Oneida Lake is the largest lake entirely within New York State, with a surface area of. The lake is located northeast of Syracuse and near the Great Lakes. It feeds the Oneida River, a tributary of the Oswego River, which flows into Lake Ontario. From the earliest times until the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the lake was part of an important waterway connecting the Atlantic seaboard of North America to the continental interior.The lake is about long and about wide with an average depth of. The shoreline is about. Portions of six counties and sixty-nine communities are in the watershed. Oneida Creek, which flows past the cities of Oneida and Sherrill, empties into the southeast part of the lake at South Bay. While not included as one of the Finger Lakes, Oneida is sometimes referred to as their "thumb". Because it is shallow, it is warmer than the deeper Finger Lakes in summer, and its surface freezes solidly in winter. It is relatively safe and popular for the winter sports of ice fishing and snowmobiling.NameThe lake is named for the Oneida, the Iroquoian Native American tribe that historically occupied a large region around the lake, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois. The Oneida called the lake Tsioqui in their language, meaning "White Water".
