After six years in the making, Utica’s mile-long, Underground Railroad self-guided walking tour is complete. Utica was at the forefront of the abolitionist movement and helped freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad.

“There are a series of six signs, five different stops throughout the city that give you an overview of some of the highlights of the Underground Railroad and abolition here in Oneida County,” Oneida County Freedom Trail Commission co-chair Mary Hayes Gordon said.

Gordon has been a part of the Oneida County Freedom Trail Commission since 2012. She’s passionate about the Underground Railroad history in this part of New York, and says this walking tour is a dream come true for her.

“And we like to start here at Bleeker Street because standing in this spot in the 1830s, if you were looking over here, you would see a church,” Gordon said. “The Second Presbyterian Church here in 1835 was a site of the call to convention to establish the New York State Anti-Slavery Society.”

The tour gives people a chance to reflect on the deep history here.

“In a time when we’re trying to deny history, it’s very important that these voices be heard, the narrative be told and how freedom for slavery came about,” Hope Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church pastor Rev. Sharon Baugh said. “As she was saying, it came about everyday people making a difference. And that should be a paradigm for us today.”

The third stop on the tour is on Devereux Street where the Liberty Press, an abolitionist newspaper, was published. Gordon says more petitions were sent from Utica than any other place in the country demanding an end to slavery.

“I would like for people to recognize that when we talk about the Underground Railroad, we are talking about real people,” Gordon said. “We’re talking about people who took extraordinary measures to free themselves and free others from a situation no human being wants to be in.”

The last stop is The Utica Rescue on Genesee Street where two freedom seekers were held captive. This is the final sign for the tour, completed in late August.

“It was a little surreal at first,” Gordon said. “Because when you’ve been working on something for so long, it’s almost like you can’t believe that it really ended. Now that I’ve been with it a few weeks, I am just ecstatic.”

And for Utica native Michael Wright, the tour was an eye-opener to Utica’s history.

“I’ve lived here for over 70 years,” Wright said. “[I] never knew anything about it. It was a new experience. It was great to see and understand what it was like in the 1800s here in Utica. It was also good to see that there were people that cared.”

Oneida County Officials and the Oneida Indian Nation partnered together to apply for a grant that funded those signs.