6 Most Inviting Towns In The Finger Lakes
Three figures of 19th-century American history lived within an hour of each other in the Finger Lakes. Harriet Tubman bought a seven-acre farm on the edge of Auburn in 1859 and lived there until her death in 1913. Susan B. Anthony stood trial for voting at the Ontario County Courthouse in Canandaigua in June 1873 and was convicted by directed verdict. Francis Bellamy, born in Mt. Morris in 1855, wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892 while working at The Youth's Companion. The six Finger Lakes towns below each carry that kind of working national history, paired with restored 19th-century downtowns and the working lakes around them.
Auburn
Auburn holds Harriet Tubman's actual home, now Harriet Tubman National Historical Park (designated by Congress in 2017). Tubman purchased the original seven-acre farm in 1859 from Frances Seward, an abolitionist and the wife of then-Senator William H. Seward, for $1,200 with $25 down. She lived there with her family until her death on March 10, 1913, and is buried at Fort Hill Cemetery a mile away. The brick house on the property today was built in 1882 after the original wood-frame farmhouse burned in 1870. Seward's own house at 33 South Street operates separately as the Seward House Museum. Seward served as Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and then continued under Andrew Johnson; the Alaska Purchase he negotiated was signed on March 30, 1867, two years after Lincoln's assassination, with Johnson in the White House.
Willard Memorial Chapel on Nelson Street, a short walk north of downtown, holds the only complete and unaltered Tiffany-designed religious interior known to exist in the world. Built between 1892 and 1894 for the Auburn Theological Seminary, the chapel's windows, mosaic floor, oak furnishings, nine Moorish-style chandeliers, and gilded pulpit are all original work of Louis Comfort Tiffany and the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company of New York City. The chapel was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2005. Auburn Public Theater on State Street books touring music acts and indie films in a restored downtown venue. Auburn sits about 26 miles west of Syracuse off I-90 at the northern end of Owasco Lake, with Cayuga Lake to the west and Skaneateles Lake to the east.
Canandaigua
Canandaigua's civic-history claim is pointed. Susan B. Anthony was tried for voting at the Ontario County Courthouse at 27 North Main Street on June 17 and 18, 1873, the year after she cast her ballot in the 1872 presidential election. Justice Ward Hunt directed a guilty verdict before the jury deliberated and fined her $100, which she never paid. The 1858 courthouse is still in active use. A marble bust of Anthony stands outside the courtroom where the trial was held, and her portrait hangs inside on the courtroom wall. A second bust, honoring her defense attorney John Van Voorhis (sculpted between 1901 and 1905), was placed next to Anthony's in 2024 by his great-granddaughters.
The Lake House on Canandaigua at the foot of Main Street books morning yoga, spa treatments, and wine-pairing dinners with views over Canandaigua Lake. Sonnenberg Gardens and Mansion State Historic Park preserves the 50-acre Victorian estate where Frederick Ferris Thompson, a co-founder of the First National City Bank of New York (the institution that eventually became Citibank), summered with his family. The Granger Homestead and Carriage Museum on North Main Street holds one of the larger collections of horse-drawn vehicles in the country, on the grounds of the 1816 mansion built for Postmaster General Gideon Granger. Kershaw Park anchors the public lakefront with a beach, a dock, walking trails, and a playground.
Geneva
Geneva runs Linden Street as a restaurant row that closes to vehicle traffic on warm evenings, with chefs sourcing produce, wine, and dairy within a short radius. Hobart and William Smith Colleges, the city's residential liberal-arts institution, keep downtown busy year-round with student traffic and a public calendar of lectures, gallery openings, and arts performances. The Smith Opera House on Seneca Street, built in 1894 and restored to operating order in the late 20th century, books national touring music acts and film screenings on its original stage.
Belhurst Castle on the lake just outside the city center serves dinners with views of the water and offers a stay in a stone mansion built between 1885 and 1889. A 2.5-mile walking and biking path along the lakeshore connects the downtown waterfront to Seneca Lake State Park, where the Sprayground operates a free public water playground in summer. Geneva sits at the northern end of Seneca Lake, the deepest of the Finger Lakes at about 618 feet, and the lake's moderating microclimate has supported a working wine industry on the surrounding slopes for generations.
