73 Best Sights in The Finger Lakes, New York

On a ridge between the southern ends of Cayuga and Seneca lakes, 9 miles north of Watkins Glen, the national forest offers more than 30 mi of easy-to-moderate hiking trails through a variety of terrain. The land was patched together when the federal government purchased about 100 farms between 1938 and 1941. The forest encompasses 16,032 acres, so you might feel like you have the place to yourself—regardless of whether you're camping, cross-country skiing, fishing, or hunting. The forest's altitude is higher than most surrounding points, so great vistas are yours for the hiking. Trail maps are available at some trailheads and at the visitor center.

Six huge Ionic columns front this restored 1839 Greek Revival mansion overlooking Seneca Lake. The 21 rooms open to the public include servants' quarters, the children's playroom, the kitchen, dining room, and parlors. Some rooms are outfitted with the Empire-style furnishings that were used from 1850 to 1890 by the prosperous farm family that lived here. Guided tours of the house begin with an introductory film and are given on the hour weekdays and on the half hour weekends. The grounds include boxwood gardens.

The grounds at this 52-acre estate are a magnificent example of late-Victorian gardening and design. The rose garden overflows with 4,000 bushes; the other themed plantings include Japanese, pansy, blue-and-white, and rock gardens. An early-1900s conservatory houses the orchid collection and other exotic plants. The stunning 1887 Queen Anne mansion was built as a summer home by a wealthy New York City banker and his wife, who became Canandaigua's biggest benefactress. The library, the couple's favorite room, looks out on the Italian garden. The great hall features a massive leaded-glass window and an 1874 Steinway. Walking tours are offered weekdays at 1 and weekends at 10 and 1 from Memorial Day through September.

Play is taken seriously at the second-largest children's museum in the country, home to the world's largest collection of toys, dolls, and play-related artifacts and to the National Toy Hall of Fame. Within its 282,000-square-foot footprint are interactive exhibits like Reading Adventureland, where you follow a yellow-brick road into a pop-up book of life-size literary creations; Sesame Street (created in collaboration with Sesame Workshop); a pint-size market where kids run the store; and an indoor butterfly garden and aquarium. Also on display are some of dolls and dollhouses of museum founder Margaret Woodbury Strong (1897–1969), who collected some 17,000 dolls throughout her life.

The main entrance to this park is in downtown Watkins Glen. Campgrounds are scattered around the beautiful Glen Creek. The waters drop about 500 feet in 2 mile and include 19 waterfalls. The easy 1½-mile gorge trail runs parallel to the creek, and 300-foot cliffs border the water. One bridge spans 165 feet over the water. The park also has an Olympic-size pool. "Timespell," a computerized light-and-sound show, explains the geological development of the gorge. It's screened on the sides of the glen. The gorge isn't accessible in winter.

Finish your day at Ontario Beach Park with a true Rochester treat: Abbott's Frozen Custard. You can spot this Rochester institution, opened in 1926, by the line on a hot afternoon. The custards—thicker and creamier than ice cream due to a slow-churning process—are made fresh daily in old-fashioned flavors ranging from chocolate almond to black cherry to butterscotch.

The former factory-warehouse district of redbrick buildings is now a vibrant area with shops, restaurants, and loads of nightlife. The district is named after the 1874 armory, now home to the Museum of Science and Technology, near its southern perimeter.

Inside this former cannon factory, nearly every inch of the more than 60,000-square-foot bohemian art-gallery-meets-studio-space is chockablock with art, much of it for sale. Some of the 500,000 pieces have a pedigree: Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Gordon Parks, though about 80% of the collection is local. The eclectic space also includes artist studios, a dinner theater, a courtyard, and a two-story firehouse with a real 1958 pumper truck. The rooftop sculpture garden gives you a view of the city skyline.

The views of Keuka Lake from here are spectacular. The wine is less so, and the tours are touristy, but the tastings are fun. Lunch and dinner are available at the Bully Hill Restaurant.

The Canandaigua Wine Trail includes just five wineries, in Fairport, Canandaigua, and Naples, and two wine centers in Canandaigua.

