Syracuse, NY news and local guide

New York set aside the Onondaga Salt Springs Reservation, which became the basis of a salt industry from the late 1700s to the early 1900s. The brine came from salt beds near Tully, 15 miles south, and flowed north to the springs along the lake, and the area became known as the Salt City. The settlement, a cluster of small villages, had no name and so no post office. Joshua Forman wanted to call it Corinth, but when John Wilkinson applied for a post office under that name in 1820 it was refused because another Corinth existed in Saratoga County. Wilkinson had read a description of Syracuse in Sicily, with its lake and salt springs, and on February 4, 1820, he proposed the name Syracuse, which was adopted for the village and post office. In 1884 the first Solvay Process Company plant in the United States was built on the southwest shore of Onondaga Lake, making soda ash from Tully brine and limestone, and the village there was named Solvay for the inventor Ernest Solvay. Sources Wikipedia: Syracuse, New York