Taughannock Falls

Taughannock Falls drops 215 feet (66 m) in a single plunge, 33 feet (10 m) more than Niagara, making it one of the tallest single-drop waterfalls east of the Rocky Mountains. Taughannock Creek pours off a ledge into an amphitheater of rock whose walls rise as high as 400 feet (120 m), a short walk from the western shore of Cayuga Lake in the town of Ulysses, near Trumansburg, New York. The gorge trail to the base is short and nearly level, and an overlook on the rim looks straight down the canyon.

Ice built this scene. Glaciers deepened the trough that now holds Cayuga Lake far more than they cut the side valleys, leaving Taughannock Creek to drop into the main valley from above. Soft shale at the base of the falls erodes faster than the siltstone and sandstone above it, so the falls slowly retreat upstream. Visitors arrived by steamboat and rail in the 19th century to stay at a hotel built here in 1850. New York began buying land for a state park in 1925, and the park now covers about 750 acres (3 km²). The name may come from Native words meaning great fall in the woods.

• New York
  The Empire State, from Manhattan to the Adirondacks located in
• The Northeast
  The Census region of New England and the Mid-Atlantic located in
• Niagara Falls
  The famous falls on the Niagara River related