Buffalo

According to Wikipedia, the City of Buffalo, N.Y., was named after Buffalo Creek, which runs through it.  But no one knows where the creek's name game from.  Wikipedia gives various theories, of which my favorite is that the local Native Americans actually called the creek "Beaver Creek," but that this term was mistranslated in a 1784 treaty.

Anyway, Buffalo's fortune was made in 1825, when the Erie Canal was opened.  This canal, one of the most important developments in American history, allowed goods to be shipped from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, and vice versa.  Buffalo, on Lake Erie, was the western terminus of the Canal, and it boomed.  In 1825, there were only 2,400 people in Buffalo.  By 1860, there were 81,000.  After that, Buffalo boomed, its population growing by leaps and bounds.  By 1900, it had a population of 352,000, and was the 8th-largest city in America.  Thanks to hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls, Buffalo was the first American city to have widespread electric lighting.  In 1901, Buffalo hosted the Pan-American Exposition, an enormous World's Fair.  Unfortunately, this turned out to be the most notorious event in Buffalo history, as President McKinley was shot and killed while visiting the fair.  Nevertheless, Buffalo continued to thrive in the early years of the 20th century.  In the Census of 1930, Buffalo had 580,000 people, and was still the 14th-largest city in the United States.

But the Great Depression, the rise of the Sun Belt, and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1957 all took a major toll on Buffalo.  The city now has a population of only 261,000, making it one of the few American cities to have a lower population now than it did 100 years ago.  The Buffalo metropolitan area now ranks 49th in American cities in population, putting it between Birmingham, Ala. and Salt Lake City, Utah.

The University of Buffalo was founded in 1846 as a private medical school.  The first chancellor of the school was Millard Fillmore, who became President of the United States a few years later.  In 1891, the University of Buffalo added a law school, and it created an undergraduate College of Arts and Sciences in 1915.  In the early 1960's, the University was taken over by the State University of New York, and became known as SUNY Buffalo or the University at Buffalo.  In 2013, U.S. News and World Report ranked UB at 106th on their list of "Best National Universities," and 51st among public universities.

UB played small-college football for most of its history, mostly to little effect.  Its high moment game in 1958, when the Bulls went 8-1 and were invited to the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Fla. -- if they would leave their two African-American players at home.  The Bulls turned down the invitation.

In 1970, UB dropped football altogether.  But in 1977, the Bulls revived as a D-3 program.  They stayed at that level until moving to I-AA in 1993, and to I-A in 1999.  They haven't done all that well -- their only win over a school from a BCS conference came in 2002, when they upset Rutgers.  They did play for the UCFC on September 20, 2008, but they lost to Missouri 42-21.