Chittenango Falls is about 170 feet high. The gorge, as you can see in the photo above, is enormous. There is no doubt that a whole lot of water once flowed down this creek.

The park is very woodsy. Admission for us (a minivan with four kids) was $6. There are no amusements at this park, and the trails are short (some were closed; I suspect it was because of the severe flooding we had before our visit that summer of 2006). But the “atmosphere” was right up our alley– thickly wooded forests, roaring water, lots of green space, benches, and beautiful stonework. The kids were enthralled with watching tufted titmouse birds dive and spin with vicious acrobatic moves over the water (we figured they were catching bugs). Chipmunks scurried everywhere, walnuts, dropping from trees, were just begging to be opened, and there were amazing fossils to be found in the large stone slab steps.

There were fossils in the stone stairs. The kids loved discovering them. According to Wikipedia, the Chittenango Falls park is home to the “endangered Chittenango Ovate Amber Snail (Novisuccinea chittenangoensis).”

Live specimens of the Chittenango snail cannot be found anywhere else on Earth.

I love that Latin word for Chittenango: chittenangoensis. We did not spot any snails.

We enjoyed terrific views of the falls at all levels: above, looking straight down, halfway down, below, and down the Chittenango Creek a bit. I liked the trails best of all. Walking down the trail to the gorge below was no easy feat. The trail was rocky and steep, and narrow at times. I guess that is part of what made it fun– it was adventurous!

The trail begins at the top of the falls. There are a lot of areas convenient to the view.

There were logs and other mangled debris snagged to the rocks. It can be safe to surmise that all this junk was a result from the Big Floods of June 2006 here in Upstate New York.

You can see the wooden footpath in the photo above. A steep trail takes you directly to it. Click the picture if you want a larger view, and then click “All Sizes” for a very large photo.

We made our way down to the gorge toward the creek.

The mulch trails were sometimes a little slippery. This is not a place to wear high heels, ladies. Believe it or not, we’ve been hiking at other places, and some of the women actually had high heels.

Here we are on the footbridge over the creek.

The footbridge leads to more paths, and we wanted to take them, but it was blocked off. A barrier with a sign said that due to the flooding, the trails on this part of the falls was closed. Rats.

We didn’t stay as long in the gorge as we liked. The heat and humidity was unbearable– it was 85 degrees (F) even at 6:30pm. I’d read that down here in the gorge the humidity is about 100%. It definitely felt that way for us. The forest literally sweated around us. The creek looked so terribly inviting, but wading was not allowed. The creek is Chittenango Creek.

This is our idea of a vacation day: quiet, outdoors, near water. You’ll NEVER find me at DisneyLand or Enchanted Forest, ugh. The only thing I wished we could have done was hopped in the water on such a scorcher of a day.

The view of the falls is best in this area.

We continued on our journey, and the trails opened up to a nice picnic area.

There are restrooms and shady places to sit here. It would have been nice to have brought a picnic lunch. Too bad we didn’t, because it was lunchtime and we were hungry now.

Time to make the arduous hike back up to the parking area.

We’d explored some of the trails and a small stream, and finally made our way down the small gorge to the Pixley Falls. The water was thin for a waterfall, although it was pretty obvious that a lot of water had once gushed across this chasm.

The rock strata is just amazing to me. The setting is so peaceful and the sound of the water so soothing that I could have watched it for hours. 

The photos cannot express smell, though. The place smelled like dead fish. There were no fish that we could find (and we did look), but I think the smell came from stagnant water. The water, rushing down the waterfall, pooled below and didn’t really have any place to go. We were able to stroll along the creekbed where the water had, long ago, raged. Small pools of slightly green water sat at out feet.

We followed the creek for a while. It was muddy in some places. The watercourse, like so many areas in Upstate New York, is flowing across limestone. Limestone suffers severe erosion with continual water activity like this, so the streams and waterways are always “changing their minds.” The stream, which had once coursed down the falls, was changing slightly. As we walked down the creekbed, we saw more water, coming from a different stream that had formed.

