Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Ithaca, NY

Ithaca is a city at the southern tip of Cayuga Lake, the longest of New York's Finger Lakes at about 40 miles long, in the Finger Lakes region of central New York.

Surveyor Simeon DeWitt named the settlement Ithaca in 1804, after the Greek island home of Ulysses, and Tompkins County was formed in 1817 with Ithaca at its heart.

Ithaca was established as a village in 1821 and incorporated as a city in 1888, becoming the twenty-ninth city in New York State.

Ithaca is home to Cornell University, the Ivy League university chartered in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew D. White, which opened in 1868 with 412 students - at the time the largest entering class at any American university.

Cornell is the youngest of the Ivy League schools and is a hybrid institution, at once a private university and New York's land-grant university with state-supported colleges on its Ithaca campus.

Ithaca's second college began in 1892, when W. Grant Egbert founded the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, which later became Ithaca College.

Ithaca's famous slogan is 'Ithaca is Gorges,' and it is literally true - there are more than 150 waterfalls within 10 miles of the city, carved into gorges of shale and limestone.

Nearby Taughannock Falls plunges 215 feet in a single drop, making it taller than Niagara Falls, and Buttermilk Falls and Robert H. Treman State Park preserve more waterfalls and gorges just outside the city.

Ithaca had a population of 32,108 at the 2020 census, and education dominates the city - about 67.7% of residents age 25 and older hold a bachelor's degree or higher, one of the highest rates in the nation.

Ithaca has about 14,200 households according to Census Bureau figures for 2020-2024, but only about 29.6% of its homes are owner-occupied, reflecting its large student population.