Interstate 88 (New York)
Interstate 88 is an Interstate Highway located within the U. S. state of New York. Nominally an east–west road as it has an number, it extends for 117.70 miles in a northeast–southwest direction from an interchange with I-81 north of Binghamton to an interchange with the New York State Thruway west of Schenectady. The freeway serves as an important connector route from the Capital District to Binghamton and Scranton, Pennsylvania. I-88 parallels NY 7, once the main route through the area. I-88 was assigned in 1968, construction of the highway began soon afterward; the first section of I-88 opened in the early 1970s, connecting two communities northeast of Binghamton. The last piece of the freeway was finished in 1989, linking the original segment to I-81 north of Binghamton. Early plans for I-88 called for the road to continue northeast to Troy. A combined freeway/tollway in Illinois, though not contiguous, was assigned the I-88 designation in 1987. I-88 begins at an interchange with I-81 just north of downtown Binghamton on the banks of the Chenango River.
While both directions of I-81 are accessible from I-88 westbound, only one direction of I-81 connects to I-88. The missing connection, I-81 south to I-88 east, is made via U. S. Route 11, NY 12 and NY 12A at I-81 exit 6. NY 12A connects to I-88 at exit 2. From I-81, I-88 heads east across the Chenango to Port Dickinson, where it merges with NY 7 at exit 1; the two routes continue north east along the eastern bank of the Chenango River, where it meets NY 12A near Chenango Bridge. I-88 and NY 7 remain alongside the river to Port Crane, where the river begins to follow NY 369 northward. Outside of Port Crane, the expressway heads east to Sanitaria Springs. Here, NY 7 leaves the expressway at exit 4 and begins to parallel I-88, as it does for the remainder of I-88's routing. I-88 continues east to Harpursville, connecting to NY 79 near the center of the community at exit 6. Shortly after meeting NY 79, I-88 reenters this time that of the Susquehanna River. I-88 heads to the northeast, following the river and NY 7 to Bainbridge where it meets NY 206 and on to Sidney, where it meets NY 8, the primary north–south road through the village, at exit 9.
From Sidney, I-88 progresses northeast through southern Otsego County, passing Unadilla before entering Oneonta. Within the city, I-88 interchanges with NY 205 ahead of an exit with NY 28. NY 28 joins the following I-88 out of the city. Northeast of Oneonta, NY 28 leaves I-88 at exit 17 to follow the Susquehanna River northward toward Cooperstown. I-88, remains on a northeasterly track through rural eastern Otsego County. Upon crossing into Schoharie County, I-88 begins to follow an easterly routing as it heads toward Cobleskill. While NY 7 enters the village, I-88 passes south of it, connecting to the village via two exits with NY 7. East of Cobleskill, I-88 interchanges with NY 145. Howe Caverns, a regionally popular attraction, is located a short distance north of the exit. I-88 continues onward, skirting the northern edge of Schoharie before passing into Schenectady County. Shortly after entering Schenectady County, I-88 meets US 20 east of Duanesburg. Past US 20, I-88 continues northeast, interchanging with NY 7 for one final time before ending at the New York State Thruway in western Schenectady.
The 1956 National System of Interstate and Defense Highways Act did not include I-88. New York state officials pressed for addition of the route, funding was included in the Federal Highway Act of 1968. Right-of-way acquisition started afterward, I-88 was added to the Interstate Highway System on December 13, 1968; as planned by the New York State Department of Transportation, I-88 would begin at I-81 in Binghamton and follow the proposed Susquehanna Expressway to Schenectady, from where it would continue to US 4 in Troy over "Alternate Route 7", the limited-access alignment of NY 7 through the northern suburbs of Albany. This would have been accomplished by having I-88 meet the New York State Thruway at exit 25, where it would connect to I-890. I-88 would continue to Troy over I-890 and an upgraded NY 7. In the early 1980s, the proposed connection with I-890 was scrapped in favor of a connection located to the west of exit 25 in Rotterdam; the extension to Troy was eventually shelved, thus the planned connections to the Adirondack Northway and the toll-free part of I-90 between Thruway exit 24 and exit B1 on the Berkshire Connector were never built.
