Ithaca

Ithaca is a college town best known for hosting Cornell University, an Ivy League university founded in 1865, as well as Ithaca College. Until the late 18th century, present-day Ithaca was inhabited by the Cayuga people of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. In 1789, the federal and state governments began granting land in the area, known as the Central New York Military Tract, to compensate veterans of the American Revolutionary War. Located in the township of Ulysses, or Tract 22, Ithaca was populated by white settlers in 1794 and formally established in 1821.