Tuesday, 22 July 2014
Letchworth State Park is a New York state park located 35 miles southwest of Rochester and 60 miles southeast of Buffalo in Livingston and Wyoming counties. The park is roughly 17 miles long,covering 14,350 acres of land along the Genesee River. Within the park, there are three large waterfalls on the Genesee River and as many as fifty waterfalls found on tributaries that flow into it; the deep gorge formed by the river, with rock walls rising up to 550 feet in places and which narrow to 400 feet across above the middle of the three falls, prompted the area's reputation as the "Grand Canyon of the East". The territory of the park was long part of the homeland of the Seneca people, who were largely forced out after the American Revolutionary War, as they had been allies of the defeated British. In 1856 William Pryor Letchworth, an industrialist, bought 1,000-acre of this territory, and constructed his Glen Iris Estate. In 1906 he bequeathed the estate to New York state, which later organized the park of which it is part. Park entrances near the towns of Mount Morris, Perry, Castile and Portageville, New York. A modern, well-maintained two- or three-lane road follows the west side of the gorge, allowing many scenic viewpoints for the geologic features. Source