As a result, the Thruway tolls are waived for all traffic that enters at exit 25A and heads west to exit 26 or east to either exit 25 or 24. The first section of I-88 to open was the piece between Chenango Bridge and Sanitaria Springs, which opened in the early 1970s. A second piece near Oneonta between exits 13 and 15 was opened to traffic c. 1974. Construction progressed southwestward from Oneonta, with the freeway reaching Nineveh by 1977; the gap between Sanitaria Springs and Nineveh was filled by 1981. The focus moved to the section of the expressway between Oneonta and Schenectady, completed from Oneonta to Duanesburg by 1981; the Duanesburg–Schenectady leg of I-88 was opened to traffic by 1985. In 1989, construction concluded on I-88 with the opening of the final portion of I-88 between I-81 in Chenango and NY 7 in Chenango Bridge. In 1999 NYSDOT, the Federal Highway Administration and the New York State Thruway Authority discussed redesignating the Berkshire Connector as I-90 and redesign
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital of the U. S. state of New York and the seat of Albany County. Albany is located on the west bank of the Hudson River 10 miles south of its confluence with the Mohawk River and 135 miles north of New York City. Albany is known for its rich history, culture and institutions of higher education. Albany constitutes the economic and cultural core of the Capital District of New York State, which comprises the Albany–Schenectady–Troy, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area, including the nearby cities and suburbs of Troy and Saratoga Springs. With a 2013 Census-estimated population of 1.1 million the Capital District is the third-most populous metropolitan region in the state. As of the 2010 census, the population of Albany was 97,856; the area that became Albany was settled by Dutch colonists who in 1614, built Fort Nassau for fur trading and, in 1624, built Fort Orange. In 1664, the English took over the Dutch settlements, renaming the city as Albany, in honor of the Duke of Albany, the future James II of England and James VII of Scotland.
The city was chartered in 1686 under English rule. It became the capital of New York in 1797 following formation of the United States. Albany is one of the oldest surviving settlements of the original British thirteen colonies, is the longest continuously chartered city in the United States. During the late 18th century and throughout most of the 19th, Albany was a center of trade and transportation; the city lies toward the north end of the navigable Hudson River, was the original eastern terminus of the Erie Canal connecting to the Great Lakes, was home to some of the earliest railroad systems in the world. In the 1920s, a powerful political machine controlled by the Democratic Party arose in Albany. In the latter part of the 20th century, Albany experienced a decline in its population due to urban sprawl and suburbanization. In the early 21st century, Albany has experienced growth in the high-technology industry, with great strides in the nanotechnology sector. Albany is one of the oldest surviving European settlements from the original thirteen colonies and the longest continuously chartered city in the United States.
The Hudson River area was inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Mohican, who called it Pempotowwuthut-Muhhcanneuw, meaning "the fireplace of the Mohican nation." Based to the west along the Mohawk River, the Iroquoian-speaking Mohawk referred to it as Sche-negh-ta-da, or "through the pine woods," referring to the path they took there. The Mohawk were one of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee, became strong trading partners with the Dutch and English, it is the Albany area was visited by European fur traders as early as 1540, but the extent and duration of those visits has not been determined. Permanent European claims began when Englishman Henry Hudson, exploring for the Dutch East India Company on the Half Moon, reached the area in 1609, claiming it for the United Netherlands. In 1614, Hendrick Christiaensen built Fort Nassau, a fur-trading post and the first documented European structure in present-day Albany. Commencement of the fur trade provoked hostility from the French colony in Canada and among the natives, all of whom vied to control the trade.
In 1618, a flood ruined the fort on Castle Island. Both forts were named in honor of the Dutch royal House of Orange-Nassau. Fort Orange and the surrounding area were incorporated as the village of Beverwijck in 1652. In these early decades of trade, the Dutch and Mohawk developed relations that reflected differences among their three cultures; when New Netherland was captured by the English in 1664, the name was changed from Beverwijck to Albany in honor of the Duke of Albany. Duke of Albany was a Scottish title given since 1398 to a younger son of the King of Scots; the name is derived from Alba, the Gaelic name for Scotland. The Dutch regained Albany in August 1673 and renamed the city Willemstadt. On November 1, 1683, the Province of New York was split into counties, with Albany County being the largest. At that time the county included all of present New York State north of Dutchess and Ulster Counties in addition to present-day Bennington County, theoretically stretching west to the Pacific Ocean.
