For centuries before European contact, the Finger Lakes region formed the heartland of the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois Confederacy. The two largest lakes bear the names of two of its member nations: Seneca and Cayuga. Iroquois towns dotted the shorelines -- Gen-nis-he-yo at present-day Geneseo, Kanadaseaga near Geneva, Goiogouen on the eastern shore of Cayuga Lake. The Confederacy's political sophistication kept European colonizers at bay for nearly two centuries, playing French and British interests against each other with a shrewdness that colonial powers grudgingly acknowledged. That era ended violently with the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, when American forces destroyed most Iroquois towns in retaliation for frontier raids during the Revolutionary War. The land was opened for purchase and settlement, and within a generation, New England migrants had planted farms across the former Iroquois homeland. Their Federal and Greek Revival architecture still lines the village streets of Geneva, Skaneateles, and Aurora.

Something about the Finger Lakes bred restlessness. The region became known as the Burned-Over District in the nineteenth century, a place where religious revivals and reform movements swept through with unusual intensity. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded at Palmyra, on the northern edge of the lakes. At Seneca Falls, Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first convention on women's rights in 1848 at the Wesleyan Chapel, launching the suffrage movement that would take another seventy-two years to achieve its goal. Waterloo claims recognition as the birthplace of Memorial Day. The Underground Railroad ran through the region, with stations scattered among sympathetic farmsteads. In Auburn, at the eastern end of Owasco Lake, Harriet Tubman made her home after the Civil War, living on a property purchased from Secretary of State William Seward. The spirit of Seneca Falls and the courage of Tubman's Auburn years are part of the same regional character -- a willingness to challenge the established order.

The geological story of the Finger Lakes reaches back far beyond the last ice age. Studies of ancient sediments exposed at the Great Gully on Cayuga Lake's eastern flank reveal that a predecessor lake, called Glacial Lake Nanette, filled the same bedrock valley around 50,000 years ago before being buried by a glacial readvance. The valleys themselves developed over multiple glaciations, each one deepening the troughs carved by its predecessor. Terminal moraines left behind by retreating ice acted as natural dams, trapping meltwater in the overdeepened valleys. Today the lakes drain northward into Lake Ontario, though neighboring Waneta and Lamoka lakes -- sometimes called the fingernail lakes -- belong to the Susquehanna River watershed instead. Hemlock and Canadice, the two westernmost major lakes, have supplied Rochester's drinking water for over a century. The city acquired surrounding land to protect water quality, and the resulting reforestation created the Hemlock-Canadice State Forest, where steep wooded shorelines and clear water offer a glimpse of how the lakes looked before settlement.

The same glacial depth that makes the lakes geologically remarkable makes them viticultural gold. Water that deep acts as a thermal reservoir, holding summer warmth into autumn and winter cold into spring, buffering the surrounding hillsides from the killing frosts that would otherwise make grape growing impossible at this latitude. The long north-south orientation of the lakes means that east-facing and west-facing slopes receive different amounts of sunlight, creating a patchwork of microclimates within a single valley. Over 400 wineries and vineyards now line the shores of Seneca, Cayuga, Canandaigua, and Keuka Lakes, making the Finger Lakes New York's largest wine-producing region. Riesling thrives here, along with Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet Franc. The Pleasant Valley Wine Company on Keuka Lake, established in 1860, holds the distinction of being the first bonded winery in the United States. On Hemlock Lake, the O-Neh-Da Vineyard -- named with the Seneca word for Lake of Hemlock Trees -- has produced sacramental wine since Bishop McQuaid founded it in 1872, making it the nation's oldest continuously operating sacramental winery.

At Hammondsport, on the southern tip of Keuka Lake, aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss built and flew some of the earliest aircraft in America, drawn by the favorable air currents that funnel through the lake valleys. Those same thermals still attract glider pilots to the area, and the National Soaring Museum preserves the history of engineless flight. Nearby Elmira was once the soaring capital of America. The region's aviation heritage shares space with more grounded attractions -- the Corning Museum of Glass, Cornell University perched above Cayuga Lake in Ithaca, the dramatic gorges of Watkins Glen at Seneca Lake's southern end. Mark Twain spent his later years in Elmira, writing in an octagonal study that still stands. From above, the Finger Lakes reveal their full geometry: eleven parallel scars in the earth, each one holding clear water that reflects the sky, surrounded by vineyard-striped hills and gorge-cut tributaries that testify to the power of ice, time, and flowing water.