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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.

Upstate New York includes the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains, the Shawangunk Ridge, the Finger and Great Lakes in the west and Lake Champlain, Lake George, and Oneida Lake in the northeast, and rivers such as the Delaware, Genesee, Hudson, Mohawk, and Susquehanna. The highest elevation in New York is Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks.

Staten Island is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located on an island of the same name on the west side of the Narrows at the entrance of New York Harbor. It is coterminous with Richmond County, the southernmost county of the State of New York.

The island of Manhattan was in some measure self-selected as a future metropolis by its extraordinary natural harbor formed by New York Bay (actually the drowned lower river valley of the Hudson River, enclosed by glacial moraines), the East River (actually a tidal strait) and the Hudson River, all of which are confluent at the southern tip, from which all later development spread.

The Lenape engaged a network of trade among themselves and with other tribes in northeastern North America through a system of barter. The principal medium of barter was wampum, which largely consisted of ornamented hand-made belts of crafted purple and white mollusk shells. The particular species required for wampum was found exclusively in the areas around Long Island Sound, in areas controlled by the Pequots.

On November 9, 1965, the city endured a massive power blackout along with much of eastern North America. The city's experience during the ordeal became the subject of a motion picture entitled Where Were You When The Lights Went Out?

About thirty Walloon families settled on the shores of the Hudson River near what is present day New York City and on the Delaware River around 1624. The Dutch also established Fort Oranje near present-day Albany in 1624. New Amsterdam was established on the island of Manhattan a year later by Peter Minuit. After the English took over in the 1660s, the colony was renamed New York, after the Duke of York, the future King James II of England.

"Upstate" is a common term for New York State north of the New York City metropolitan area; but many of those outside of the NYC metropolitan area find the term demeaning because it is emblematic of the cultural and demographic divide which separates the two areas, one rural and conservative, the other urban and liberal.

Not all of the land within the park is owned by the state, but new sections are purchased or donated frequently. The park contains the highest peaks (High Peaks) in New York State, including Mount Marcy the highest elevation in the state. About one-half of the park's six million acres (24,000 km˛) are in the public domain.

The phrase "Wall Street" is also used to refer to the financial markets as a whole. Interestingly, most New York financial firms are no longer headquartered on Wall Street (JPMorgan Chase, the last major holdout, sold its headquarters tower at 60 Wall Street to Deutsche Bank in November 2001), but elsewhere in lower and midtown Manhattan. When contrasted to "Main Street", it can refer to big business interests as against those of small business.