Geography and Industry

In the southeast, New York's Long Island is surrounded by three bodies of water: Long Island Sound, the Atlantic Ocean, and New York Harbor. Along its southern border, New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

New York has a little bit of every terrain, except for desert, within its borders. In the southeast, there is the broad floodplain of the Atlantic. Running north from there is the Great Appalachian Valley, which includes the Hudson River and Lake Champlain. The Hudson cuts through the Allegheny Plateau, which rises into the Catskill Mountains.

The northern part of the state is mountainous, with the Adirondack chain running through it. Western New York is very hilly, with a number of lakes, including the Finger Lakes and Lake Oneida.

Fun Facts

NIAGARA FALLS

The falls of the Niagara River are a world-famous attraction that draws millions of people to see them every year. Every hour 5,000,000,000 gallons of water flow over the edge of the Niagara Falls.

Words to Know

Floodplain

A floodplain is a flat piece of land next to a river, stream, or ocean that experiences occasional flooding.

History

Before European settlement, New York was the home of many different tribes of Native Americans. The most powerful tribes were the Iroquois confederacy in western New York.

The Iroquois were not one tribe — they were actually five tribes! They called themselves the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, which means “People of the Longhouse.” In the minds of the Iroquois, they all lived together, much the same way that a family will live in different parts of a house today. The Seneca lived furthest west, and were called the Keepers of the Western Door. The Mohawks lived furthest east, and were called the Keepers of the Eastern Door. The tribes in the middle were the Cayuga, Oneida, and Onondaga. Many of the descendants of the Iroquois still live in western New York as well as in southern Canada today.

The French and Dutch were the first Europeans to visit New York. They have left their words as place names all over the state — for example, bodies of water like Lake Champlain (pronounced “sham-PLAIN”) and the Schuylkill River (pronounced “SKOOL-kil”).

The Dutch (people from the Netherlands) founded the first permanent settlement in what is now New York when they bought an island at the mouth of the Hudson River in 1626. They paid local Native Americans with trade goods (blankets and colored beads) that would cost us about $25.00 in today's money for what is now Manhattan Island! Imagine buying the area where New York City now stands, and having money left over from your allowance. You'd be the next Donald Trump!

The Dutch called this colony New Netherlands, and called the city they built on Manhattan Island New Amsterdam. The English later fought a war with the Dutch and took New Netherlands away from them. They changed the name of the colony (and its largest city) to New York.

After America became a nation, New York City quickly became more and more important. It was even the national capital city for a brief time! Did you know that when New York became a state, the northern parts of Manhattan Island still had farms on them? It's true! But by the late nineteeth century, with the growth of manufacturing in New York City, the farms were long gone.

One of the major reasons for New York's emergence as the foremost city of the new nation was its harbor, lauded by many as the finest natural harbor in the western hemisphere. This meant a boom in the trade that passed through New York City on its way between the American West and places overseas such as Europe and Asia. On top of the city's harbor, there also was the fact that New York state had built the famous Erie Canal, which made it very easy to get trade goods back and forth across the state between the harbor cities of New York, which was on the Atlantic coast, and Buffalo, which serves as an important port city at the eastern end of the Great Lakes.