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city in Oneida County, New York, United States
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Utica is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and the county seat of Oneida County. The tenth-most populous city in New York, its population was 65,283 in the 2020 census. It is located on the Mohawk River in the Mohawk Valley at the foot of the Adirondack Mountains, approximately 95 mi (153 km) west-northwest of Albany, 55 mi (89 km) east of Syracuse and 240 mi (386 km) northwest of New York City. Utica and the nearby city of Rome anchor the Utica–Rome metropolitan area comprising all of Oneida and Herkimer counties.
Formerly a river settlement inhabited by the Mohawk Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy, Utica attracted European-American settlers from New England during and after the American Revolution. In the 19th century, immigrants strengthened its position as a layover city between Albany and Syracuse on the Erie and Chenango Canals and the New York Central Railroad. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the city's infrastructure contributed to its success as a manufacturing center and defined its role as a worldwide hub for the textile industry.
Like other Rust Belt cities, Utica underwent an economic downturn throughout the mid-20th century. The decline consisted of industrial flight due to offshoring and the closure of textile mills, population loss caused by the relocation of jobs and businesses to suburbs and to Syracuse, and poverty associated with socioeconomic stress and a depressed tax base. With its low cost of living, the city has become a melting pot for refugees from war-torn countries around the world, encouraging growth for its colleges and universities, cultural institutions and economy.
Utica was an ancient Punic and later Roman city in Tunisia.
Many central New York cities are named after places and figures of the Greco-Roman world, including Rome, Syracuse, Ithaca, Troy, Homer, Cicero, and Ovid. This is largely due to the influence of Robert Harpur, a politician and professor at King's College (today Columbia University), who assigned many of the best known names.
An alternative attribution claims that the name was picked during a 1798 meeting at Bagg's Tavern, from a hat holding 13 suggestions.
Utica was established on the site of Old Fort Schuyler, built by American colonists for defense in 1758 during the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War against France. Prior to construction of the fort, the Mohawk, Onondaga and Oneida nations of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy had controlled this area southeast of the Great Lakes region as early as 4000 BC. The Mohawk were the largest and most powerful nation in the eastern and lower Mohawk Valley. Colonists had a long-standing fur trade with the Mohawk, in exchange for firearms and rum. The Iroquois nations' dominating presence in the region prevented the Province of New York from expanding past the middle of the Mohawk Valley until after the American victory over the British and British-allied Iroquois in the Revolutionary War. Following the war several Iroquois nations were forced to cede lands to the new State Of New York.
The land housing Old Fort Schuyler was part of a 20,000-acre (81 km2) portion of marshland granted by King George II to New York governor William Cosby on January 2, 1734. Since the fort was located near several trails (including the Great Indian Warpath), its position—on a bend at a shallow portion of the Mohawk River—made it an important fording point. The Mohawk call the bend Unundadages ("around the hill"), a name that now appears on the city's seal.
During the American Revolutionary War, border raids from British-allied Iroquois tribes harried the settlers on the frontier. George Washington ordered America’s first Rangers to enter Central New York and suppress the Iroquois threat. Sullivan's Expedition destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages and their winter stores, causing starvation. In the aftermath of the war, numerous colonial settlers migrated into the region of New York from New England, especially Connecticut.
In 1794 a state road, Genesee Road, was built from Utica west to the Genesee River. That year a contract was awarded to the Mohawk Turnpike and Bridge Company to extend the road northeast to Albany, and in 1798 it was extended. The Seneca Turnpike was key to Utica's development, replacing a worn footpath with a paved road. The village became a rest and supply area along the Mohawk River for goods and the many people moving through Western New York to and from the Great Lakes.
The boundaries of the village of Utica were defined in an act passed by the New York State Legislature on April 3, 1798. Utica expanded its borders in subsequent 1805 and 1817 charters. On April 5, 1805, the village's eastern and western boundaries were expanded, and on April 7, 1817, Utica separated from Whitestown on its west. After completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, the city's growth was stimulated again. Utica became a printing and publishing center, with many newspapers.
The municipal charter was passed by the state legislature on February 13, 1832. In 1840 the United States Census ranked Utica as the 29th-largest in the country (with over 12,000 residents, more than the populations of Chicago, Detroit or Cleveland).
Utica's location on the Erie and Chenango canals encouraged industrial development, allowing the transport of anthracite coal from northeastern Pennsylvania for local manufacturing and distribution. Utica's economy centered on the manufacture of furniture, heavy machinery, textiles and lumber. The combined effects of the Embargo Act of 1807 and local investment enabled further expansion of the textile industry.
In addition to the canals, transport in Utica was bolstered by railroads running through the city. The first was the Mohawk and Hudson Rail Road, which became the Utica and Schenectady Railroad in 1833. Its 78 mi (126 km) connection between Schenectady and Utica was developed in 1836 from the right-of-way previously used by the Mohawk and Hudson railroad. Later lines, such as the Syracuse and Utica Railroad, merged with the Utica and Schenectady to form the New York Central Railroad, which originated as a 19th-century forest railway of the Adirondacks.
In the early 1800s, William Williams and his partner published Utica's first newspaper, The Utica Club, from their printing shop on Genesee Street. In 1817 Williams also published Utica's first directory. Utica went on to become a printing and publishing center, with many newspapers.
