Cayuga Heights is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

Tompkins County Tompkins County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 105,740. The county seat is Ithaca. The name is in honor of Daniel D. Tompkins, who served as Governor of New York and Vice Preside ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, United States and an upscale suburb of

Ithaca Ithaca most commonly refers to: *Homer's Ithaca, an island featured in Homer's ''Odyssey'' *Ithaca (island), an island in Greece, possibly Homer's Ithaca *Ithaca, New York, a city, and home of Cornell University and Ithaca College Ithaca, Ithaka ...

. The village is in the

Town of Ithaca The Town of Ithaca is a former local government area of Queensland, Australia, located in inner western Brisbane. History The Ithaca Division was first proclaimed in 1879, and originally covered an area that stretched from Windsor, Kelvin G ...

, directly northeast of the City of Ithaca and

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

's main campus. The population was 3,729 at the 2010 census. The village is home to many faculty members at

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

, including its president.

History

After the Revolutionary War, much of

Upstate New York Upstate New York is a geographic region consisting of the area of New York (state), New York State that lies north and northwest of the New York metropolitan area, New York City metropolitan area. Although the precise boundary is debated, Upsta ...

was divided into tracts to be given to veterans. Several veterans received lots in what is now Cayuga Heights, and started farms. In the early 1800s,

started to grow as a small city and inland port. In 1865,

Ezra Cornell Ezra Cornell (; January 11, 1807 – December 9, 1874) was an American businessman, politician, and philanthropist. He was the founder of Western Union and a co-founder of Cornell University. He also served as President of the New York Agricul ...

started

. Students and faculty members initially lived on campus and in Ithaca, but rapid expansion in the late 1800s and early 1900s spurred new development north of the Fall Creek gorge. Two trolley bridges were built across the gorge, and a streetcar connected downtown, Cornell, and the budding residential development north of the gorge. In the 1901, local businessmen Charles Newman and Jared Blood bought nearly 1,000 acres of farmland and started the "Cayuga Heights Land Company." They hired landscape architect

Harold Caparn Harold may refer to: People * Harold (given name), including a list of persons and fictional characters with the name * Harold (surname), surname in the English language * András Arató, known in meme culture as "Hide the Pain Harold" Arts ...

, who designed the

Brooklyn Botanic Garden Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is a botanical garden in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City. It was founded in 1910 using land from Mount Prospect Park in central Brooklyn, adjacent to Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Museum. The garden holds ...

, to design an organic, curving, park-like layout of roads and trees. Cayuga Heights was incorporated as a village in 1915, consisting of one-half square mile of land from the City of Ithaca line to what is now Upland Road. In 1924, Cayuga Heights Elementary School was built. After World War II, Cayuga Heights continued to expand. The Community Corners Shopping Center was built as a small suburban shopping plaza for residents in 1947, and in 1952, the village opened its own wastewater treatment plant on the shore of

Cayuga Lake Cayuga Lake (,,) is the longest of central New York's glacial Finger Lakes, and is the second largest in surface area (marginally smaller than Seneca Lake) and second largest in volume. It is just under long. Its average width is , and it is ...

. The village resisted attempts to be annexed by the growing City of Ithaca, and instead more than tripled in size in 1954, when it annexed approximately 1.4 square miles of land in the Town of Ithaca extending from Upland Road to the Town of Lansing border. A large addition was built onto Cayuga Heights Elementary School in the late 1950s. In 1969, the First Congregational Church relocated from downtown Ithaca to a new building on the former site of the Country Club of Ithaca, which had relocated a mile east. The village was a founding member of the Bolton Point water system when it opened in the mid-1970s. In 1980, Cayuga Heights Elementary School closed due to declining enrollment. It reopened in 1988. In 1995, the last large plot of open land in Cayuga Heights, the former Savage Farm, was developed into a retirement community, Kendal at Ithaca, by the Kendal Corporation. Kendal has since become home to many retired

faculty members; a local joke for many years was that it had the best physics department in the country, as Nobel-prize winner

Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Bethe (; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel ...

, along with

Boyce McDaniel Boyce Dawkins McDaniel (June 11, 1917 – May 8, 2002) was an American nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and later directed the Cornell University Laboratory of Nuclear Studies (LNS). McDaniel was skilled in constructing "atom ...

Dale Corson Dale Raymond Corson (April 5, 1914 – March 31, 2012) was the eighth president of Cornell University. Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, in 1914, Corson received a B.A. degree from the College of Emporia in 1934, his M.A. degree from the University ...

and many other physicists, were long-time residents.

Government and politics

The main governmental body of the Village of Cayuga Heights is the board of trustees. Meetings are convened by the Mayor or by an appointed deputy. The village offices are in Marcham Hall, a stone mansion built by a granddaughter of

On January 12, 2015, the board of trustees of the Village of Cayuga Heights unanimously adopted a resolution declaring freedom from

domestic violence Domestic violence (also known as domestic abuse or family violence) is violence or other abuse that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage or cohabitation. ''Domestic violence'' is often used as a synonym for '' intimate partn ...

to be a fundamental human right.

