Not all tourist traps are alike. At some point, a tourist trap transcends its label, becoming a “must-see” simply for being so over the top. I can’t remember when we saw the first Wall Drug roadside sign, but its fame far exceeded its actual appearance.
We’d long left Chicago’s skyline behind for the flatlands. Of course, before the wide-open spaces, we traversed Wisconsin and Minnesota. It’s kind of arbitrary, but somehow poetic, to declare that crossing the Mississippi River truly makes you feel “out West” for the first time.
I-90 crosses the Mississippi on the Wisconsin-Minnesota border immediately south of Lake Onalaska. Yeah, they call it a lake, but it looks like it’s part of the river. Stretching 4 miles across, this is the widest span of the Mississippi River (if you include the Lake).
Oddly, crossing the Mississippi didn’t immediately scream “out West.” Instead, my brain went Continue Reading “Tourist Traps to Timeless Landscapes”
America’s Forgotten First Frontier
Before the wild wilderness of Alaska, before the trans-Mississippi west, even before the Appalachian forests and the Cumberland Gap, the Greater Western New York region stood as America’s First Frontier. It was a rugged place where individuals could test the fruits of its promise—and sometimes discover its limits.
But it was tamed.
Quickly tamed.
Too quick for history books to notice.
And so, it slipped quietly out of the national memory.
Until a sportscaster unintentionally reframed its true origin story.
When Chris Berman proclaimed, “Nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills,” he wasn’t merely referring to a professional football team. He was describing a people. Perhaps without realizing it, he was echoing the rich experience of the region’s earliest pioneers—men and women who braved brutal winters to build permanent homes in the post-Revolutionary War virgin arboreal woodlands and lush valleys of the Greater Western New York Region.
Far beyond the settled coastal cities of the Atlantic, this was the first true frontier of the new nation. Unlike what would later become Kentucky and Ohio, it lay within an original state rather than a federal territory. That distinction mattered more than history remembers.
Europeans called Western New York “terra incognita” during the colonial era. It was, however, home to the Seneca and Cayuga, two member nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The French were the first Europeans to pass through. Their explorers camped here. Their missionaries converted here. Their soldiers fought and built forts here.
But they didn’t settle here.
That omission was not accidental. Western New York was too valuable to ignore—and too dangerous to control without alliances.
It became a critical artery in the economy of New France, later brokered by the Dutch, and ultimately claimed by the British. That final transfer was secured not by force alone, but through alliance with the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.
The Seneca served as “Keepers of the Western Door.” Ostensibly defensive, that door became a gateway to expansion. During the Beaver Wars, the Confederacy used it to eliminate the Erie tribe and to push its Algonquin adversaries off the map. This left the lands west of the Genesee River wholly vacated a century before the Revolutionary War.
The consequences were profound. French trappers lost their allies. British traders gained control of the valuable fur routes along the fertile waters that flow through western New York and beyond. And America’s First Frontier became one of the earliest battlegrounds for European supremacy in upper North America.
The Western New York region has always been a strategic crossroads.
Long before French missionaries first set foot in the New World, the feud between the Confederacy and its Iroquoian and Algonquin neighbors had been ongoing. The arrival of the Europeans didn’t change the dynamic. It intensified it.
At one time or another, all four Old World powers laid claim to the region. Ambitious Spanish claims, the French fur trade, the Netherlands river-based financial colonies, and the British desire for Empire, all collided here (and elsewhere).
Spain’s claim existed only on paper. They never came close. The Dutch, on the other hand, made the unfortunate decision to choose the Erie as their partners. When the Cat Nation disappeared, New Netherlands shortly followed, mostly without a fight. Mostly.
The French and the British, however, did what the French and the British always did. They went to war. Whether you call it “The French and Indian War” (as North Americans do) or the “Seven Years’ War” (as Europeans do), its outcome determined the fate of American colonies.
Decades later, before Horace Greeley championed Manifest Destiny when his New York Tribune pronounced, “Go West, young man,” New Englanders loaded up their wagons and headed down the ancient Central Trail of the Iroquois Confederacy. They looked past Geneva, at that time, the westernmost settlement in New York State (which itself became a point of controversy).
The Greater Western New York Region promised opportunity and risk in equal measure. It became the proving ground for a new nation’s first attempts to settle undeveloped land.
But it was more than that.
As George Washington quickly learned, America’s first frontier wasn’t just about the pioneers; in true mythic form, this west also posed diplomatic challenges regarding the conquered peoples who had previously claimed the land. The dance between state and federal power in the infant United States proved precarious. Fortunately, Washington’s wisdom and restraint helped protect both the State of New York and the Seneca Nation.
Still, uncertainty lingered.
Though technically part of New York State, the western portion of this original colony lacked clearly defined boundaries. Not until the War of 1812 would the dispute of the “Mile Strip” on the Niagara River be resolved.
Before then, however, the future of the Greater Western New York Region was cloudy at best. It stood on the cusp of history, on the edge of possibility.
Would that history be British, as part of Upper Canada?
Would it remain tethered to America and New York State?
Or would it become an independent state, following Vermont’s example?
Indeed, within a decade of the Paris Treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, no fewer than three attempts were made to separate Greater Western New York from New York State. What was the motivation for this? Why did they fail? How did state and local leaders respond? And what does that response reveal about the fragile architecture of the early republic?
Those unanswered questions are not historical curiosities.
They are the central mystery of our own backyard.
As we celebrate America’s 250th, perhaps now is a good time to rediscover a chapter of our past that unfolded quietly, quickly, and almost invisibly.
After all, history is not what survives in a bland textbook. It is more alive than that. More contingent. More human. And to the attentive ear, the all-seeing eye, and the genuinely curious, it often reveals far more than we were ever taught to notice.
A history too often skipped in classrooms.
A history unfamiliar to many elected officials.
A history even seasoned historians sometimes overlook.
It’s the history of America’s forgotten first frontier.
And it leads, inevitably, to one enduring question that can finally be revealed to you:
To understand why that question was ever asked—and why it was never answered—we must return to the moments when authority was uncertain, allegiance was fluid, and the future of this frontier was still undecided.
Interested? Have you joined the 1786 Project yet? Go to http://1786project.com/ to access cool stuff about the history of the Greater Western New York Region! (And find out how to participate in the hidden treasure hunt!)