Champlain passed through the town in 1615, leading a war party of Hurons (Wendat) and soldiers.
The town was first settled around 1803, near Lacona. Sandy Creek was formed from the Town of Richland in 1825.
In 1835, Sandy Creek resident Thomas Meacham decided to make the world's largest cheese as a gift to president Andrew Jackson. His finished product was 4 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighed nearly 1400 pounds. The cheese was delivered and sat in the White House until February 22, 1836, when the president invited the public to come to the White House and eat the cheese. This event was made famous in an episode of the television show The West Wing.
The Holyoke Cottage was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
town of Sandy Creek. It was then Willianistown, that town having been set off from Mexico on tlie 24th of March, 1804, with boundaries which included tlio whole northeastern part of what is now Oswogo County, excojiling the town of Redfield.
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... History of Oswego County, New York1877 · page 381Read the page →
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In 1872 a neat little church edifice was built just south of Sandy Creek. A church had also been erected in the "Goodenough" neighborhood, but it is just over in Ellisburg. The class there has about thirty-three members, of whom three-fourths are in the town of Sandy Creek. That at the mouth of the creek has about forty. The members of the Port Ontario class all reside in Richland.
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Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Sandy Creek, 1838 to 2010
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
1885Sheet 1 of 1
Edition
Sheets
BrickWoodStone
Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Then & now
Stand where they stood
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Retake this viewEast Boylston (Village); East Boylston Business Directory.; West Amboy Business Directory.; Sandy Creek Business Direct…, 1867
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Sandy Creek’s page.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (3), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress) and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
1867
