Saturday, July 2, 2004
Letchworth State Park info
more about Letchworth
Letchworth hike photo slideshow
Five years ago Ann and I spent a better part of a Sunday at Letchworth State Park, about an hour south of Rochester. Unfortunately, it rained much of the time we were there, so we really didn’t see that much – but we saw enough for me to know that I wanted to go back someday. And since this seems to be the year where I revisit places – off we went to Letchworth, on a sunny Saturday.
The most prominent feature of Letchworth is the gorge, cut out during the last Ice Age and currently forming the bed of a portion of the Genesee River. The canyon is one of the deepest east of the Mississippi River, and is sometimes referred to as the “Grand Canyon of the East” (though Ann tells me there’s another place in Pennsylvania that also claims that name.) The entire park is nearly 20 miles long and is made up of three gorges separated by two valleys – the southernmost gorge is the one that sees the most visitors, since it contains three major waterfalls (Upper, Middle, and Lower Falls) as well as the Glen Iris Inn, which used to be the home of William Pryor Letchworth, who owned the property as a private estate until 1907 when he deeded it to New York State to be developed as a state park, to protect it from industrialists looking to turn the area into a hydroelectric generating plant. (Much of this info comes from Rich & Sue Freeman’s Waterfalls in Central & Western New York – more info on this excellent guide book and their other guides to hiking and biking in western NY can be found at www.footprintpress.com )
As should be clear from the pictures, the entire park is very beautiful, and the gorges are spectacular. I’m VERY pleased we finally went back…
We started out with a fairly quiet picnic lunch and then hiked down to the river and wandered around for a bit. After that we stopped at a very nice area with a stream and a tall (and unfortunately difficult to see) waterfall – that spot was VERY crowded, as was the area around Lower Falls. Ann managed to climb to the top of an outcropping near Lower Falls, but even that had lots of people coming and going. The area around Middle and Upper Falls was also pretty busy, but large enough that we weren’t bumping into other folks very time we turned around.
After looking at the falls we hiked up the steep path to the railroad bridge over Upper Falls and went out of the bridge to take some pictures. Oddly enough we were the only ones up there, despite the fact that we had seen many people on the bridge previously. Perhaps they had somehow gotten word that one of the park police was in the area – we were very apologetic and he was nice enough not to give us a ticket for trespassing (the bridge is off limits for obvious safety reasons – trains still use it!)
After that we hiked back down and watched a local company set up a hot air balloon and take a group up for a ride… that was pretty cool. We wrapped the day up buying Chinese takeout in Mount Morris and eating it while waiting for the July 4th fireworks to start… that was pretty crowded, but they did put on a decent show (and we were already there…)
So, all in all, a pretty nice day spent walking around an absolutely breathtaking park with my sweetheart. And yes, I want to go back again and explore even more (maybe during the week when it might be a little less crowded.)
JMH