Albany was formally chartered as a municipality by provincial Governor Thomas Dongan on July 22, 1686. The Dongan Charter was identical in content to the charter awarded to the city of New York three months earlier. Dongan created Albany as a strip of land 16 miles long. Over the years Albany would lose much of the land to the annex land to the north and south. At this point, Albany had a population of about 500 people. In 1754, representatives of seven British North American colonies met in the Stadt Huys, Albany's city hall, for the Albany Congress. Although it was never adopted by Parliament, it was an important precursor to the United States Constitution; the same year, the fourth in a series of wars dating back to 1689, began.
Hudson Valley
The Hudson Valley comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U. S. state of New York, from the cities of Albany and Troy southward to Yonkers in Westchester County. Depending upon the definition delineating its boundaries, the Hudson Valley encompasses a growing metropolis, home to between 3 and 3.5 million residents centered along the north-south axis of the Hudson River. The Hudson River valley runs north to south down the eastern edge of New York State, cutting through a series of rock types including Triassic sandstones and redbeds in the south and much more ancient Precambrian gneiss in the north. In the Hudson Highlands, the river enters a fjord cut during previous ice ages. To the west lie the extensive Appalachian highlands. In the Tappan Zee region, the west side of the river has high cliffs produced by an erosion-resistant diabase; the Hudson Valley is one physiographic section of the larger Ridge-and-Valley province, which in turn is part of the larger Appalachian physiographic division.
The northern portions of the Hudson Valley fall within the Eastern Great Lakes and Hudson Lowlands Ecoregion. During the last ice age, the valley was filled by a large glacier that pushed south as far as Long Island. Near the end of the last ice age, the Great Lakes drained south down the Hudson River, from a large glacial lake called Lake Iroquois. Lake Ontario is the remnant of that Lake. Large sand deposits remain from; the Hudson Valley was inhabited by indigenous peoples ages. The Algonquins lived along the Hudson River, with the three subdivisions of that group being the Lenape, the Wappingers, the Mahicans; the lower Hudson River was inhabited by the Lenape Indians. In fact, the Lenape Indians were the people that waited for the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano onshore, traded with Henry Hudson, sold the island of Manhattan. Further north, the Wappingers lived from Manhattan Island up to Poughkeepsie, they lived a similar lifestyle to the Lenape. They traded with both the Lenape to the Mahicans to the north.
The Mahicans lived in the northern valley from present-day Kingston to Lake Champlain, with their capital located near present-day Albany. The Lenape, the Wappingers, the Mahicans were speakers of languages that were part of Algonquin language family; as such, the three subdivisions were able to communicate with each other. Their relations with each other were peaceful. However, the Mahicans were in direct conflict with the Mohawk Indians to the west, a part of the Iroquois nation; the Mohawks would sometimes raid Mahican villages from the west. The Algonquins in the region lived in small clans and villages throughout the area. One major fortress was called Navish, located at Croton Point, overlooking the Hudson River. Other fortresses were located in various locations throughout the Hudson Highlands. Villagers lived in various types of houses; the houses could be rectangular. Large families lived in longhouses that could be a hundred feet long. At the associated villages, the indigenous peoples grew corn and squash.
They scavenged for other types of plant foods, such as various types of nuts and berries. In addition to agriculture, they fished for food in the river, focusing on various species of freshwater fish, as well as several variations of striped bass, sturgeon and shad. Oyster beds were common on the river floor, which provided an extra source of nutrition. Land hunting consisted of turkey, deer and other animals. In 1497, John Cabot claimed the entire country for England. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano visited the bay of New York, in service of Francis I of France. On his voyage, Verrazzano sailed north along the Atlantic seaboard. Verrazzano sailed all the way to New York Harbor. Verrazzano sailed his boat into the harbor and sailed over what is now Battery Park. However, Verrazzano never left the harbor shortly thereafter. A year Estevan Gomez, a Portuguese explorer sailing for Spain in search of the Northwest Passage visited New York Bay; the extent of his explorations in the bay is unknown.