We made our way back up to the top and I discovered a small path that led to the top of the falls, 50 feet above where we had just been. Good thing I’m not afraid of heights! I told the kids they had to stay back, but I ventured to the edge to snap some photos of the top of the waterfall. I thought it would be cool to have a picture of the water going down at the bottom and the top!

Here I am, looking straight down where I was looking up previously.

I stepped back and noticed all these circles at my feet.

When I stepped back, I found the neatest thing! The water coming down the upper creek (before it fell down the waterfall) has carved dozens of circles into the limestone. It was like a little fairyland of sorts, it was beautiful.

And here’s a closeup of a circle.

I found it awesome that the water formed perfect circles, sometimes perfectly concentric circles, as it flowed down the limestone and then down to the pool below. It was all sparkly and wonderful up here. I am still kind of stunned by its beauty, even now.

If you’d like to see a simple video I took of the waterfall, I posted it here.

A small stream flows through the park, part of the many-veined water network leading to the mighty Mohawk River. The stream tumbles down the steep hills, narrows in some places and widens in others. the day we visited, the waterflow was steady but rather small and unspectacular. During periods of heavy rains, I could imagine it cresting easily over the green banks.

You really need to click the image to enlarge it, in order to appreciate the absolute beauty of the place.

The kids were very happy to simply run around, follow the stream, and look for fossils. We found diatoms in several of the rocks. It is amazing to think that at one time, all this land– even the Adirondacks themselves– were once under water.

There are little rocks. And there are big rocks. REALLY big rocks.

After exploring the little stream and some of the trails (and the restrooms), we made our way down the hill to see the actual waterfalls. The descent was rather steep.

It was a wonderfully invigorating walk! I was surprised to see so many people down by the water. A small group of about 20 Amish women were chatting by the water, and a few couples had small children. One lady even had a tiny dog she was carrying around.

When we got to the bottom of the incline, the full 50-foot view of the falls came into sight. It was lovely.

I’ll save the rest of the story for another post, including my little exploratory walk to the top edge of the waterfalls. That was fun!

Cherry Valley is a tiny little place and one of those uber-rural Upstate New York towns very much “out of the way” from the main thoroughfare. It wasn’t always such an isolated settlement. In the days before motorcars and railroads, Cherry Valley was the natural passageway between the western and eastern sections of New York State. A Landmark Village says of it:

Cherry Valley was a gateway to the American Frontier. The reason was this: there is a ridge of mountains and hills that run east to west, separating the Mohawk from the Susquehanna watersheds. But there are smooth fertile glacial valleys both north and south of this ridge at Cherry Valley. The ancient Iroquois discovered that these glacial valleys formed a natural stairway, giving them their easiest way through the ridge. Cherry Valley was also quite near to the Mohawk River itself, which veers sharply south into Canajoharie.

The result was that Cherry Valley was an important link between the Mohawk and the other Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Cherry Valley’s favored position along the ridge made it part of the natural route east to west as well.

Cherry Valley was the location of the Cherry Valley Massacre during the American Revolution. Have you ever seen the Mel Gibson movie, “The Patriot”? A great deal of the movie’s plot comes from various little events that actually occurred during the American Revolution. In the movie, Mel Gibson’s character speaks of a massacre of innocent women and children at a fort (called Fort Wilderness in the movie). Gibson and his men take revenge on the Indians and French perpetrators. During the American Revolution, there were several massacres, but the most famous one was probably the Cherry Valley Massacre.

One of the most notorious events of the Revolutionary War was the Cherry Valley Massacre of November 11, 1778. A regiment of Tory rangers under Captain Walter Butler and Native forces under the Mohawk war chief Joseph Brant, fell upon the settlement, killing 47, including 32 noncombatants — mostly by tomahawk. The Cherry Valley Massacre, along with an earlier rout by Butler’s forces at Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, in time induced General Washington to redeploy some of his forces who were staving off the British, and focus them on securing the frontier. Thus General Clinton’s famous 1779 raid on the Southern Tier via Cooperstown, a tale best left for another day.

