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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.

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.

By about 1970, New York City had become notorious the world over for having high rates of crime and other social disorder, including several incidents in which police officers were ambushed and murdered by black militants. A popular song in the autumn of 1972, "American City Suite," chronicled, in allegorical fashion, the decline in the city's quality of life.

The megalopolis, however, is not the only aspect of New York State. While best known for New York City's urban atmosphere, especially Manhattan's skyscrapers, by contrast the rest of the state is dominated by farms, forests, rivers, mountains, and lakes. Few people know that New York's Adirondack State Park is larger than any National Park in the US.

Had the Welland Canal, which bypassed Niagara Falls to connect Lakes Ontario and Erie, been built first, instead of in 1833, the history of North America could have been far different, with Montreal, Quebec becoming the main eastern port, instead of New York City.