Hammondsport
Hammondsport is the historical anchor of the Finger Lakes wine industry. Pleasant Valley Wine Company, founded on March 15, 1860 by Charles Davenport Champlin and twelve area businessmen two miles south of the village, holds U.S. Bonded Winery No. 1, the first federal bonded-winery license issued in the country. (California winemaking long predates this, going back to Spanish mission plantings in the 1770s, but Pleasant Valley was the first US winery to be federally licensed and taxed.) The winery still operates and now houses the Great Western Winery visitor center. Dr. Konstantin Frank Vinifera Wine Cellars, founded in 1962 by a Ukrainian-born plant scientist who pioneered cold-hardy Vitis vinifera cultivation in the eastern United States, still pours flights on the lakeside. Heron Hill, Bully Hill, and Domaine LeSeurre fill out the working wine roster along Keuka Lake.
The Glenn H. Curtiss Museum displays original aircraft, motorcycles, and engines built by the aviation pioneer who launched the Curtiss aircraft business in Hammondsport in March 1909. The 19th-century village square at the center of town holds cafes, artisan shops, and a small green, with the Park Inn Hotel, Brewery of Broken Dreams, and Timber Stone Grill all within a short walk. Champlin Beach south of the village runs a public swimming area on Keuka Lake. Hammondsport sits at the southern tip of Keuka Lake's Y-shaped basin, the only Finger Lake with that branching geometry.
Mt. Morris
Mt. Morris is the northern entrance to Letchworth State Park, often called the "Grand Canyon of the East." The park's northern gate sits at the edge of town, anchored by the Mount Morris Dam, the largest concrete dam east of the Mississippi River when it was completed in 1952. The major waterfalls (Upper, Middle, and Lower Falls) lie roughly 17 miles south through the gorge near the Castile entrance, with the Middle Falls dropping 107 feet across a 285-foot crest of Tully Formation limestone. The Genesee River runs the length of the canyon between cliffs that reach about 550 feet in places. Mt. Morris itself was the birthplace, on May 18, 1855, of Francis Bellamy, the Baptist minister and editor who wrote the original Pledge of Allegiance in August 1892 for The Youth's Companion. The Mt. Morris Murals project covers downtown walls with portraits of local figures including Bellamy.
The town's compact Main Street holds a handful of restored 19th-century commercial buildings, restaurants, and the Allegiance Bed and Breakfast in a renovated downtown mansion. Letchworth's trail network covers about 66 miles, with several routes running along the gorge rim from the southern overlooks back toward Mt. Morris. The town sits between Silver Lake to the west and Conesus Lake to the east, off the main commuter routes that connect the larger Finger Lakes towns.
Skaneateles
Skaneateles Lake supplies unfiltered drinking water to the City of Syracuse under a long-standing federal filtration avoidance determination, which makes it one of the cleanest large lakes in the eastern United States. The village beach at Clift Park sits directly on that water. The Sherwood Inn at the foot of Genesee Street has operated as a stagecoach stop and inn since 1807, when Isaac Sherwood opened it on the Seneca Turnpike. The dining room still serves both hotel guests and walk-ins. Thayer Park next to the lake works as a picnic spot with a view of the village pier.
Anyela's Vineyards south of Skaneateles pours estate Rieslings on a deck overlooking the lake and books live music most weekends in summer. Main Street downtown holds a row of 19th-century commercial buildings filled with independent shops, bakeries, and bookstores. Dickens' Christmas runs the first three weekends of December with costumed performers in character as figures from Dickens novels roaming Genesee Street, and Winterfest in February brings ice sculptures, ice fishing, skating, hot cocoa, and an annual polar plunge into the lake.
Year-Round in the Finger Lakes
The eleven long, narrow lakes between Syracuse and Rochester support enough working historical sites, hiking, and vineyards to fill several weekends. The six towns above each carry their own particular anchor: Auburn for Tubman and the Tiffany interior at Willard Chapel, Canandaigua for Susan B. Anthony's trial site, Geneva for the Seneca Lake wine slopes and Hobart and William Smith, Hammondsport for the first US bonded winery and the Curtiss aviation legacy, Mt. Morris for the northern gate of Letchworth, and Skaneateles for the Sherwood Inn and the clean lake at Clift Park.
