There are 24 cities and towns in the World with the name Rochester. Nineteen of them are in the United States, but many of them are just small towns or hamlets. There are also Rochesters in Canada and Australia. Three of them are in England. The most western USA Rochester is the one in Washington State about 25 miles south of its Capital, Olympia.
The largest Rochester in the world is the city in New York State. There are more than 200,000 people living there, and Ruth and I visited it for the first time last year. The 2nd largest Rochester is the city of more than 100,000 people in Minnesota. Home to the Mayo Clinic, the Minnesota Rochester is often on lists of the best places to live. The 3rd largest Rochester is Rochester Hills in Michigan, the original home of the entertainer Madonna just north of Detroit. It has about 71,000 people. The Rochester in England, near London, is 4th in size with 62,000. It began as a Roman town. The Rochester castle, in fact, was built atop a Roman fort.
Ruth and I enjoyed ourselves in Rochester, New York, where there is a lot to do, unlike Syracuse. The only 5 Compass attraction in this other upstate New York city is an excellent museum devoted to the Erie Canal. Originally called Rochesterville, Rochester, New York is home to the art deco Times Square Building, the Eastman School of Music where singer Renee Fleming studied, and the George Eastman home. Eccentric George Eastman, founder of Kodak, was not born in Rochester but he died there in 1932 after he shot himself. Other famous people who spent time in this Rochester included Suffragette Susan B. Anthony, who died there, and social reformer/abolitionist Frederick Douglass. This city was named after a Revolutionary War colonel, Nathaniel Rochester.
Rochester had one of the 1st railroads in America. The engine just above was the first in America. It ran along the Delaware and Hudson Canal with a test run in 1829. The Rochester & State Line Railroad began operations in 1878 to the town of Salamanca in southwest New York State. It was bought by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1932 but became the Rochester and Southern (RSR) and began service to Silver Springs, New York, in 1986 with a line from there to Buffalo.
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