The Rochester area’s history reaches back to the Seneca, the westernmost of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, and its growth was shaped by the Genesee River’s fertile valley and waterfalls, which supported flour mills and manufacturing. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 transformed Rochester from a frontier boomtown into the “Young Lion of the West” and helped make it known as “the manufacturing city by the falls.” In Rochester, the First Genesee Aqueduct, built of red Medina sandstone, carried the canal over the Genesee River until it was replaced during the circa-1838 enlargement by a new aqueduct of Onondaga limestone. The Empire State Trail spans 750 miles across New York, linking natural beauty, cultural heritage, urban centers, village main streets, and rural communities from New York City through the Hudson River Valley, west to Buffalo along the historic Erie Canal, and north to the Champlain Valley and Adirondacks. In Rochester it connects with the Genesee Valley Greenway Trail, which follows a corridor that began as the Genesee Valley Canal, later became the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Rochester Branch, and was eventually converted into a trail and state park, and with the Genesee Riverway Trail, which runs from the Erie Canal to Lake Ontario and gives access to the river, gorge, waterfalls, landmarks, historic districts, and parks. Rochester also preserves the Charlotte-Genesee Lighthouse, built in 1822 and saved from demolition in 1965 by a campaign led by Charlotte High School students, and includes one of the nation’s few complete park systems designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, with Highland Park, Seneca Park, and Genesee Valley Park dating to the 1890s. The city’s heritage trail links important historic sites, and its museums include The Strong National Museum of Play, the George Eastman Museum, and the Rochester Museum and Science Center. Ralph C. Wilson, Jr., founder of the Buffalo Bills in 1959, later directed that much of his estate support the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation, whose parks and trails initiative committed 200 million dollars in 2018 to projects in Western New York and Southeast Michigan to connect communities, encourage healthy lifestyles, and promote economic growth.
