WHAT AREA WAS COLLECTIVELY CONSIDERED THE RHINE?
Silent City - the squatter community called 'Silent City,' is located across the road and around the site on which the Hangar Theatre resides. By the late 1920’s Silent City had burned or been otherwise demolished by the City. Those still living there were relocated to Floral Avenue or just moved elsewhere.
Rhine Heights - a neighborhood of shacks and shanties along Floral Avenue. In many cases one dwelling was built one on top of another - going uphill – and reminiscent of tenement housing. The Rhine inhabitants never had plumbing and few people, if any, had electricity.
Inlet Island - rumored to have been called 'Moonshine Island' back in the day… and now the location of our festival!

WHO ARE THE RHINERS?
Generally speaking, the presence of Inlet dwellers squatting the area dates back to the turn of the 20th century. The population consisted of groups of poverty-stricken immigrants living in shanty dwellings constructed from scraps of lumber collected along the Inlet on land they did not own.

Having found their way to the area along the southwest corner of Cayuga Lake, most likely to find seasonal work with one of the railroad companies or on a canal barge (among other reasons), the Rhiners did what they could to survive by hunting, fishing, trapping, foraging and poaching, and relying upon each other's goodwill. Sometimes, as rumor has it, the Rhiners were known to make moonshine, or in the Silent City days, to entertain themselves by holding cockfighting matches in one of the big, empty buildings located over on Cherry Street. They fought against rivals from up on the hill who bred their own birds specifically for this purpose.

While, depending on who you ask, there are many, often opposing recollections about the nature of the area, there appears to be no argument that Rhiners, despite their diverse range of origins or cultural backgrounds, and despite the extreme poverty, and how they were generally shunned by the majority of the local townspeople throughout the duration of their history, they were marked by an ability join together to work together and help each other under the often adverse conditions they faced living in the Rhine.

CAN I BE A RHINER?
Living descendants of the Rhiner district's inhabitants are proud to share the history of the Rhiners, turn-of-the-century squatters from the southwest corner of Cayuga Lake. But to be a Rhiner, you must fit the following criteria:
1. Have been born before 1967;
2. Have lived within the City of Ithaca limits, on the west side of the (Fulton St.) train tracks.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?
There is a theory that the name 'Rhine' was born from the visual likeness of the landscape at the time, with its meandering inlet, to that of the Rhine River in Germany.

All photos for Rhiner Festival are courtesy of The History Center in Tompkins County

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