village from 1663 - 1682 in the Limestone Creek watershed. If you follow Indian Hill Road today, you’ll find a cleared site with a couple of white pines and a monument at the purported site of the Chapel erected here by French Jesuit missionaries in the 1660s? Wentworth Greenhalgh, an English trader, visited this site in 1677.
Kimber Springs
"I think it’s the spring that feeds Webster Pond and Kimber Brook (mostly underground). Of course there may have been other springs further north that are also undergrounded." (from Kathy Stribley: I think she is referring to the fact that Kimber Brook has mostly been routed underground from where it leaves the Rand Tract wetland on Chaffee Street to where it meets Onondaga Creek, somewhere near Van Duyn School.
Lodi Swamp same as Tamarack Swamp
Oak openings
somewhere near the Onondaga Nation; maybe the area where the current cemetery is now on Valley Drive?
Oak orchard
Red Mill Pond.
"The pond was deemed the main cause of malarial sickness in early Syracuse, and it was declared a nuisance by the state, the abatement of which was ordered by the removal of the dam and the filling up of the pond" (Smith and Smith 1904).
Sapony Hollow (now Pony Hollow near Newfield, NY, 8 miles south of Ithaca)
From Pursh (1869):
Sapony Hollow: this place has been once cleared & probably settled by Indians, but is now grown up with small white pine very handsomely mixed with Populus tremuloides & Magnolia acuminata. The last is very scarce about here & & the trees here in this place & two or three others I seen are of a creeply, small & old growth, nothing like to what they are in Virginia.
The Sapony people originally lived in North Carolina, so maybe they imported cucumbertree in order to have the company of a more familiar southern species.
The inhabitants of the Ithaca area at the time Europeans began arriving were the Sapony and Tutelo Indians, dependent tribes of the Cayugas. These tribes had been permitted to settle on Cayuga controlled hunting grounds at the south end of Cayuga Lake as well as Pony (originally Sapony) hollow of Newfield. These groups were driven out of North Carolina by European invasion. They were later driven from the Ithaca area by the Sullivan expedition which destroyed the Tutelo village of Coregonal, located near the junction of State Routes 13 and just south of the Ithaca city limits (Citation).
According to Dudley (1886):
Now called" Pony Hollow." Sapony Hollow is the only nominal relic in this region, the last home, of a once large tribe of Indians called Catawbas or Saponies, formerly residing in Virginia and North Carolina. There is indirect evidence that this last remnant sought protection of the Cayugas, and settled in this valley about I753. Coreorganel was their principal town, and their burial places were near that village, also north of Buttermilk Falls and on the bluff near Dr. Parker's, East Hill, Ithaca. As a nation they were utterly extinguished by Sullivan's army as it swept over them, Sept., I779·
And all but extinguished from popular memory—note the name change from “Sapony” to the culture-neutral “Pony.” Note also that the preponderance of Oaks in the military tract surveys conducted in 1790 occurred between Seneca and Cayuga lakes, especially in the southern portion of this area. Purse also observed oak forest in this area. The presence of Oaks may be due to soil, aspect, or to microclimatic conditions in this interlacustrine area. But there may also have been some effect of native people as neighbors to this region.
Salina
Also known as Salt Point, Salina was the center of the salt industry in Syracuse and (along with the Onondaga Hollow area south of the city) was the first place settled by EuroAmerican immigrants.
DeWitt Clinton (1849) wrote of Salina during his visit there in 1810:
Salina is a short distance from the Onondaga Lake. Boats come up to the factories. It contains about 80 houses. Liverpool and Geddes are within 3 miles.
Clinton described the details of making salt. As he pointed out, “By digging a pit anywhere in the marsh salt water is found." Disease is a lingering issue, and is noted by most of the early visitors to Salina including Clinton:
This is an unhealthy place. In entering it, we saw an inenclosed burying ground, which indicates great mortality. Three of the superintendents have died. The people complain already of dysentery; but the sickly season has not yet arrived.
Salina was a frontier to town, the center of a booming extractive industry, and that material was salt. Clinton points out, "there is a great resort of strangers to this place, summer as well as winter, to speculate in salt."