Mayors

* Frederick G. Marcham, 1956 - 1987 * Ronald Anderson, 1988 - 2002 *

Walter Lynn Walter Lynn (born Valdimir Royal Lynn; 1 October 1928 – 6 June 2011) was a distinguished professor at Cornell University for most of his academic career. As a civil engineer he was interested in water-quality issues, he was at the forefront of e ...

, 2003 - 2007 * Jim Gilmore, 2008 - 2012 * Kate Supron, 2012 – May 2016 * Linda Woodard, June 2016 – present

Fire Department

The Cayuga Heights Fire Department was founded in 1955 and provides fire, rescue, and ALS first-response emergency medical services to the village, areas of the Town of Ithaca, and parts of Cornell University. The department is an all-volunteer agency with response times averaging under three minutes. This is due to the department's dedicated volunteers, as well as the innovative and highly successful "bunker program" that allows for 7-8 Firefighter/EMT's to live in a second floor dormitory and provide duty shifts in exchange for their room in the station. Unlike conventional membership recruiting/acceptance methods, the department recruits and restricts new member acceptance to bi-annual "recruit classes" in tandem with the academic semesters. As a result, many firefighters are Cornell students. The department's current home, the Ronald E. Anderson Fire Station, was built in 2000 and named after the then-mayor. (The fire company is technically a

501(c)3 A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 5 ...

non-profit independent of the village, which allows it to sponsor annual fundraising drives.)

Police Department

The Cayuga Heights Police Department is a small department consisting of a chief, a sergeant, four full-time officers, a clerk, and several part-time officers and school crossing guards.

Geography

Cayuga Heights is located at (42.466338, -76.488678), on the eastern slope of

. The elevation ranges from 900 feet near the Community Corners to 400 feet near the lake. Several streams and steep gorges cut through the village. According to the

United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of th ...

, the village has a total area of , all of it land. The village is at the south end of

, one of the

Finger Lakes The Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north–south lakes located south of Lake Ontario in an area called the ''Finger Lakes region'' in New York, in the United States. This region straddles the northern and transitional ...

. Cayuga Heights borders, on its north, the Village of Lansing. Two examples of old-growth oak/hickory forest are in the village
Palmer Woods
on the south side of the village near

campus, and
Renwick Slope
on the far western part of the village by Cayuga Lake. Both are managed by Cornell Botanic Gardens. The village has gotten national attention for its large population of

white-tailed deer The white-tailed deer (''Odocoileus virginianus''), also known as the whitetail or Virginia deer, is a medium-sized deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia. It has also been introduced t ...

. In addition to deer, the village also hosts

foxes Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

wild turkey The wild turkey (''Meleagris gallopavo'') is an upland ground bird native to North America, one of two extant species of turkey and the heaviest member of the order Galliformes. It is the ancestor to the domestic turkey, which was originally d ...

s, squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits.

Demographics

As of the

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses inc ...

of 2000, there were 3,273 people, 1,497 households, and 772 families residing in the village. The

population density Population density (in agriculture: standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical term.Matt RosenberPopu ...

was 1,850.9 people per square mile (714.0/km²). There were 1,584 housing units at an average density of 895.8 per square mile (345.5/km²). The racial makeup of the village was 85.73%

White White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White ...

, 1.86%

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

, 0.06% Native American, 8.95% Asian, 0.09%

Pacific Islander Pacific Islanders, Pasifika, Pasefika, or rarely Pacificers are the peoples of the Pacific Islands. As an ethnic/ racial term, it is used to describe the original peoples—inhabitants and diasporas—of any of the three major subregions of O ...

, 1.19% from

other races Other often refers to: * Other (philosophy), a concept in psychology and philosophy Other or The Other may also refer to: Film and television * ''The Other'' (1913 film), a German silent film directed by Max Mack * ''The Other'' (1930 film), a ...

, and 2.11% from two or more races.

Hispanic The term ''Hispanic'' ( es, hispano) refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or Hispanidad. The term commonly applies to countries with a cultural and historical link to Spain and to viceroyalties for ...

or Latino of any race were 3.57% of the population. There were 1,497 households, out of which 17.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.5% were

married couples Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...

living together, 2.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 48.4% were non-families. 38.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.10 and the average family size was 2.71. In the village, the population was spread out, with 15.3% under the age of 18, 14.1% from 18 to 24, 24.0% from 25 to 44, 22.6% from 45 to 64, and 24.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 42 years. For every 100 females, there were 95.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.9 males. The median income for a household in the village was $74,258, and the median income for a family was $122,746. Males had a median income of $70,893 versus $33,621 for females. The

per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or total income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. It is calculated by dividing the area's total income by its total population. Per capita i ...

for the village was $47,493. About 1.5% of families and 8.7% of the population were below the

poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...

, including none of those under the age of eighteen or sixty-five or over.

