Onondaga Historical Association

The film, Beneath the Surface: The Storied History of Onondaga Lake, covers the amazing history of the lake and the remarkable impact it has had on our American Way of Life over the past six centuries.

From the birthplace of the Great Law of Peace and the great Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the first representative democracy in the west, to the production of the country’s largest supply of some of its most important commodities and innovative products, to the Resort Era and the WPA project that built Onondaga Lake Park, to the most polluted lake in America, to one of the largest Superfund Clean-up sites in history, to a tourist attraction and the center of economic, cultural, recreational, educational, and natural development in our community.