Watkins Glen State Park
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Watkins Glen State Park is located on the edge of the village of Watkins Glen, New York, south of Seneca Lake in Schuyler County. The main feature of the park is the hiking trail that climbs up through the gorge, passing over and under waterfalls. The park has a lower part that is next to the village and an upper part that is open woodland.
Watkins Glen State Park is in a 400 foot deep narrow gorge cut through rock by a stream that was left hanging, when glaciers of the Ice age deepened the Seneca valley, increasing the tributry stream gradient to create rapids and waterfalls (wherever there were hard layers of rock). The rocks of the area are sedimentary of Devonian age that are part of a dissected plateau that was uplifted with little faulting or distortion. They consiste mostly of soft shales, with some layers of harder sandstone and limestone.
Activities and Services
The park features a trail by which one can climb or descend the the gorge. Hundreds of stone steps climb over, under, and along the waterfalls.
Watkins Glen is in New York's Finger Lake's region, south of Seneca Lake and west of Ithaca.
The park has comfortable camping sites, as well as pavilions, picnic tables, food, playground, gift shop, pool, dump stations, showers, recreation programs, tent/trailer sites, fishing, hiking, hunting, cross-county skiing.
Note: The Gorge trail is closed early November to mid-May.
External links
- List of New York state parks
- Friends of The Finger Lakes (http://www.fingerlakes.com/index.htm) for a bit of history about the region.