Points of interest

* The Country Club of Ithaca * The Community Corners Shopping Center, a small shopping center of detached buildings featuring a wine shop, th
Heights Restaurant
Talbots, a

Gimme! Coffee Gimme! Coffee is a coffee roaster and third-wave coffee shop, based in New York, with espresso bars in Ithaca and Trumansburg. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Gimme! announced the permanent closure of the Manhattan and Brooklyn based loca ...

, a gym, florist, and several other businesses. * Kendal at Ithaca * Pleasant Grove Cemetery * Sunset Park, a small village park bordered by stone arches with a panoramic view of

Ithaca College Ithaca College is a private college in Ithaca, New York. It was founded by William Egbert in 1892 as a conservatory of music and is set against the backdrop of the city of Ithaca (which is separate from the town), Cayuga Lake, waterfalls, and ...

, the City of Ithaca, West Hill, and

Deer controversy

Cayuga Heights has gotten national attention for its large population of

, as many as 125 per square mile. The efforts to control the deer population have sparked huge controversy in the village. In 2011, the village Board of Trustees approved a plan to reduce the deer population by sterilizing 20 to 60 does in two years, while killing the remaining 160 to 200 deer in the village. Paul Curtis, a Natural Resources Professor at Cornell who has worked with the board of trustees, said "The primary problems that the deer cause to the community are damage to garden plants, deer-vehicle accidents and the potential threat of the spread of foreign diseases.” Opponents of the deer culling program have criticized the culling program as "war on sweet innocent deer", "brutal slaughter" and Cayuga Heights as a "constant killing field". Local opposition group CayugaDeer.org has accused the board of trustees actions as deceptive and dishonest, and sued the village to stop the culling. Few residents agreed to allow the village to cull deer on their property, and in November 2012, the board of trustees abandoned its plan to cull the deer, instead deciding to capture and sterilize does.

Notable people

A.R. Ammons Archibald Randolph Ammons (February 18, 1926 – February 25, 2001) was an American poet who won the annual National Book Award for Poetry in 1973 and 1993. Poetic themes Ammons wrote about humanity's relationship to nature in alternately comic ...

, poet and winner of the National Book Award for Poetry *

, physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize *

Pearl S. Buck Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973) was an American writer and novelist. She is best known for ''The Good Earth'' a bestselling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, Pulitze ...

, author and winner of the Nobel Prize *

Vernon and Irene Castle Vernon and Irene Castle were a husband-and-wife team of ballroom dancers and dance teachers who appeared on Broadway and in silent films in the early 20th century. They are credited with reviving the popularity of modern dancing. Castle was a st ...

, film stars, developers of the

Castle Walk Castle Walk is a dance originated and made famous by Vernon and Irene Castle. The Castle Walk became popular through its introduction into the Tango. "Castle Walk" is also a popular American song (1914) composed for Vernon and Irene Castle b ...

and popularizers of the

Foxtrot The foxtrot is a smooth, progressive dance characterized by long, continuous flowing movements across the dance floor. It is danced to big band (usually vocal) music. The dance is similar in its look to waltz, although the rhythm is in a tim ...

. *

Dorothy Cotton Dorothy Cotton (June 9, 1930 – June 10, 2018) was an American civil rights activist, who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and a member of the inner-circle of one of its main organizations, the Southern Christian ...

, civil rights leader and close associate of

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

Peter Debye Peter Joseph William Debye (; ; March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije in Maastricht, Netherland ...

, physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize *

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfl ...

, physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize *

Louis Agassiz Fuertes Louis Agassiz Fuertes (February 7, 1874 Ithaca, New York – August 22, 1927 Unadilla, New York) was an American ornithologist, illustrator and artist who set the rigorous and current-day standards for ornithological art and naturalist depiction ...

Ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the "methodological study and consequent knowledge of birds with all that relates to them." Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and th ...

and painter. *

Henry Louis Gates Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African Amer ...

, historian * Thomas Gold, maverick astronomer * David Lee, physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize *

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...

, author, lived in six different houses in Cayuga Heights during his tenure at Cornell *

Roy H. Park Roy Hampton Park (15 September 1910 – 25 October 1993) was an American media executive and entrepreneur. He is known for creating the Duncan Hines brand of packaged food products, and for his television/radio/newspaper conglomerate, Park Commun ...

, television entrepreneur *

Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on ex ...

, David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences and Director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell University. *

Kirkpatrick Sale Kirkpatrick Sale (born June 27, 1937) is an American author who has written prolifically about political decentralism, environmentalism, luddism and technology. He has been described as having a "philosophy unified by decentralism" and as being " ...

, writer and activist, co-founder of

Students for a Democratic Society Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...

. Sale, Kirkpatrick
The Importance of Growing Up Village
''Front Porch Republic'' *

Steven Strogatz Steven Henry Strogatz (), born August 13, 1959, is an American mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University. He is known for his work on nonlinear systems, including contributions to the study o ...

, mathematician

References

External links

*
The History Project at Cayuga Heights
{{authority control Ithaca, New York 1915 establishments in New York (state) Populated places established in 1915 Villages in Tompkins County, New York Villages in New York (state)