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Madison County

Oneida Castle, Canastota, Chittenango and Cazenovia on the Central Trail; the Oneida heartland.

Madison County is the Oneida heartland, and the Central Trail runs straight through it. On the 1851 map the Oneida principal village, Ga-no-a-lo-hale (Kanonwalohale), sits on Oneida Creek where Oneida Castle stands today; an older Oneida town lay to the south near Munnsville. Beauchamp traced Morgan’s trail from Oneida Castle west through Canastota, Canaseraga (now Sullivan), Chittenango and the Deep Spring to Manlius and Jamesville, with a branch from Canaseraga north to Oneida Lake and Three Rivers and another to Onondaga.

That line is the Seneca Turnpike of 1800 and today’s NY-5. The Thruway runs a few kilometres north across the flats, and the Erie Canal towpath between Canastota and Chittenango follows the same lowland the trail avoided by keeping to the rising ground on the south.

On the overlay, zoom to Oneida Castle to see the village box and the trails radiating from it: west to Onondaga, northeast to Verona and Rome, south toward the Chenango headwaters, and north to the lake at South Bay. Cazenovia Lake and Chittenango Creek are drawn but unnamed on the sheet; Oneida Creek is Ka-ne-go-dik.

Modern towns on or near the route: Oneida Castle, Wampsville, Canastota, Canaseraga (Sullivan), Chittenango, Cazenovia (on the south branch), and Munnsville.

Trails through the county

  • Oneida Lake and the Oswego River — The branch from the Central Trail north to Oneida Lake, Three Rivers and Oswego, and the shore trail along Lake Ontario to the Salmon River.
  • The Central Trail: Onondaga to Rome — The eastern half of the Iroquois Trail, from the Onondaga council fire through Manlius, Chittenango, Canastota and Oneida Castle to the carrying place at Rome.

Sources

Updated 2026-09-17. Positions on the overlays are accurate to the map's stated error (about 5 km for the 1851 map): read them as which valley, not which lot.