First shovel, first cheese
Rome's modern history opens with a shovel: the Erie Canal's groundbreaking here on July 4, 1817.7 But its quietest revolution came from a dairy farmer. In 1851, Jesse Williams began pooling his neighbors' milk at a purpose-built works just north of Rome — generally counted as America's first commercial cheese factory.1 The idea spread until central New York dominated the nation's cheese trade, with market hubs at Little Falls and Utica.
Rome's other signature was metal. Copper and brass works grew along the canal corridor from the late 1800s, and Revere — corporate descendant of the company Paul Revere founded in 1801, in Rome through the 1928 merger that formed Revere Copper & Brass — became the anchor of the city's rolling mills.2 Rome earned its nickname, the Copper City, the direct way: a substantial share of America's copper products rolled out of its plants.
The Air Force years
In 1942 the Army Air Forces opened a depot on Rome's east side that became Griffiss Air Force Base — for five decades a pillar of the region's economy, home in the Cold War to bombers, tankers and the Rome Air Development Center's electronics research.3 A 1993 base-closure decision ended the active flying mission — the last bomb wing stood down in 1995 — a blow Rome is still metabolizing.4
The runway had one more surprise: on July 23–25, 1999, the former base hosted Woodstock '99, the infamous 30th-anniversary festival.5 Today Griffiss is a business and technology park — Air Force research in information systems never left, and the airfield hosts one of the FAA's designated unmanned-aircraft test sites.6 The fort-town on the portage now tests drones.