Onondaga Lake is one of the most storied bodies of water in North America. The oral tradition of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (better known by its French name, the Iroquois) traces its origin to the lake shore over a thousand years ago, when leaders of five warring nations gathered to enact the Great Law of Peace. The freshwater lake and its nearby salt springs figure in histories of Jesuit missionaries to North America, the founding of Syracuse, the financing and routing of the Erie Canal, and the rise of Syracuse as a tourist destination and industrial center. In the 20th century, the lake told its own tragic story when industrial and urban pollution earned it a reputation as the "most polluted lake in America." Its unique fisheries died out, tourists fled, and the city turned its back on the lake, leaving the former salt flats and amusement parks to become brownfields, a sewage treatment plant, and the vast parking lots for an urban shopping mall.

Still, the Onondaga Nation, scientists and environmentalists insisted that the lake deserved respect, and their dogged efforts have resulted in new stories emerging from the lake's abused shores and waters. These include stories of an unusual indigenous land rights action, a court order that prompted a massive, high-tech cleanup of industrial waste and an innovative green infrastructure project to divert the County's sewage from the lake. Another is the emerging story of a community turning back to the lake, building parks and trails, restoring native vegetation, and celebrating the return of wildlife - and people - to the lake.

These stories emerge in many voices and perspectives: indigenous, scientific, legal, historical, entrepreneurial, anecdotal. Some come into conflict. Where the "Salt City" celebrates its heritage as a major salt producer in the 19th century, historical ecologists see the exploitation of the brine as a calamity for the rare inland salt marsh community that once stretched south from the lake. Where the Honeywell Corp. and U.S. Corps of Engineers speak of lake "restoration" through dredging out a portion of the mercury contamination and capping the rest, the Onondaga Nation objects that the lake will not be restored until "we... ensure that the lake is clean enough to drink the water and eat the fish.”

This atlas aims to make the multi-layered history of the lake accessible to teachers, researchers, and the public, and to allow the many stories of Onondaga Lake to tell themselves, and to come into conversation in productive ways.

To get in touch with any member of the team, click here to contact us.

Rachel May
Coordinator of Sustainability Education at Syracuse University and an expert on environmental communications and urban ecology.

Phil Arnold
Professor of Religion at Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences and founding director of the Skä-Noñh – Great Law of Peace Center.

Jane Read
Associate Professor of Geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and an expert on geographic information systems.

This project is supported by a Digital Humanities grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.