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NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Champlain-Hudson valleys to tidewater. The former of these 

 routes — that through the Mohawk valley — was the pathway from 

 the east to the west when the white man first came. Here the 

 Iroquois warriors journeyed back and forth, and here, where the 

 Dutch patroons built with the fur trade the early beginnings of" 

 what is now a vast interstate commerce, is the great highway of 

 today. At Rome, the highest point on the divide between the 

 Mohawk river and the Great Lakes drainage, the surface of the 

 ground is only 430 feet above tidewater. This is the lowest pass 

 from the Adirondacks to Alabama; all other lines of communica- 

 tion rise to much higher altitudes than this. Hence, it was inevi- 

 table that New York State, by virtue of position alone, should 

 become a great manufacturing State. 



Let us see why the great waterpowers, indispensable to the 

 development of manufacturing, happen to be located on the direct 

 line of greatest commercial activity. The explanation is partly 

 geologic and partly topographic, or, if we consider topography 

 as an outcome of geology, then the explanation is all geologic. 



Favorable natural conditions. New York State is great in 

 water resources, not only by virtue of her position between the 

 Atlantic ocean and the Great Lakes, but because topographic, 

 geologic and climatic conditions have combined to make her the 

 highway of commerce as well as the manufacturing center of the 

 United States. Some of the contributing causes to this position 

 may be found in her mountain systems, affording great water 

 centers, from which large streams descend to the neighboring low- 

 lands, affording large opportunities for the economic development 

 of waterpower, as well as insuring an adequate supply of potable 

 water to her towns and municipalities. 



As regards waterpower, the other chief contributing causes are 

 the possession, as part of her domain, of the Niagara and St Law- 

 rence rivers, with their extensive waterpower development. 



A study of the climatology of New York shows that in nearly 

 every portion of the State the amount and distribution of the rain- 



