Home to the Corning Museum of Glass — the largest glass museum in the world — and a revitalized Gaffer District of galleries, restaurants, and studios, Corning sits just south of the Finger Lakes and functions as the region's cultural anchor.

Otisco Lake is the smallest and easternmost of the major Finger Lakes — 5.4 miles long and 76 feet deep — and it's better known among anglers chasing tiger muskie and walleye than among tourists.

Skaneateles Lake is so clean it serves as an unfiltered drinking water supply for Syracuse, and the village on its northern shore matches that clarity with a polished downtown of independent shops, fine dining, and year-round lakefront beauty.

Owasco Lake stretches 11 miles through Cayuga County with the city of Auburn at its north end — but finding a way to the water takes planning, because public access here is among the most limited of any Finger Lake.

The largest community in the Finger Lakes proper, Canandaigua pairs a showpiece Victorian downtown with a public beach, elaborate gardens, and a history that includes Susan B. Anthony's 1873 trial for the crime of voting.

Skaneateles Lake is one of the cleanest lakes in the United States — so clean it supplies drinking water to the city of Syracuse without filtration — and the village on its north shore is the refined eastern anchor of the Finger Lakes.

This village of 700 at the southern tip of Keuka Lake holds two major American origin stories — the Finger Lakes wine industry started here, and Glenn Curtiss built the aircraft that launched American aviation from these hills.

The Seneca people called it "The Chosen Spot" — Canandaigua Lake runs 15.5 miles through the western Finger Lakes, with a sophisticated lakeside city at its north end and one of the best public swimming beaches in the region.

A village of 1,800 people at the southern tip of Seneca Lake, Watkins Glen draws over a million visitors a year to its extraordinary state park gorge and legendary motorsport circuit.

Keuka is the only Y-shaped lake in the Finger Lakes, with two distinct northern branches separated by a steep bluff — and it's where the region's wine industry began in 1860.