The Cayuga Wine Trail has 16 wineries stretching from Seneca Falls down to Ithaca, with most concentrated on the western-central lakefront. Montezuma Winery, on the trail, is known for its mead (honey wine).

The lighthouse stands about a mile south of Lake Ontario, giving you an idea of how the landscape has changed since the 40-foot-tall stone structure was erected in 1822. In the 1960s a group of local high school students saved the structure—the second-oldest American lighthouse on Lake Ontario—from rumored demolition.

The smell of its bread baking is so good that Columbus Baking Co. could charge admission. On a side street in Syracuse's Little Italy section, the bakery has just one product and makes it 10 paces from where customers buy it.

The 200 acres of plants and trees adjacent to the Cornell University campus are primarily organized in collections—peonies, rock-garden species, rhododendrons, old-time vegetable and flower gardens, conifers, flowering crabapples, wildflowers. There's even a section for poisonous plants. The winter garden includes evergreens, conifers, and assorted plants with interesting cold-weather colors and textures. The complex's arboretum includes an area with sculptures. Walking and bus tours are available; call ahead for seasonal times. Some tours are free and others are $5.

With its historic buildings, weave of natural and man-made spaces, Cayuga Lake views, and two spectacular gorges, the campus of this private university is considered one of the most beautiful in the country. Founded in 1865, Cornell is a mixture of modern structures and ivy-covered 19th-century buildings. Wear your walking shoes; there is almost no public parking near the campus center. Free 75-minute tours of the campus leave daily from Day Hall, at Tower Road and East Avenue.

One of the world's premier glass museums, the Corning Museum of Glass displays pieces ranging from contemporary glass sculpture to Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Comfort Tiffany stained-glass windows to glassware crafted by Egyptians 3,500 years ago. About 10,000 of the more than 45,000 glass objects in the museum's collection are on display at any one time. Interactive exhibits show the history, beauty, and creativity of 35 centuries of glasswork. Glassmaking demonstrations are given throughout the day and a workshop encourages you to make your own glass souvenir ($10–$30); even preschoolers may participate. In the 18,000-square-foot gift shop you can buy works from local or internationally known glass artists, from a $5 glass-bead bracelet to a $17,000 Pepi Hermann cut-crystal platter, as well as utilitarian items, like the namesake CorningWare. Also available is Steuben Glass, founded in Corning; Steuben masterpieces have been presented as gifts to foreign heads of state and are in museums around the world. The museum adjoins a glass studio, which serves as a workshop for professional gaffers and an educational center for glass students.

Lake history and local farming take center stage at this 1899 barn-style building where butter bound for New York City was produced. Exhibits here also feature the prickly, cone-shape teasel—a plant used in mills to "tease" the nap of wool. Skaneateles was a teasel-growing center until the 1950s, when synthetic fabrics replaced much of the demand for wool.

Many consider Dr. Frank's the best wine in the Finger Lakes. The winery, overlooking Keuka Lake, was started in the early 1960s and is run by the grandson of the founder. A Ukrainian immigrant, Dr. Frank was a pioneer in growing classic European grapes in the region. Cabernet francs, Rieslings, pinot noirs, and chardonnays (all European, or vinifera, varietals) are among Dr. Frank's offerings. The Rieslings are excellent, and the pinot noirs are really coming into their own. Also look for rkatsiteli (ar-kat-si-tel-lee), a spicy wine made from an Eastern European grape.

The meticulously restored Elizabeth Cady Stanton House is where one of American feminism's most important leaders shaped social reform as she raised seven children. Stanton's feminist colleague, Susan B. Anthony of Rochester, was a guest in the house. A tour helps you to understand Stanton's charisma and power. The house, a mile east of the Declaration Park and visitor center (across the canal), is open early March through mid-December, with tours daily at 11:15 and 2:15 and more frequently in summer.

Orient yourself to Syracuse and the region by watching the introductory film in the museum theater. Then make your way to a replica canal boat in a circa-1850 building where real canal boats were weighed when the Erie was a major player in U.S. commerce. A re-created general store, an 1800s canal office, and a postal area are interspersed with exhibits about Syracuse musician Libba Cotten and others who shaped the region.