John Goldie (1897) also visited Salina, in late August 1819. He wrote:
There is a small village here name Salina which is only a short distance to the south of Lake Onondaga. The land around the village is very low and swampy. Between the buildings and the lake is a flat piece of ground partially covered with water which is all salt and which is called the springs.
He notes the presence of trash or filth left by the drawdown of water in late summer, the time of his visit:
I cannot observe the water rise in any particular spot, but for the space of two or 3 acres it looked like a spot that had been covered with water during winter but now nearly dry and covered with all manner of rubbish and filth, sending forth a most disagreeable odor. The furnaces for drying the salt are in and around the spot. There is communication by water between this and Ontario by which salt is carried to Canada and the Western states.
Salina did not recommend itself to John Goldie. He writes:
I have never been in a more disagreeable and unhealthy place in this. At this time a number of people were sick with fever and ague, a disease which is always to be found here. If it were not for the salt works I believe this never would be a village. Salt forms the only circulating medium about this part of the country, instead of money of which there is scarcely any. When person brings anything to be sold the first question is, "how much salt will he take?"
"Being completely disgusted with this place," Goldie soon left Salina for places more to his taste. Goldie, a Scotsman, was an accomplished botanist in whose honor the fern Aspidium goldianum, later Dryopteris goldiana or Goldie’s fern, was named. Goldie’s botanical notes were unfortunately lost to fire (Beauchamp 1908), and several shipments of pressed plants (including possibly anything gathered at Salina or vicinity) were lost at sea.
Tamarack Swamp, Lodi Swamp
“This swamp, also called Lodi Swamp, which is now drained entirely drained and built over, was a very rich collecting ground. Possibly careful search among the swampy grounds along the New York Central Railway, east and west of Syracuse may reveal equally interesting areas. It is doubtful that they have been explored according to Van Eseltine. Extended east from the southern end of Onondaga Lake.” from Hough 2012
Considered “the most interesting small swamp, for botanists, in central New York” (Wibbe 1883), it supported many rare plants including the following orchids:
Arethusa bulbosa dragon’s mouth
Calopogon tuberosus tuberous grasspink
Calypso bulbosa fairy slipper
Cypripedium parviflorum yellow lady’s slipper
Cypripedium candidum white lady’s slipper
Platanthera grandiflora greater purple fringed orchid
Could also cite Hand 1889
Yellow Brook
There's a lot you could say about Yellow Brook, which was the second largest stream (after Onondaga Creek) flowing through the city of Syracuse. It was reviled for its quite natural tendency to overflow its banks. Its waters were diverted at one point to power the hydraulic machinery at Salina, pumping salt brine up for salt production. See Hand (1889) as well as Smith and Smith (1904).
The historical landscape is of interest since its economy was local and tied to the local ecology, in contrast to today’s economy based on global markets. Some of these sites were part of a “once larger complex of gathering sites and traditional use areas along a trail network” (Storm 2002) that extended throughout what is now central New York.
Place names
A designated place name confirms that there was some kind of people-land relationship (Storm 2002). The name may not always imply what this relationship is, but it is important corroborating information for reconstructing the history of people and their place (Hunn 1996).
Place names can also, of course, describe a place in terms of its natural setting or ecological attributes. Not only indigenous but Euro-American place names can encode ecological information. Peat Street, Chestnut Hill, Elm Street are examples from the Syracuse area. Changes in Liverpool street names between 1807 and the present speak volumes about the degradation of Onondaga Lake fisheries.
1807 street names Today’s street names
Sturgeon Cypress
Trout Vine
Salmon Tulip
Pike Sycamore
Perch Balsam
Bass Bass
Lake First
Park Second
Sylvan Third
Here, add more info and examples cut & paste from class place names paper.
The Places
Cicero Swamp
The last stronghold for things wild and free in CNY, the swamp stands for the opposite of everything valued by the Euro-American settlers. One writer, in fact, considers the wetland a “disgrace” to the “immortal name” of the great Latin orator (Wibbe 1883). He writes:
This dismal forest, visited only by berry-pickers in the fall, and lumbermen in the winter, does not pay for the trouble and danger that it requires to attain access to it. Such plants as grow there (Woodwardia Virginica, orchids, Dalibarda, etc.) can be found easier in more accessible localities, and far from the numerous rattlesnakes of that green desert from out of which even an expert guide found his way only by listening for the sound of a locomotive whistle on the Central Railroad.