Yet as Charles H. Winfield has noted, as late as 1679, there was a tradition among the First Nations that the Spanish arrived before the Dutch, that from them it was that the natives obtained the maize or Spanish wheat. Maps of that era based on Gomez's map labeled the coast from New Jersey to Rhode Island, as the "land of Estevan Gomez". In 1598 some Dutch employed by the Greenland Company wintered in the Bay. Eleven years the Dutch East India Company financed English navigator Henry Hudson in his attempt to search for the Northwest Passage. During this attempt, Henry Hudson decided to sail his ship up the river that would be named after him; as he continued up the river, its width expanded, into Haverstraw Bay, leading him to believe he had reached the Northwest Passage. He docked his ship on the western shore of Haverstraw Bay and claimed the territory as the first Dutch settlement in North America, he proceeded upstream as far as present-day Troy before concluding that no such strait existed there.
After Henry Hudson realized that the Hudson River was not the Nort
ZIP Code
A ZIP Code is a postal code used by the United States Postal Service in a system it introduced in 1963. The term ZIP is an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan; the basic format consists of five digits. An extended ZIP+4 code was introduced in 1983 which includes the five digits of the ZIP Code, followed by a hyphen and four additional digits that reference a more specific location; the term ZIP Code was registered as a servicemark by the U. S. Postal Service, but its registration has since expired; the early history and context of postal codes began with postal district/zone numbers. The United States Post Office Department implemented postal zones for numerous large cities in 1943. For example: The "16" was the number of the postal zone in the specific city. By the early 1960s, a more organized system was needed, non-mandatory five-digit ZIP Codes were introduced nationwide on July 1, 1963; the USPOD issued its Publication 59: Abbreviations for Use with ZIP Code on October 1, 1963, with the list of two-letter state abbreviations which are written with both letters capitalized.
An earlier list in June had proposed capitalized abbreviations ranging from two to five letters. According to Publication 59, the two-letter standard was "based on a maximum 23-position line, because this has been found to be the most universally acceptable line capacity basis for major addressing systems", which would be exceeded by a long city name combined with a multi-letter state abbreviation, such as "Sacramento, Calif." along with the ZIP Code. The abbreviations have remained unchanged, with the exception of Nebraska, changed from NB to NE in 1969 at the request of the Canadian postal administration, to avoid confusion with the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Robert Moon is considered the father of the ZIP Code; the post office only credits Moon with the first three digits of the ZIP Code, which describe the sectional center facility or "sec center." An SCF is a central mail processing facility with those three digits. The fourth and fifth digits, which give a more precise locale within the SCF, were proposed by Henry Bentley Hahn Sr.
The SCF sorts mail to all post offices with those first three digits in their ZIP Codes. The mail is sorted according to the final two digits of the ZIP Code and sent to the corresponding post offices in the early morning. Sectional centers do not deliver mail and are not open to the public, most of their employees work the night shift. Mail picked up at post offices is sent to their own SCF in the afternoon, where the mail is sorted overnight. In the case of large cities, the last two digits coincide with the older postal zone number thus: In 1967, these became mandatory for second- and third-class bulk mailers, the system was soon adopted generally; the United States Post Office used a cartoon character, which it called Mr. ZIP, to promote the use of the ZIP Code, he was depicted with a legend such as "USE ZIP CODE" in the selvage of panes of postage stamps or on the covers of booklet panes of stamps. In 1971 Elmira Star-Gazette reporter Dick Baumbach found out the White House was not using a ZIP Code on its envelopes.
Herb Klein, special assistant to President Nixon, responded by saying the next printing of envelopes would include the ZIP Code. In 1983, the U. S. Postal Service introduced an expanded ZIP Code system that it called ZIP+4 called "plus-four codes", "add-on codes", or "add-ons". A ZIP+4 Code uses the basic five-digit code plus four additional digits to identify a geographic segment within the five-digit delivery area, such as a city block, a group of apartments, an individual high-volume receiver of mail, a post office box, or any other unit that could use an extra identifier to aid in efficient mail sorting and delivery. However, initial attempts to promote universal use of the new format met with public resistance and today the plus-four code is not required. In general, mail is read by a multiline optical character reader that instantly determines the correct ZIP+4 Code from the address—along with the more specific delivery point—and sprays an Intelligent Mail barcode on the face of the mail piece that corresponds to 11 digits—nine for the ZIP+4 Code and two for the delivery point.
