Syracuse Hancock International

The Finger Lakes are eleven long narrow lakes in central New York running roughly N-S, carved by retreating glaciers ten thousand years ago. From altitude they look like a hand laid flat with fingers spread. Seneca Lake is the deepest (over 600 feet) and largest by volume; Cayuga is the longest (38 miles). Together they hold more freshwater than any group of lakes outside the Great Lakes themselves. The microclimate around the lakes — moderated by the lakes' enormous thermal mass — has made the region one of the most important wine-producing areas in the eastern United States. The Finger Lakes are the Riesling capital of America: cool nights, mineral-rich shale soils, and growing seasons just long enough to ripen Vitis vinifera that struggles elsewhere east of the Rockies. Watkins Glen State Park, at the southern tip of Seneca Lake, is the geological signature of the region. The Gorge Trail — 1.5 miles, 832 stone steps, opened to visitors in 1863 — follows Glen Creek through a slot canyon 400 feet deep that the creek has carved into Devonian shale and sandstone. Nineteen waterfalls cascade through the gorge. The most famous, Rainbow Falls, drops 30 feet over an overhanging ledge that visitors walk behind on a stone path. The CCC built the current trail system 1935-1939. National Geographic has named it one of the most beautiful state parks in the United States. Watkins Glen International, two miles south of the gorge, is the racetrack. It opened in 1956, hosted the United States Grand Prix from 1961 through 1980 (the F1 race), and continues to host the NASCAR Cup Series Go Bowling at The Glen annually in August. Before the permanent track was built, sports cars raced on the public streets of Watkins Glen village — the original 6.6-mile road course — from 1948 through 1952. Cornell University is 30 miles N on the south end of Cayuga Lake.

Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball in Cooperstown in 1839. The Mills Commission, formed by sporting-goods magnate Albert Spalding in 1905 to determine the origins of baseball, decided he had, on the strength of a single letter from a man named Abner Graves who had spent years in a Colorado asylum. The commission published its findings in 1908 and the myth stuck. Modern historians trace the game to British "rounders" and to the New York Knickerbockers' codified rules of 1845. But Cooperstown was already too good a story to give up. The National Baseball Hall of Fame opened June 12, 1939 at the supposed centennial of Doubleday's mythical 1839 game. It is a 75,000-square-foot museum on Main Street with 40,000 baseball artifacts, two million documents, 14,000 hours of video, and a 50,000-square-foot plaque gallery honoring 351 inductees as of 2025. The induction ceremony, held annually on the Sunday of the last weekend in July, draws 50,000+ people to a town with a population under 2,000. Cooperstown sits at the foot of Otsego Lake (which James Fenimore Cooper, who grew up there and named the town for his father, called "Glimmerglass" in The Leatherstocking Tales). Doubleday Field — the small baseball stadium two blocks behind the Hall — was built in 1920 on the spot where Doubleday supposedly invented the game; it has hosted the Hall of Fame Classic, all-star alumni games, and amateur tournaments continuously since. The Otesaga Resort Hotel on the lake (1909) hosts inductees and visitors during induction weekend. The Farmers' Museum and Fenimore Art Museum sit a mile north on Lake Road. The town is a perfect main-street American village — wood-frame storefronts, brick library, white-spired church — that doubles as a baseball pilgrimage site every summer.

George Eastman invented roll film. In 1888 he founded the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester to manufacture it. By 1900 Kodak was the dominant photographic company in the world. Eastman built a 50-room Colonial Revival mansion on East Avenue in Rochester in 1905 — a 35,000-square-foot personal palace with a conservatory, library, terrace gardens, a working pipe organ, and a billiard room. He had a chauffeur named Solomon, a butler, and a private string quartet that played at dinner. He never married. On March 14, 1932, at age 77, Eastman shot himself through the heart at his home. A note on his nightstand read "To my friends: my work is done. Why wait? G.E." He had been suffering from a degenerative spinal condition that was making his life progressively more painful. He had given away the bulk of his fortune — by his death he had distributed roughly $100 million (in pre-1932 dollars) to MIT, the University of Rochester, Tuskegee Institute, the Hampton Institute, and the Eastman School of Music. He outlived his usefulness on his own terms. The mansion, his fortune's last bequest, became the George Eastman Museum in 1949. It is the oldest photography museum in the world and one of the world's largest. The collection holds over 400,000 photographs (including 12 of Daguerre's original 1839 plates, and a deep run of Civil War, Western expansion, FSA, and 20th-century holdings), 30,000 motion pictures, over a million film stills, and a deep technology archive — every Kodak product back to 1885 plus a working chemistry lab where film preservationists still develop early stocks. Two miles W of the museum, the Genesee River drops 96 feet over High Falls of the Genesee — one of three significant waterfalls within the Rochester city limits. The High Falls Heritage District around the falls is the historic Rochester millworking district; in the 19th century Rochester was the "Flour City" of America (then "Flower City" after the milling industry declined and seed catalog companies took over). The Pont de Rennes pedestrian bridge crosses the gorge directly over the falls.

Up in the Thousand Islands, where the St. Lawrence runs between New York and Ontario, one small island is shaped like a heart with a half-built castle on it. That's Heart Island, and the story behind it is the reason to look. George Boldt ran the Waldorf-Astoria, the most famous hotel in America; in 1900 he set 300 workers to building his wife Louise a six-story Rhineland castle on the island, and reshaped the shoreline into a heart for her. In January 1904 Louise died suddenly at 41. Boldt telegraphed the island to stop all work. The crews walked off with the castle three-quarters done, and he never came back. It sat open to the weather for 73 years; hunters used it as a duck blind. The bridge authority bought it for a dollar in 1977 on the condition that every dollar of revenue go back into restoring it, and they've been at it since. From the air you've got the heart-shaped island and the castle, plus 1,800 islands and the gilded-age cottages along Millionaire's Row.