Buffalo New York City Hall Sources of Buffalo New York City Hall resources from the Web

The island was laced with foot trails, one which followed the south side of the ridge near the course of present day Richmond Road and Amboy Road. The Lenape did not live in fixed encampments, but moved seasonally, using slash and burn agriculture. The staples of their diet included shellfish, including the oysters that are native to both Upper New York Bay and Lower New York Bay.

Following a 554.26 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) on November 24, 1997, officials at the Exchange for the first time invoked the "circuit breaker" rule to stop trading. This was a very controversial move and prompted a quick change in the rule; trading thereafter stops only when the DJIA drops at least 10 or 20 percent.

The first European to see the harbor was Giovanni da Verrazano, during his expedition of 1524 and named it Nouvelle-Angoulême. Verrazano entered the harbor on April 17 and set anchor in the Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn, where he was greeted by a canoe party of Lenape.

In 1687-1688, the English divided the island into four administrative divisions based on natural features, called the North, South, and West divisions, as well as the 5100 acre (21 km²) manorial estate of colonial governor Thomas Dongan in the central hills known as the "Lordship or Manner of Cassiltown." These divisions would later evolve into the four townships Northfield, Southfield, Westfield, and Castleton.

The Erie Canal, though no longer so important a trade route (it is supplanted by railroads and highways) still defines the central commerce belt of New York State. The port city of Buffalo, Lockport, where the canal crossed a great limestone ridge, mill-town Rochester on the Genessee, and many smaller cities owe their growth, perhaps even their existence, to the Erie. Connecting canals were also built to Lake Ontario and the larger Finger Lakes.

Staten Island is separated from Long Island by the Narrows and from mainland New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull. It is connected to New Jersey by the Bayonne Bridge, the Outerbridge Crossing, the Goethals Bridge, and to Brooklyn by the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The Staten Island Ferry connects the island to lower Manhattan. The Staten Island Railway traverses the island from its northeastern tip to its southwestern tip.

In 2002, 16,892 laws were introduced in the New York legislature, more than twice as many as in the Illinois General Assembly, whose members are the second most prolific. Of those bills, only 4 percent, 693, actually became law, the lowest passing percentage in the country.

Upstate New York (as well as parts of present Ontario, Quebec, Pennsylvania, and Ohio) was occupied by the Five Nations (after 1720 becoming Six Nations, when joined by Tuscarora) of the Iroquois Confederacy for at least a half millenium before the Europeans came.

New York newspapers were read across the continent as editors James Gordon Bennett, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst battled for readership.

As in all fifty states, the head of the executive branch of government is a Governor. The legislative branch is called the Legislature and consists of a Senate and an Assembly. Unlike most States, the New York electoral law permits electoral fusion, and New York ballots tend to have, in consequence, a larger number of parties on them, some being permanent minor parties that seek to influence the major parties and others being ephemeral parties formed to give major-party candidates an additional line on the ballot.

The park has a year-round population of about 130,000 people in dozens of villages and hamlets. There are more than 3,000 lakes and 30,000 miles (48,000 km) of streams and rivers. Many areas within the park are devoid of settlments and distant from usable roads.

The idea of the Park first occurred to surveyor Verplanck Colvin in 1870 while taking in the view from atop Seward Mountain. He wrote to the state government that action was necessary to protect the forests or it would be wasted. Three years later he was appointed to a committee formed to consider how to do this.

After Jerome Kern's Show Boat, the Broadway musical developed into a characteristically American art, while Tin Pan Alley cranked out the tunes America danced to before rock and roll.

To the north of the island is Long Island Sound, which separates it from the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island. To the south are the Great South Bay, South Oyster Bay, and Jamaica Bay, which are actually lagoons, protected from the Atlantic Ocean by a string of narrow barrier islands, most notably Fire Island. The island separates into two forks at the eastern end, known as the North Fork and South Fork.