8 Slow-Paced Towns to Visit in the Finger Lakes

It took an ice age to carve the Finger Lakes, and the towns along them have been in no hurry since. Most people come for the wineries and the waterfalls. Keuka Spring Vineyards pours its tastings above the lake, and Taughannock alone drops farther than Niagara. The towns here are the small lakefront and gorge-side ones, with empty sidewalks again by evening. Spend an afternoon and you will lose track of which day it is.

Naples

Canandaigua Lake ends at Naples, a village with no major highway running through it. The town calls itself the grape pie capital. Bakeries and farm stands sell it all through the harvest, and the whole valley smells of Concord grapes by late September.

Grimes Glen, a county park at the edge of the village, is a short walk up the creekbed to a pair of waterfalls. The Naples Grape Festival brings pie and music to Main Street for one weekend each September, then the village empties back out. The rest of the year it is wineries, hill views, and a downtown you can cross in a few minutes.

Hammondsport

Hammondsport stands at the southern tip of Keuka Lake, where Glenn Curtiss tested the first seaplanes before he reshaped American aviation. The Glenn H. Curtiss Museum holds the working aircraft and motorcycles he built, plus enough early aviation gear to fill an afternoon.

The Finger Lakes Boating Museum covers the rest of the village's water-and-engines story, with more than 100 boats across six galleries. Depot Park and Champlin Beach open onto the water for swimming and kayaking. Burgers and Beer of Hammondsport is steps away when it is time to eat.

Penn Yan

Penn Yan occupies the northern tip of Keuka Lake's east branch, a county seat with a harbor and a downtown you can walk end to end. The name shortens "Pennsylvania Yankee," for the mixed settlers who founded it. The Yates County Courthouse Park District forms downtown's core, with the courthouse, the Old Jail, and a Civil War Memorial.

Keuka Lake State Park sits a few miles west for swimming, fishing, and picnic afternoons. Keuka Spring Vineyards pours tastings with lake views, one stop on the Keuka Lake Wine Trail that follows the shore. For dinner, the Tavern and Keuka Restaurant are the sit-down options.

Watkins Glen

Watkins Glen stands at the southern tip of Seneca Lake, and for most of the day it belongs to the crowds headed for the gorge. They come for Watkins Glen State Park, 778 acres with a gorge cut about 400 feet deep and 19 waterfalls along its length. The Gorge Trail passes every one of them, joined by the Southern Rim and Indian Trails on a half-day loop.

Once those crowds clear out in the late afternoon, the village comes back to itself. The harbor and the marinas meet downtown at the foot of the lake. The Brick Tavern Museum, built in 1828, is the oldest brick building in Schuyler County and works as a local-history stop. Quintus Studio and Gallery shows work by local artists, and by evening the main street belongs to the people who live on it.

Aurora

Aurora is barely more than one historic main street along Cayuga Lake's eastern shore. The Inns of Aurora turned a cluster of those buildings into a small luxury hotel with a spa, several restaurants, and lakefront rooms. Everything is a few minutes' walk apart.

Long Point State Park just south of the village has a swim beach on the lake and trails into the trees. The 1833 Kitchen and Bar handles the upscale dinner with regional wines and grilled proteins. The Howland Stone Store Museum just up the road in Sherwood preserves a stop on the Underground Railroad and the home of women's suffrage organizers.

Trumansburg

Trumansburg, a village on the west side of Cayuga Lake, is best known for the waterfall just down the road. Taughannock Falls drops 215 feet in a single plunge, the tallest free-falling waterfall east of the Rocky Mountains and taller than Niagara. The Gorge Trail to its base is a flat mile, the rare big waterfall you reach without a climb.

Back in the village, a few blocks of red brick storefronts carry a strong restaurant scene, with farm-to-table plates at Hazelnut Kitchen and comfort food over a bowling lane at Atlas Bowl. The Ulysses Historical Society Museum is the stop for local history. Every July the GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance takes over the fairgrounds, but most weekends the loudest thing in town is the creek.

Seneca Falls

Seneca Falls lines its downtown along the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, close enough to walk in a morning, and the Harbor Promenade follows the water through the middle of it. The walk is mostly history. This is where the American women's rights movement started, at the 1848 convention that drafted the Declaration of Sentiments inside the Wesleyan Chapel.

The National Women's Hall of Fame and the Women's Rights National Historical Park are both downtown, the strongest history stop among these towns. The village also claims a tie to Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, said locally to have inspired the film's Bedford Falls. The It's a Wonderful Life Museum downtown displays movie memorabilia and scripts, and the Seneca Museum of Waterways and Industry tells the canal-era story.

Skaneateles

Skaneateles spends its summers on the water, a lake clean enough that Syracuse drinks it and clear enough to see straight down. Thayer Park has the easy lakeside benches and picnic tables for a long afternoon under the trees.

A short drive south leads to the 90-foot Carpenter Falls and three other falls along Bear Swamp Creek, with pools at the base. The Skaneateles Historical Society Museum fills in the town's past in a few walkable blocks. Browse antiques at the Skaneateles Antique Center, then settle into The Krebs, serving dinner in the village since 1899.

The Case for Staying Put

The wine buses and the gorge crowds move through fast, chasing the next name on the map. The towns they leave behind are the better visit. A lunch above Keuka stretches into the afternoon, and the bench at Skaneateles becomes the entire plan. These are not places you tour. They are places you settle into until you forget the hour. The only hard part of a day in these towns is the drive home.