The negative attitude towards such wetlands is more remarkable when we realize that this piece appeared in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Society, whose authors might be expected to be somewhat more sympathetic to such wetlands.
Cross Lake. Cross Lake is not technically a “lake” but rather a slow-flowing, swampy section of the Seneca River. DeWitt Clinton describes it during his passage through the area in 1810:
Cross Lake is five miles long, and one broad; in some places it is very deep, and in others contains large reeds and high grass. It abounds with ducks, and is formed by the passing of the Seneca river through a large swamp. (Clinton 1849 p. 91)
According to one source, the Onondaga name for Cross Lake was Teu-nen-to, “at the cedars,” and referred to the lake’s position “just beyond a great cedar swamp” (Beauchamp 1893 p. 55). “Hemlock tops lying on the water” was another, earlier name for this place. Either way, the image of a swampy area, having a calcareous substrate and rich in waterfowl and plants, prevails. Acorus americanus, the native sweet flag, as well as other plants of interest once occurred at this site.
Note also the recent (2013) sightings of bald eagles at Cross Lake; 15 eagles were regularly seen there over the winter (J. Wright, pers. comm.). It’s quite possibly that one might remain to nest.
“Cross Lake”: See also William Beauchamp papers, Box 34, #6, p. 141. I think you’d actually have to go back to the archives to get this paper. I don’t think it’s online.
Indian Hill
Site of a large Onondaga village from 1663 - 1682 in the Limestone Creek watershed. If you follow Indian Hill Road today, you’ll find a cleared site with a couple of white pines and a monument at the purported site of the Chapel erected here by French Jesuit missionaries in the 1660s? Wentworth Greenhalgh, an English trader, visited this site in 1677.
Kimber Springs
"I think it’s the spring that feeds Webster Pond and Kimber Brook (mostly underground). Of course there may have been other springs further north that are also undergrounded." (from Kathy Stribley: I think she is referring to the fact that Kimber Brook has mostly been routed underground from where it leaves the Rand Tract wetland on Chaffee Street to where it meets Onondaga Creek, somewhere near Van Duyn School.
Lodi Swamp same as Tamarack Swamp
Oak openings
somewhere near the Onondaga Nation; maybe the area where the current cemetery is now on Valley Drive?
Oak orchard
Red Mill Pond.
"The pond was deemed the main cause of malarial sickness in early Syracuse, and it was declared a nuisance by the state, the abatement of which was ordered by the removal of the dam and the filling up of the pond" (Smith and Smith 1904).
Sapony Hollow (now Pony Hollow near Newfield, NY, 8 miles south of Ithaca)
From Pursh (1869):
Sapony Hollow: this place has been once cleared & probably settled by Indians, but is now grown up with small white pine very handsomely mixed with Populus tremuloides & Magnolia acuminata. The last is very scarce about here & & the trees here in this place & two or three others I seen are of a creeply, small & old growth, nothing like to what they are in Virginia.
The Sapony people originally lived in North Carolina, so maybe they imported cucumbertree in order to have the company of a more familiar southern species.
The inhabitants of the Ithaca area at the time Europeans began arriving were the Sapony and Tutelo Indians, dependent tribes of the Cayugas. These tribes had been permitted to settle on Cayuga controlled hunting grounds at the south end of Cayuga Lake as well as Pony (originally Sapony) hollow of Newfield. These groups were driven out of North Carolina by European invasion. They were later driven from the Ithaca area by the Sullivan expedition which destroyed the Tutelo village of Coregonal, located near the junction of State Routes 13 and just south of the Ithaca city limits (Citation).