During the 1850s, Utica aided more than 650 fugitive slaves; it played a major role as a station in the Underground Railroad. The city was on a slave escape route from the Southern Tier to Canada by way of Albany, Syracuse, or Rochester. The route, used by Harriet Tubman to travel to Buffalo, guided slaves to pass through Utica on the New York Central Railroad right-of-way en route to Canada. Utica was the locus for Methodist preacher Orange Scott's antislavery sermons during the 1830s and 1840s, and Scott formed an abolitionist group there in 1843. Beriah Green organized the 1835 initial meeting of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society in Utica, which was disrupted by an anti-abolitionist mob led by local congressman Samuel Beardsley and other "prominent citizens". (It adjourned to Gerrit Smith's home in nearby Peterboro, New York.) This mob was part of a national campaign of anti-abolitionist violence in the 1830s.
The early 20th century brought rail advances to Utica, with the New York Central electrifying 49 mi (79 km) of track from the city to Syracuse in 1907 for its West Shore interurban line. In 1902, the Utica and Mohawk Valley Railway connected Rome to Little Falls with a 37.5 mi (60.4 km) electrified line through Utica.
Waves of Lebanese Maronite, Italian, Irish, and Polish immigrants worked in the city's industries in the early part of the 20th century. Like many other industrial centers, labor unrest affected Utica in the 1910s; on April 5, 1912 martial law was proclaimed to stop riots in Utica, Yorkville, and New York Mills, while on October 28 during the strike wave of 1919, city police shot six or more striking textile workers. In 1919, two-thirds of employed Uticans worked in the textile industry. The textile industry in the Northern United States declined rapidly following World War I, as mills relocated to the Southern United States. Textiles remained the leading industry in Utica through 1947, with the few remaining mills employing a little less than a quarter of the city's workers.
As early as 1928, the area Chamber of Commerce sought to diversify Utica's industrial base. Prompted by local labor issues and national trends, the Republican political machine in Utica declined and was replaced by a Democratic machine headed by Rufus Elefante with the support of Governor (and later, President) Franklin D. Roosevelt. Democratic political leaders cooperated with local business interests to draw modern industry to Utica. General Electric, Chicago Pneumatic, Bendix Aviation, and Univac among others established factories in Utica. Utica College and Mohawk Valley Community College were founded to provide skilled workers, and Oneida County Airport was built to provide transport. The city also underwent residential redevelopment, including slum clearance and modernizing streets and neighborhoods to accommodate the automobile. The period of Utica history through the 1940s and 1950s is sometimes called the "loom to boom" era. While it led to growth of the suburbs of New Hartford and Whitestown, Utica's population remained flat during this era, and unemployment was persistently elevated.
As in some other US cities during the decade, scandals involving political corruption, vice, and organized crime tarnished Utica's reputation. Organized crime in Utica received national attention after three Utican mafiosos were reported to have attended the Apalachin meeting of American Mafia leaders in 1957. The New York Journal American dubbed Utica the "Sin City of the East", and reporting from sources like the Journal American and Newsweek gave Utica a national reputation for Mafia activities. Local business interests, as well as other media sources such as Look magazine, asserted that these reports were exaggerated, and corruption and crime in Utica were no worse than that in similar American cities. In 1959, the scandals culminated in criminal investigations of city employees and officials: many were arrested on charges related to prostitution, gambling, fraud, and conspiracy, and others were forced to resign. The Utica Daily Press and Utica Observer-Dispatch were awarded the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their investigations of local corruption. Elefante's machine lost dominance. Organized crime in Utica was curtailed, but resurged in the late 1970s. The local Mafia, present since the 1930s, ended with the indictment of local associates of the Buffalo crime family in 1989.
Strongly affected by the deindustrialization that took place in other Rust Belt cities, Utica suffered a major reduction in manufacturing activity during the second half of the 20th century. The remaining textile mills continued to be undercut by competitors in the South. The 1954 opening of the New York State Thruway (which bypassed the city) and declines in activity on the Erie Canal and railroads throughout the United States also contributed to a poor local economy. During the 1980s and 1990s, major employers such as General Electric and Lockheed Martin closed plants in Utica and Syracuse. Some Utica businesses relocated to nearby Syracuse, with its larger and more educated workforce. Utica's population fell while population in the county increased, reflecting a statewide trend of decreasing urban populations outside New York City. Eccentric populist mayor Ed Hanna, who served from 1974 to 1978 and from 1996 to 2000, brought himself national media attention but was unable to stem Utica's decline.
The low cost of living in Utica has attracted immigrants and refugees from around the world. The largest refugee groups in Utica are Bosnians, with 4,500 refugees resettled following the Bosnian War, and the Karen people of Myanmar, with about 4,000 resettled. Utica also has sizable communities of refugees from the former Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Between 2005 and 2010, Utica's population increased for the first time in decades, largely because of refugee resettlement. In 2015, about one quarter of the population of Utica were refugees, and 43 languages were spoken in city schools. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees described Utica as the "town that loves refugees" in 2005, although issues of discrimination still occur. In 2016, the Utica City School District settled lawsuits alleging refugee students were excluded from attending high school. In 2024, 13-year-old Karen refugee Nyah Mway was shot and killed by police, making national news. Immigration raids throughout 2025 and 2026 have also raised tensions.
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