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This photo was shown on Earth
Science Picture of the Day for 01-06-2004
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Use these links for larger versions:
Click the image below to preview the other versions.
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| Location |
On Taughannock Creek, a tributary of Cayuga Lake,
in Tompkins County. |
| Access |
Located in Taughannock
State Park on Route 89, 12 miles north of Ithaca,
NY. You can view this waterfall by walking to the
base on a foot trail from the lower park, or by driving
to the overlook on Taughannock Park Rd. The lower
park has extensive picnic, lake swimming, and camping
facilities. There may be a parking/entrance fee in
the summer. There is no fee to park at the overlook
or at the upper parking lot. |
| Hiking |
The walk to the base of
the lower falls is on a well-maintained footpath and
is an easy 1 mile each way. Allow about an hour. You
can also see the falls from the overlook parking lot,
or descend about 3 flights of stairs to a viewing
balcony. The pictures to the left are from the viewing
balcony. There are also hiking trails on the South
Rim and the North Rim of the gorge. Keep on the trails
at all times; this is not a toy gully and people have
been killed when venturing off the trails. See our
Taughannock Creek page for
more information about hiking. |
| Details |
This is the highest waterfall in western
New York with a 215 feet sheer drop. It is on a good sized stream
and never fails to impress visitors, even in dry periods (as shown
in the late summer photo at left).
The vertical panoramas were taken with our digital camera as four
separate frames and then auto-stitched together to form the final
images.
Can you find the people in the pictures? |
| Erosion |
We noticed a large piece of rock missing
in our recent photos. Can you find it by comparing our summer and
fall pictures? If not, see the rockfall closeup. |
| Pronunciation |
We've had several people (including Salit)
ask us how to pronounce Taughannock. Here's our homegrown phonetic
spelling:
tah-GAH-nick which rhymes with mechanic.
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