ABOUT ONONDAGA LAKE
Onondaga Lake is located in Central New York, near Lake Ontario and just east of the Finger Lakes region. Though it is a small lake, it has loomed large in North American history. Large enough that it was identified on early European maps.....
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ABOUT US
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...
OL Lake past and present
The land south of Onondaga Lake was once a rich wetland, part salt marsh, part freshwater swamp. We have created an animation to envision what the land might have looked like 300 years ago, compared to 2016.
OL Ghosts
The lowlands south of the lake have inspired grand visions for development and recreation, many of which were never realized or vanished very quickly. This animated video imagines the area as a landscape full of ghosts.
The sacred history of Onondaga Lake
Jake Edwards of the Onondaga Nation recounts the story of the ancient Great Law of Peace ceremony, where the warring nations cast their weapons of war underneath a great pine tree on the south shore of Onondaga Lake.
"Cedars, Capitalism, and a Carousel"
This video was created by Syracuse University students Rachel Brown-Weinstock, Kayla Fermin, and Andy Paladino about the history of the Carousel Mall and its underlying landscape.