Finger Lakes

The Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north–south lakes located in an area called the Finger Lakes region in New York, in the United States. This region straddles the northern and transitional edge of the Northern Allegheny Plateau, known as the Finger Lakes Uplands and Gorges ecoregion, and the Ontario Lowlands ecoregion of the Great Lakes Lowlands.
The geological term finger lake refers to a long, narrow lake in an overdeepened glacial valley, while the proper name Finger Lakes goes back to the late 19th century. Cayuga and Seneca Lakes are among the deepest in the United States, measuring, respectively, with bottoms well below sea level. Though none of the lakes' widths exceed, Seneca Lake is long, and at is the largest in total area.

Name

The origin of the name Finger Lakes is uncertain. Currently, the oldest known published use of finger lakes for this group of 11 lakes is in a United States Geological Survey paper by Thomas Chamberlin that was published in 1883. This paper was later cited and Finger Lakes formally used as a proper name by R. S. Tarr in a Geological Society of America paper published in 1893. Older usage of Finger Lakes in either maps, papers, reports, or any other documents remains to be verified.

Lakes

The eleven Finger Lakes, from west to east, are:

Name	Elevation	Area	Length	Maximum width	Maximum depth	Location	Settlements
Conesus Lake						Livingston County: Conesus, Geneseo, Groveland, Livonia	Lakeville
Hemlock Lake						Livingston County: Conesus, Livonia, Springwater Ontario County: Canadice, Richmond
Canadice Lake						Ontario County: Canadice
Honeoye Lake						Ontario County: Canadice, Richmond	Honeoye
Canandaigua Lake						Ontario County: Canandaigua, Gorham, South Bristol Yates County: Italy, Middlesex	Canandaigua, Woodville
Keuka Lake						Steuben County: Pulteney, Urbana, Wayne Yates County: Barrington, Jerusalem, Milo	Branchport, Hammondsport, Penn Yan
Seneca Lake				approx		Ontario County: Geneva Schuyler County: Dix, Hector, Reading Seneca County: Fayette, Lodi, Ovid, Romulus, Varick, Waterloo Yates County: Benton, Milo, Starkey, Torrey	Dresden, Geneva, Watkins Glen
Cayuga Lake						Cayuga County: Aurelius, Genoa, Ledyard, Springport Seneca County: Covert, Fayette, Ovid, Romulus, Seneca Falls, Varick Tompkins County: Ithaca, Lansing, Ulysses	Aurora, Ithaca, Lansing
Owasco Lake						Cayuga County: Fleming, Moravia, