Oneida Castle, NY

Oneida Castle is a Oneida County village of 586 residents in the 2020 census, in the northwestern corner of the town of Vernon between the city of Oneida and the city of Sherrill. The present village was organized and laid out in 1815, although the ground carries a much older Oneida history. Kanonwalohale, a fortified Oneida village, occupied this area in the early eighteenth century, making the village name part of a much longer Indigenous and regional story.

Oneida Castle has long leaned into its position near the geographic center of New York. In the mid-1800s, lawyer and congressman Timothy Jenkins tried to have the state capital moved here, a proposal that never got off the ground. Today the village's event calendar, village hall, and local service links keep civic life focused close to home, while Oneida and Sherrill provide the larger shopping and employment map nearby. It is a compact place where an old Oneida village site, an 1815 street plan, and a state-capital what-if sit side by side.