I have not seen the monument to the Cherry Valley Massacre. I suspect it is somewhat out of the village. Next time we go through, we’ll look for it. There is a large monument erected to those who were killed, I found some photos of it here.

After the war, Upstate New York was rapidly settled. The construction of the Erie Canal, connecting the Great Lake Ontario to the Hudson River and to the Atlantic Ocean, brought economic prosperity to many Upstate cities. The discovery of sulphur springs in the mid-to-eastern section of the state brought tourists seeking the health benefits of the warm springs. Many Upstate towns are named after such springs: Saratoga Springs, Richfield Springs, Springfield, Sharon Springs, and so on. Wealthy families from New York City came north to these resort towns. Cherry Valley wasn’t as prosperous as the other Upstate towns (it was somewhat removed from the Erie Canal), but it has its share of importance.

History has it that Samuel Morse developed his telegraph machine here. And the National Bank of Cherry Valley is the “oldest bank in New York State west of Albany.” The inside of the bank still retains much of its charm from its establishment in 1818. Actually, driving into Cherry Valley is like going back in time. If it wasn’t for the power line poles and the cars, I doubt the town looks much different than it did 100 years ago. Many of the old houses are still standing.

I hadn’t been through the town in 15 years, and absolutely nothing was changed. The old dingy laundromat and the Limestone Inn were exactly the same. The old Central National Bank still stood, in excellent shape. There are some good photos of the town here and here.

When I lived here, I had once visited the little-known and well-hidden waterfalls. According to Waterfalls of the Northeastern United States, the falls at Cherry Valley are called Judds Falls. No offense, but the name Judds Falls is just not majestic enough to describe the quiescent beauty of this magnificent feature.

The Falls are off Route 166, just under the Route 20 overpass and where Vanderwerker Rd begins. The Falls flows out from underground Vanderwerker Rd (which I thought unusual), but you cannot see them from that road. Below is a photo I took while standing above the Falls on Vanderwerker Rd. You can hear them from this vantage point, but you cannot see them. They are actually 20 yards below your feet. The gorge is very hard to see, as it is far, far below and the trees block the view of the stream at the bottom. If you want, click the photo to enlarge it and look for it.

I parked in a small parking area off Rt. 166 perpendicular to Vanderwerker, and wandered through the small patch of woods to the gorge. If you go by only what you can see, you will easily miss the gorge as you walk toward it– it seems that the woods just continue on and on. But before you know it, the cacophony of falling water pounds your ears and the great gorge opens up before you. The wooded trail you’d followed is suddenly swallowed up by empty space 300 feet down and 400 feet across.

This old picture from Waterfalls of the Northeastern US does not depict the falls as they are today. There is a lot more water running through the area today. It is a tremendous sight. To some, it’s not as exciting as seeing Mickey Mouse at Disneyland or the Jaws shark at Universal Studios. But IMHO nobody beats God when it comes to special attractions.

I took a picture of the way across the gorge. The sun was low in the sky, so the photo didn’t come out as nice as I’d hoped, but perhaps it gives an idea of how huge this gorge is.

My camera was not sufficient to take the photo from the top to the bottom of the gorge. The drop is 135 feet.

Great sheets of slate and limestone puncture the gorge walls. It was like someone had carefully built block upon block of different kinds of rock.

We roamed the area a little, which was still snowy in patches. My sons found deer tracks and bunny dung everywhere. A large collection of muddy acorns was tucked into their pockets. And I found out that my boots are no longer waterproof. Nice. After a few minutes of quiet repose, we sloshed our way back to the van. I snapped a picture of the valley from the side of the road.

Beautiful country.