For Post Office Boxes, the general rule is. The add-on code is one of the following: the last four digits of the box number, zero plus the last three digits of the box number, or, if the box number consists of fewer than four digits, enough zeros are attached to the front of the box number to produce a four-digit number. However, there is no uniform rule, so the ZIP+4 Code must be looked up individually for each box; the ZIP Code is translated into an Intelligent Mail barcode, printed on the mailpiece to make it easier for automated machines to sort. A barcode can be printed by the sender, it is better to let the post office put one on. In general, the post office uses OCR technology, though in some cases a human might have to read and enter the address. Customers who send bulk mail can get a discount on postage if they have printed the barcode themselves and have presorted the mai
Town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are larger than villages but smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish them vary between different parts of the world; the word town shares an origin with the German word Zaun, the Dutch word tuin, the Old Norse tun. The German word Zaun comes closest to the original meaning of the word: a fence of any material. An early borrowing from Celtic *dunom. In English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed. In England, a town was a small community that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications, built a palisade or stockade instead. In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, more those of the wealthy, which had a high fence or a wall around them. In Old Norse tun means a place between farmhouses, the word is still used in a similar meaning in modern Norwegian. In Old English and Early and Middle Scots, the words ton, etc. could refer to diverse kinds of settlements from agricultural estates and holdings picking up the Norse sense at one end of the scale, to fortified municipalities.
If there was any distinction between toun and burgh as claimed by some, it did not last in practice as burghs and touns developed. For example, "Edina Burgh" or "Edinburgh" was built around a fort and came to have a defensive wall. In some cases, "town" is an alternative name for "city" or "village". Sometimes, the word "town" is short for "township". In general, today towns can be differentiated from townships, villages, or hamlets on the basis of their economic character, in that most of a town's population will tend to derive their living from manufacturing industry and public services rather than primary industry such as agriculture or related activities. A place's population size is not a reliable determinant of urban character. In many areas of the world, e.g. in India at least until recent times, a large village might contain several times as many people as a small town. In the United Kingdom, there are historical cities; the modern phenomenon of extensive suburban growth, satellite urban development, migration of city dwellers to villages has further complicated the definition of towns, creating communities urban in their economic and cultural characteristics but lacking other characteristics of urban localities.
Some forms of non-rural settlement, such as temporary mining locations, may be non-rural, but have at best a questionable claim to be called a town. Towns exist as distinct governmental units, with defined borders and some or all of the appurtenances of local government. In the United States these are referred to as "incorporated towns". In other cases the town lacks its own governance and is said to be "unincorporated". Note that the existence of an unincorporated town may be set out by other means, e.g. zoning districts. In the case of some planned communities, the town exists in the form of covenants on the properties within the town; the United States Census identifies many census-designated places by the names of unincorporated towns which lie within them. The distinction between a town and a city depends on the approach: a city may be an administrative entity, granted that designation by law, but in informal usage, the term is used to denote an urban locality of a particular size or importance: whereas a medieval city may have possessed as few as 10,000 inhabitants, today some consider an urban place of fewer than 100,000 as a town though there are many designated cities that are much smaller than that.
Australian geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor proposed a classification of towns based on their age and pattern of land use. He identified five types of town: Infantile towns, with no clear zoning Juvenile towns, which have developed an area of shops Adolescent towns, where factories have started to appear Early mature towns, with a separate area of high-class housing Mature towns, with defined industrial and various types of residential area In Afghanistan and cities are known as shār; as the country is an rural society with few larger settlements, with major cities never holding more than a few hundred thousand inhabitants before the 2000s, the lingual tradition of the country does not discriminate between towns and cities. In Albania "qytezë" means town, similar with the word for city. Although there is no official use of the term for any settlement. In Albanian "qytezë" means "small city" or "new city", while in ancient times "small residential center within the walls of a castle"; the center is a population group, larger than a village, smaller than a city.
Though the village is bigger than a hamlet In Australia, towns or "urban centre localities" are understood to be those centers of population not formally declared to be cities and having a population in excess of about 200 people. Centers too small to be called towns are understood to be a township. In addition, some local government entities are styled as towns in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, before the statewide amalgamations of th
Sullivan Expedition
The 1779 Sullivan Expedition known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, or Sullivan Campaign was an extended systematic military campaign during the American Revolutionary War against Loyalists and the four Nations of the Haudenosaunee which had sided with the British. The campaign ordered and organized by George Washington and his staff was conducted chiefly in the lands of the Iroquois Confederacy "taking the war home to the enemy to break their morale", the expedition was successful in that goal as they destroyed more than 40 Iroquois villages and stores of winter crops, breaking the power of the six nations in New York all the way to the Great Lakes, as the terrified Indian families relocated to Canada seeking protection of the British. Today this area is the heartland of Upstate New York, with the military power of the Iroquois vanquished, the events opened up the vast Ohio Country, the Great Lakes regions, Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky to post-war settlements. Led by Major General John Sullivan and Brigadier General James Clinton, the expedition was conducted during the summer of 1779, beginning June 18 when the army marched from Easton, Pennsylvania, to October 3 when it abandoned Fort Sullivan, built at Tioga, to return to George Washington's main camp in New Jersey.
