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Croesus Canyon CampsIndependent travel agency · Rochester, New York

+1 (585) 663-2741Mon to Thu 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Fri 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern

Plan a gorge stay

Reservations handled from the Rochester desk; payment goes straight to the campground or inn, and no card is ever requested here.

Where to reserve: gorge destinations near Rochester in four directions

These are the gorge destinations near Rochester that the office plans for, grouped by the direction you drive. The nearest is about 1 hour 10 minutes away; the farthest, across the Pennsylvania line, takes about 2 hours 55 minutes. Rochester sits almost in the middle, which is why a Friday evening start works for most of them.

Western and central New York were planed flat by glaciers and then cut by the streams that drained them. The result is a band of gorges and glens from Lake Erie to the Mohawk valley, most of them in thin layers of shale that break into the stair-stepped walls you see in every picture on this site.

Glens and gorges, and why both appear here

Locally, a glen is a narrow gorge cut by a side creek, usually with waterfalls stepping down its length; a gorge is anything with walls. The cleft at Watkins is a glen; the Genesee and the Niagara cut gorges. We use the word gorge for all eight, because what matters for a weekend is the depth, and that we measured.

Looking up a narrow cleft of layered gray rock to a small waterfall, green trees and a strip of sky
A wide view along a winding river gorge with pale cliff walls and forests of red, orange and yellow trees on both rims

South: the Genesee valley and Dansville

The Genesee River leaves the city through its own gorge at High Falls and, about an hour south, runs through the deepest gorge in western New York, with Castile and Perry on its west side. A little east, Route 390 runs straight to Dansville and the Stony Brook glen.

Southeast: the Finger Lakes

Three of the eight are glens cut by creeks falling into the long lakes: the cleft at Watkins on Seneca, the tall falls near Trumansburg on Cayuga, and Fall Creek in Ithaca. Each is a drive of under two and a half hours.

West: the lower Niagara

The lower Niagara runs past Lewiston, deep and fast, at the end of the lake plain road from Rochester. Every stay is on the American side, and the village makes a good base for walking the gorge rim.

East and south across the line

East and south across the state line sit two gorges: Chittenango Falls, a short gorge near Cazenovia past Syracuse, and Pine Creek in north-central Pennsylvania, the deepest of all and the longest drive.

Places left off the list

Some well-known gorges are missing on purpose, and the ones on the list are served from outside their parks. Nights inside public parks are reserved through the parks' own system, so every stay here is with a campground or inn outside the park boundary. Zoar Valley, wild and beautiful, allows no overnight stays in the valley itself, so it is left off as well. Every stay on this site is in New York or Pennsylvania.

For the full list, ordered by depth, see all eight gorge campgrounds.