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In 1885, legislation declared that the land in the Adirondack State Park and the Catskill State Park was to be conserved and never put up for sale or lease. The park was established in 1892, due to the activities of Colvin and other conservationists. The park was given constitutional protection in 1894, so that the state-owned lands within its bounds would be protected forever ("forever wild"). The part of the Adirondack State Park under government control is referred to as the Adirondack Preserve.

As in much of North America, human habitation appeared in the island fairly rapidly after the retreat of the ice sheet. Archaeologists have recovered tool evidence of Clovis culture activity dating from approximately 14,000 years ago. The island was probably abandoned later, possibly because of the extinction of large mammals on the island. Evidence of the first permanent Native American settlements and agriculture date from about 5,000 years ago (Jackson, 1995).

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.

The Erie Canal proved to be a stroke of genius, as settlers now poured from New England, Eastern New York and Europe into the central and western part of the state. Others went on to Ohio and Michigan. The Canal was the first serious route for settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, which had previously been a geographic barrier. Now upstate farms and industries could easily ship their products to the large and growing market of New York City and beyond.

In Manhattan, uptown means north and downtown means south, either in direction of motion or in relative location. The terms uptown and downtown are most often used in the relative sense of north and south; however, uptown can also refer to the northern part of Manhattan (above 59th Street) and downtown to the southern part (below 23rd Street or 14th Street). The area in the middle, between 23rd and 59th Streets, is Midtown.

The Dutch took heavy advantage of the Native American reliance on wampum as a trading medium by exchanging cheap European-made metal tools for beaver pelts. By using such tools, the Natives greatly increased the rate of production of wampum, debasing its value for trade. Lenape men abandoned hunting and fishing for food in favor of beaver trapping.

The court system in New York is notable for its "backwards" naming: the state's trial court is called the New York Supreme Court, while the highest court in the state is the New York Court of Appeals.

Following this treaty, there were various groups attempting to circumvent the treaty and directly obtain title from the Indians. For example, in 1787 John Livingston, Col. John Butler, Samuel Street, a Capt. Powell, and Lt. William Johnston attempted to circumvent the Treaty of Hartford by purporting to purchase a 999-year lease of about 8 million acres (32,000 kmē) from the Iroquois. This lease, however, was promptly declared void by both the New York and the Massachusetts legislatures.

"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.

The Dutch were the first European settlers in the colony known as New Netherland (Nova Belgica in Latin). Fort Nassau was founded near Albany, New York in 1614 and abandoned in 1618.

In 1989, Koch was defeated by David Dinkins in the Democratic primary in his bid for a fourth term, and then Dinkins narrowly defeated Republican Rudolph Giuliani in the general election to become the city's first-ever black mayor.

An electrical blackout rolled through the Northeastern United States and Southern Canada on August 14, 2003 at 4:11 PM, leaving many areas, including NYC, without electricity for over a day. There was no major looting or other crime, unlike in the blackout of 1977.