While the campaign had only one major battle, at Newtown along the Chemung River in western New York, the expedition damaged the Iroquois nations' economies by burning their crops and chattels, thus ruining the Iroquois technological infrastructure. With the Amerindians' shelter gone and food supplies destroyed, thereafter the strength of the Iroquois Confederacy was broken; the death toll from exposure and starvation dwarfed the casualties received in the Battle of Newtown, in which about 1,000 Iroquois and Loyalists were decisively defeated by an army of 3,200 Continental soldiers. Sullivan's army carried out a scorched earth campaign, methodically destroying at least forty Iroquois villages throughout the Finger Lakes region of western New York, to put an end to Iroquois and Loyalist attacks against American settlements as had occurred the previous year of 1778, such as the Cobleskill, Wyoming Valley and Cherry Valley massacres; the survivors fled to British regions in the Niagara Falls and Buffalo areas.
The devastation created great hardships for the thousands of Iroquois refugees who fled the region to shelter under British military protection outside Fort Niagara that winter, many starved or froze to death, despite strenuous attempts by the British authorities to import food and provide shelter via their limited resources. The Sullivan Expedition devastated the Iroquois crops and towns and left them dependent upon the mercy of the British for the harsh winter of 1779. With the Iroquois population decimated by disease and battle, the Indian morale never recovered, the Iroquois thereafter limited their incursions into the new United States to isolated hunting parties, the main populations having permanently migrated north of the border; when the American Revolutionary War began, British officials as well as the colonial Continental Congress sought the allegiance of the influential Iroquois Confederacy. The Six Nations divided over. Most Mohawks, Cayugas and Senecas chose to ally themselves with the British.
But the Oneidas and Tuscaroras, thanks in part to the influence of Presbyterian missionary Samuel Kirkland, joined the American revolutionaries. For the Iroquois, the American Revolution became a civil war; the Iroquois homeland lay on the frontier between the Province of Quebec and the provinces of New York and Pennsylvania. After a British army surrendered after the Battles of Saratoga in upstate New York in 1777, Loyalists and their Iroquois allies raided American Patriot settlements in the region, as well as the villages of American-allied Iroquois. Working out of Fort Niagara, men such as Loyalist commander Colonel John Butler, Mohawk military leader Joseph Brant, Seneca chief Cornplanter led the British-Indian raids. Commander-in-chief General George Washington never allocated more than minimal Continental Army troops for the defense of the frontier and he told the frontier settlements to use local militia for their own defense. On June 10, 1778, the Board of War of the Continental Congress concluded that a major Indian war was in the offing.
Since a defensive war would prove to be inadequate the board called for a major expedition of 3,000 men against Fort Detroit and a similar thrust into Seneca country to punish the Iroquois. Congress designated Major General Horatio Gates to lead the campaign and appropriated funds for the campaign. In spite of these plans, the expedition did not occur until the following year. On July 3, 1778, Loyalist commander Colonel Butler led his Rangers accompanied by a force of Senecas and Cayugas in an attack on Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley annihilating 360 armed Patriot defenders lured out of their defenses at Forty Fort. In September 1778, revenge for the Wyoming defeat was taken by American Colonel Thomas Hartley who, with 200 soldiers, burned nine to twelve Seneca and Mingo villages along the Susquehanna River in northeast Pennsylvania, including Tioga and Chemung. At the same time, Butler's Rangers attacked German Flatts in the Mohawk Valley, destroying all the houses and fields in the area. Further American retaliation was soon taken by Continental Army units under William Butler and John Cantine, burning the substantial In
Susquehanna River
The Susquehanna River is a major river located in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic United States. At 464 miles long, it is the longest river on the East Coast of the United States that drains into the Atlantic Ocean. With its watershed, it is the 16th-largest river in the United States, the longest river in the early 21st-century continental United States without commercial boat traffic; the Susquehanna River forms from two main branches: the "North Branch", which rises in Cooperstown, New York, is regarded by federal mapmakers as the main branch or headwaters, the West Branch, which rises in western Pennsylvania and joins the main branch near Northumberland in central Pennsylvania. The river drains 27,500 square miles, including nearly half of the land area of Pennsylvania; the drainage basin includes portions of the Allegheny Plateau region of the Appalachian Mountains, cutting through a succession of water gaps in a broad zigzag course to flow across the rural heartland of southeastern Pennsylvania and northeastern Maryland in the lateral near-parallel array of mountain ridges.