According to Dudley (1886):
Now called" Pony Hollow." Sapony Hollow is the only nominal relic in this region, the last home, of a once large tribe of Indians called Catawbas or Saponies, formerly residing in Virginia and North Carolina. There is indirect evidence that this last remnant sought protection of the Cayugas, and settled in this valley about I753. Coreorganel was their principal town, and their burial places were near that village, also north of Buttermilk Falls and on the bluff near Dr. Parker's, East Hill, Ithaca. As a nation they were utterly extinguished by Sullivan's army as it swept over them, Sept., I779·
And all but extinguished from popular memory—note the name change from “Sapony” to the culture-neutral “Pony.” Note also that the preponderance of Oaks in the military tract surveys conducted in 1790 occurred between Seneca and Cayuga lakes, especially in the southern portion of this area. Purse also observed oak forest in this area. The presence of Oaks may be due to soil, aspect, or to microclimatic conditions in this interlacustrine area. But there may also have been some effect of native people as neighbors to this region.
Salina
Also known as Salt Point, Salina was the center of the salt industry in Syracuse and (along with the Onondaga Hollow area south of the city) was the first place settled by EuroAmerican immigrants.
DeWitt Clinton (1849) wrote of Salina during his visit there in 1810:
Salina is a short distance from the Onondaga Lake. Boats come up to the factories. It contains about 80 houses. Liverpool and Geddes are within 3 miles.
Clinton described the details of making salt. As he pointed out, “By digging a pit anywhere in the marsh salt water is found." Disease is a lingering issue, and is noted by most of the early visitors to Salina including Clinton:
This is an unhealthy place. In entering it, we saw an inenclosed burying ground, which indicates great mortality. Three of the superintendents have died. The people complain already of dysentery; but the sickly season has not yet arrived.
Salina was a frontier to town, the center of a booming extractive industry, and that material was salt. Clinton points out, "there is a great resort of strangers to this place, summer as well as winter, to speculate in salt."
John Goldie (1897) also visited Salina, in late August 1819. He wrote:
There is a small village here name Salina which is only a short distance to the south of Lake Onondaga. The land around the village is very low and swampy. Between the buildings and the lake is a flat piece of ground partially covered with water which is all salt and which is called the springs.
He notes the presence of trash or filth left by the drawdown of water in late summer, the time of his visit:
I cannot observe the water rise in any particular spot, but for the space of two or 3 acres it looked like a spot that had been covered with water during winter but now nearly dry and covered with all manner of rubbish and filth, sending forth a most disagreeable odor. The furnaces for drying the salt are in and around the spot. There is communication by water between this and Ontario by which salt is carried to Canada and the Western states.
Salina did not recommend itself to John Goldie. He writes:
I have never been in a more disagreeable and unhealthy place in this. At this time a number of people were sick with fever and ague, a disease which is always to be found here. If it were not for the salt works I believe this never would be a village. Salt forms the only circulating medium about this part of the country, instead of money of which there is scarcely any. When person brings anything to be sold the first question is, "how much salt will he take?"
"Being completely disgusted with this place," Goldie soon left Salina for places more to his taste. Goldie, a Scotsman, was an accomplished botanist in whose honor the fern Aspidium goldianum, later Dryopteris goldiana or Goldie’s fern, was named. Goldie’s botanical notes were unfortunately lost to fire (Beauchamp 1908), and several shipments of pressed plants (including possibly anything gathered at Salina or vicinity) were lost at sea.
Tamarack Swamp, Lodi Swamp
“This swamp, also called Lodi Swamp, which is now drained entirely drained and built over, was a very rich collecting ground. Possibly careful search among the swampy grounds along the New York Central Railway, east and west of Syracuse may reveal equally interesting areas. It is doubtful that they have been explored according to Van Eseltine. Extended east from the southern end of Onondaga Lake.” from Hough 2012
Considered “the most interesting small swamp, for botanists, in central New York” (Wibbe 1883), it supported many rare plants including the following orchids:
Arethusa bulbosa dragon’s mouth
Calopogon tuberosus tuberous grasspink
Calypso bulbosa fairy slipper
Cypripedium parviflorum yellow lady’s slipper
Cypripedium candidum white lady’s slipper
Platanthera grandiflora greater purple fringed orchid
Could also cite Hand 1889
Yellow Brook
There's a lot you could say about Yellow Brook, which was the second largest stream (after Onondaga Creek) flowing through the city of Syracuse. It was reviled for its quite natural tendency to overflow its banks. Its waters were diverted at one point to power the hydraulic machinery at Salina, pumping salt brine up for salt production. See Hand (1889) as well as Smith and Smith (1904).