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However much the tourist authorities try to encourage visitors, the large and rambling state of NEW YORK stands inevitably in the shadow of America's most celebrated city. The words "New York" bring to mind soaring skyscrapers and congested streets, not the 50,000 square miles of rolling dairy farmland, colonial villages, workaday towns, lakes, waterfalls and towering mountains that spread north and west from New York City and constitute upstate New York . Just an hour's drive north of Manhattan, the valley of the Hudson River , with the moody Catskill Mountains rising stealthily from the west bank, offers a respite from the intensity of the city. Much wilder and more rugged are the peaks of the vast Adirondack Mountains further north - far beyond the scope of a casual excursion, but holding some of eastern America's most enticing scenery. To the west, the slender Finger Lake s and endless miles of dairy farms and vineyards occupy the central portion of the state. Few of the cities hold much of interest, but the smaller towns, like Ivy League Ithaca , can be quite charming for a day or two, while the venerable spa town of Saratoga Springs attracts thousands of punters during the August horse racing season.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as nation-molding political and military battles were taking place, semi-feudal Dutch landowning dynasties such as the Van Rensselaers held sway upstate. Their control over tens of thousands of tenant farmers was barely affected by the transfer of colonial power from Holland to Britain, or even by American independence. Only with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, linking New York City with the Great Lakes, did the interior start to open up; improved opportunities for trade enabled canal-side cities like Rochester, Syracuse and especially Buffalo to undergo massive expansion. On the other hand, this industrial and agricultural growth in the hinterland served, inevitably, to increase the financial standing of the Wall Street capitalists. The story of the past century and a half has been one of New York City's political and economic domination of New York State, though Governor George Pataki's popularity has buoyed upstate politicians, if not fully redressed the imbalance.

From New York City, the Long Island Railroad (leaving from Penn Station) and Metro North (leaving from Grand Central Station) shuttle commuters to and from the suburbs of Long Island and Westchester County respectively. For journeys further north, Greyhound and Adirondack Trailways buses run to all the major towns, while Amtrak operates a train service along a beautiful route through the Hudson Valley to the state capital, Albany ; from there trains continue north to Montréal via the Adirondacks, and west along the Erie Canal to Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Many bus and train stations are several miles out from the town centers; the necessary walking can be unpleasant in the muggy heat of summer (not to mention the freezing winter).

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