Onondaga Historical Association collaborates with a number of partners to create walking tours or to add value to existing tours. Walking Tours are self guided, however, many added features provide compelling information in a variety of ways. For example: the Downtown Syracuse Walking Tour has a mobile component that provides additional content and images; the Onondaga Creekwalk Tour contains short videos in documentary form that expand upon information provided in the physical signs.
These Walking Tours are self-guided, but we also offer tours lead by OHA Staff. For public OHA-led tours, check out our events calendar. If you would like to schedule a private tour with an OHA staff member, contact Scott Peal at 315-428-1864 x317. Please provide a subject, date, time, and number of people that will be on the tour. A minimum of 10 people is necessary to conduct a tour.
Learn more about individual tours by clicking the links below.
Self-Guided Walking Tours
Downtown Syracuse Walking Tour
Onondaga Creekwalk
Learn more about the Onondaga Creekwalk by watching these short films.
Syracuse Freedom Trail
Syracuse Freedom Trail
The Preservation Association of Central New York, in cooperation with the City of Syracuse, installed interpretive panels at 11 locations throughout the city to mark important sites in the local story of the Underground Railroad.
For more information, visit the Preservation Association website at: www.pacny.net/freedom_trail/.
View the map below to see sign locations.
Underground Railroad Downtown Walking Tour
Underground Railroad Guided Downtown Walking Tour
Tour participants will walk from the Onondaga Historical Association to Clinton Square. Along the way, they will learn about leading personalities, events and places that figured prominently in the often-bitter debate in antebellum America over the issue of slavery. Stops will include the spot where Frederick Douglass first spoke in Syracuse, the location of the dramatic 1839 escape of Mississippi slave Harriet Powell and the building that housed the office of New York State’s first black attorney. Locations of the 1851 Jerry Rescue episode will also be included. That rescue by local abolitionists of fugitive Missouri slave William “Jerry” Henry is considered one of the more dramatic stories of America’s Underground Railroad era.