Jackson Pollock and Andrew Wyeth works are part of the collection of more than 8,000 objects at the Everson, which was designed by architect I.M. Pei. Kids have their own gallery.

The limestone-and-shale Fillmore Glen State Park, 17 mi south of Auburn, has five waterfalls and a stream-fed, stone-walled swimming pool. Named for the nation's 13th president, the park also has a replica of the cabin where Millard Fillmore was born. (The actual site is 5 mi east.)

The Finger Lakes Wine Center, on the Sonnenberg Gardens' grounds in a building near the parking lot, has a tasting room with a rotating selection of wines and sells wines and specialty foods from throughout the Finger Lakes region.

Some of Auburn's most famous residents are buried at Fort Hill, an outstanding example of the parklike burial grounds resulting from the rural-cemetery movement of the early 1800s. Rising over a middle-class residential and commercial neighborhood near downtown, Fort Hill is a great place for a quiet walk under giant trees and for views of the city. Among those buried here are William H. Seward, who served in the cabinets of two U.S. presidents; Harriet Tubman, who liberated hundreds of slaves; and Captain Myles Keogh, who fought (and died) alongside General George Custer at Little Big Horn.

Some of the region's best wines are produced at this winery, opened in 1990 in a converted Civil War–era dairy barn on the shores of Seneca Lake. All the wines are winners, but the Rieslings, gewürtztraminer, and dry reds are particularly notable. In 2008, Fox Run was the first New York State winery in 22 years to be chosen as one of the top 100 wineries in the world by Wine and Spirits magazine. Tours are given every hour on the hour (weather permitting) until 4 pm. A café serves homemade soups, salads, and sandwiches, prepared fresh daily by the CIA-trained chef; all of Fox Run's wines are available by the glass in the café. Note: it has an address in Penn Yan, but is actually closer to Geneva.

This 750-acre living-history museum has 68 buildings that were moved from throughout the region to re-create 19th-century life in the Genesee Valley. The complex includes the John L. Wehle Gallery of Wildlife & Sporting Art. The 175-acre Genesee Country Nature Center, which has exhibits and 5 mi of interpreted hiking trails, is open all year. You may cross-country ski and snowshoe here. Mumford is 20 mi southwest of Rochester.

The sprawling colonial-revival mansion, once the home of Eastman Kodak's founder, has been restored to its early-1900s appearance. The elephant head on the wall in the conservatory is an eye-catcher, and the rest of the house gives a glimpse into the life and times of the man who brought photography to the masses. Much of the second floor is used as gallery space. The grounds include a rock garden with scallop-shaped flower beds, a formal terrace garden with more than 90 types of perennials, a cutting garden, a lily pool, and a grape arbor. The International Museum of Photography and Film, connected to the mansion, has changing exhibits about the history of photography and film technology; the permanent collection includes tens of thousands of photos, books, and films as well as photographic equipment. Also here is the Dryden Theatre, which shows movies ($7) and hosts film festivals.

Just outside Hammondsport, this museum honors Curtiss and his early aviation experiments. The Hammondsport native made the first public preannounced flight when he flew his June Bug plane more than 5,000 feet outside the village on July 4, 1908. Exhibits include aircraft, engines, a collection of antique motorcycles, and hands-on models for kids. A restoration shop is open to the public and staff is available to answer questions.

The Federal-style house was completed in 1816 by Gideon Granger, postmaster general for presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It contains what's known as a flying staircase, and its nine rooms have hand-carved woodwork and many of the original furnishings and paintings. Free guided daily tours are available. The carriage house displays 93 horse-drawn vehicles, including an undertaker's hearse. The many annual events include a Civil War encampment in September and a Festival of Trees in November and December. The museum runs 45-minute narrated carriage tours of Canandaigua on Friday and Sunday, June through September. The trips cost $20, and reservations are required. Weather permitting, sleigh rides are offered on Sunday at 1 pm, January–March.

A tour of the vineyard and winery includes the Greyton H. Taylor Wine Museum, which focuses on 18th-century wine-making equipment.