Syracuse

City in New York State, USA, on Lake Onondaga; population (2000) 147,300. Industries include the manufacture of electrical and other machinery, paper, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, and processed foods. There are canal links with the Great Lakes and the Hudson and St Lawrence rivers. Settled in the 1780s as a salt-mining centre on the site of a former Iroquois capital, it later developed as a port on the Erie Canal (completed 1825).

It is the seat of Syracuse University (1870), the State University of New York Health Science Center (1834), and Le Moyne College (1946). Other features include the Erie Canal Museum, and the New York State Fair, held here annually since 1841.

First efforts to establish a mission and fort on the site in 1655-56 had to be abandoned because of American Indian hostility. Settled permanently as Webster's Landing in the 1780s, the town was renamed after Syracuse of the ancient Greeks in 1820. Its salt industry declined after the Civil War. It became a major distribution and manufacturing centre, strategically positioned on the Erie Canal (now used for recreational boating), the main New York-Chicago line, and the New York State Thruway.