The river empties into the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay at Perryville and Havre de Grace, providing half of the Bay's freshwater inflow. The Chesapeake Bay is the ria of the Susquehanna; the Susquehanna River is one of the oldest existing rivers in the world, being dated as 320-340 Mya, older than the mountain ridges through which it flows. These ridges resulted from the Alleghenian orogeny uplift events, when Africa slammed into the Northern part of EurAmerica); the Susquehanna basin reaches its ultimate outflow in the Chesapeake Bay. It was well established in the flat tidelands of eastern North America during the Mesozoic era about 252 to 66 million years ago; this is the same period when the Hudson and Potomac rivers were established. Both branches and the lower Susquehanna were part of important regional transportation corridors; the river was extensively used for muscle-powered ferries and canal boat shipping of bulk goods in the brief decades before the Pennsylvania Canal System was eclipsed by the coming of age of steam-powered railways.
While the railroad industry has been less prevalent since the closures and mergers of the 1950s–1960s, a wide-ranging rail transportation infrastructure still operates along the river's shores. Called the Main Branch Susquehanna, the longer branch of the river rises at the outlet of Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, New York. From there, the north branch of the river runs west-southwest through rural farmland and dairy country, receiving the Unadilla River at Sidney, it dips south into Pennsylvania to turn north at Great Bend hooking back into New York. It receives the Chenango in downtown Binghamton. After meandering westwards, it turns south crossing the line again through the twin-towns of Waverly, NY–Sayre and their large right bank railyard, once holding the largest building in the world. A couple miles south, just across the New York state line, in Athens Township in northern Pennsylvania it receives the Chemung from the northwest, it makes a right-angle curve between Sayre and Towanda to cut through the Endless Mountains in the Allegheny Plateau of Pennsylvania.
It receives the Lackawanna River southwest of Scranton and turns to the southwest, flowing through the former anthracite industrial heartland in the mountain ridges of northeastern Pennsylvania, past Pittston City, Wilkes-Barre, Shickshinny, Berwick and Danville. The origin of the official West Branch is near northern Cambria County, Pennsylvania near the contemporary junction of Mitchel Road and US Route 219, it travels northeasterly through Curwensville and through Clearfield, where it's joined by the Clearfield Creek right bank tributary. The Clearfield Creek tributary rises in a Loretto woodlands source spring outflow running northerly while draining the north-face and eastern slopes of the drainage divide crossing athwart the greater pass — the irregular rolling terrain of the several local gaps of the Allegheny—several of which end in the hilly pass around Gallitzin Borough, Gallitzin Township, Cresson area — all above and within the greater Altoona, Pennsylvania area. Clearfield Creek passes through Cresson Lake and bends to flow northeast or north-northeast, passing through other tarns and receiving tributary waters along its descending meanders.
Outside the pass flats, it is paralleled by PA Route 53, built in the river valley, passing through small towns such as Ashville, Glen Hope and others that developed along its banks. It makes its way north and east to the confluence in Clearfield—this valley is exploited as a railroad corridor from Clearfield, climbing to end in a wye within Cresson in the same broad saddle pass as did the upper works of the Allegheny Portage Railroad; the railroad joins the railroad mainline, climbing a nearby incline through the famous Horseshoe Curve. The West Branch turns to the southeast and passes through Lock Haven and Williamsport before turning south; the West Branch joins the North Branch flowing from the northwest at Northumberland, just above Sunbury. Downstream from the confluence of its branches in Northumberland, the river flows south past Selinsgrove, where it is joined by its Penns Creek tributary, cuts through a water gap at the western end of Mahantongo Mountain, it receives the Juniata River from the northwest at Duncannon passes through it
