Syracuse

Syracuse, an important city of central New York, seat of Onondaga county, lies in the beautiful Onondaga valley, stretching along Onondaga Creek to the head of the lake of the same name. It is on the Erie Canal, and is a terminus of the Oswego Canal; by rail it is 148½ miles E. of Buffalo and 147½ W. of Albany. Syracuse is the seat of a Methodist Episcopal university (1870), open to both sexes. It carries on extensive manufactures, the most notable being salt, of which some 6,000,000 bushels annually is produced. The city possesses rolling-mills, Bessemer steel-works, foundries, blast-furnaces, boiler-factories, and manufactories of engines, farming implements, furniture, doors and blinds, picture-frames, silver-ware, musical instruments, saddlery, boots and shoes, flour, beer, &c. The salt-springs were visited by French missionaries as early as 1654, and began to be worked by white men in 1789; the city was incorporated in 1847. Pop. (1880) 51,792; (1890) 88,143.