Seneca Lake

Seneca is the largest and deepest of the Finger Lakes, 38 miles long and 618 feet deep, gouged by glaciers that turned river valleys into troughs and then dammed them with debris. It is so deep that it rarely freezes and holds enough warmth to give the vineyards on its slopes the longest growing season in the region — which is why the Seneca Lake Wine Trail wraps it.

Watkins Glen sits at the south end below its gorge and its racetrack; Geneva at the north with its lakefront colleges. In between, the depth has drawn stranger tenants: the U.S. Navy has tested sonar in the lake's deep water since the 1940s, and residents have long reported the "Seneca guns," unexplained booms that roll across the water on still days.

The Seneca Nation, for whom the lake is named, held this country until the Sullivan campaign of 1779; the towns that followed kept the classical names — Geneva, Ovid, Romulus, Dresden — that mark the lake's shore today.