A “book of nature” is how local journalist and promoter Morvalden Ells described Watkins Glen in the 1860s. He was speaking of the splendid natural wonder from which both the town and the famous racetrack take their names.
A “glen” is a ravine, a narrow valley. The ravine called Watkins Glen is cut into the steep hillside on the west flank of the Seneca Lake valley. It is a beautiful break in the skin of the earth, where a stream has sliced through hundreds of feet of ancient rock layers. For thousands of years, Glen Creek has roared and whispered through its confines, slowly deepening the rugged throat of rock and shaping its ledges, pools, and waterfalls. With its cave-like gorges, fern-draped cliffs, and splashing waterfalls, Watkins Glen is a sensory delight.
Water created Watkins Glen—water as a stream that eroded the gorge, water as Ice Age glaciers that bored the Seneca Lake valley and changed the course of Glen Creek, and water in an ancient sea where sand and mud settled on the bottom, eventually to harden and become the very rocks the gorge is cut into. The magic of water and its works are what have brought people to the glen, whether to harness waterpower for mills in the 1800s or to walk behind a waterfall in the twenty-first century.
Watkins Glen first opened as a privately owned scenic resort in 1863 as a result of the vision and efforts of Mr. Ells. His descriptions of the gorge and its waterfalls drew thousands of visitors from America and Europe and placed Watkins Glen alongside Niagara Falls, Saratoga Springs, and the Catskill Mountains as a Victorian tourist destination. In 1906, Watkins Glen became the first state park in the Finger Lakes region and it continues to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
Travel writer Tip Roseberry wrote in 1982, “A tour through Watkins Glen is a visit to an art gallery of nature, each picture to be savored individually before moving on to the next.” In that spirit, let’s consider one section of the gorge at a time, starting at the mouth of the glen where it opens to the Seneca valley.
