Watkins Glen State Park is a spectacular 1,000-acre park in the Village of Watkins Glen. It has an erosion-sculptured chasm, craggy rock formations, and the cascading water of nineteen waterfalls. Initially, the gorge was privately owned and operated as a tourist attraction. The State of New York established the State Park in 1906.
Visitors walking the trail pass by grottoes, rock caverns, waterfalls and walk behind two waterfalls (Cavern Cascade and Rainbow Falls) as they climb 600 feet of elevation in one
and a half miles. Some of the highlights of the park are:
• The main Entrance Tunnel, through hand-cut rock.
• A hole cut in the rock fifty-two feet above the creek (an old rock flume).
• Spiral Tunnel, leading up to Suspension Bridge, eighty-five feet above the
creek.
• The high, wide Cathedral with its vertical cracks, potential sites for
waterfalls.
• Sixty-foot high Central Cascade, the highest waterfall in the gorge, leading to
the Glen of Pools, with its many plunge pools and pot holes.
• Rainbow Falls, which the trail passes behind, so named because sunlight
frequently produces a rainbow in the spray.
• Frowning Cliff, a narrow passage with erosion-sculpted pools and dark narrow Pluto Falls, named for the Greek God of the underworld.
• Mile Point Bridge, a decision point to either continue up the trail for a half
mile to the steep, stone staircase Jacob's Ladder and the Upper Entrance to the park,
or to cross a bridge and return to the Main Entrance, using the South Rim Trail.
Excerpt from Persons, Places and Things In the Finger Lakes Region
by Emerson Klees
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