Watkins Glen State Park

Glen Creek didn't carve this gorge so much as inherit it — glaciers deepened the Seneca valley until the creek was left hanging, then spent the next 12,000 years cutting downward through layers of rock that erode at different rates, leaving behind 19 waterfalls stacked along roughly two miles of trail. A Vermont newspaper editor opened the site to the public in 1863; it became a state park in 1906. The CCC rebuilt its stone bridges and walkways during the Depression. Come for the gorge trail, which runs over, under, and behind those falls.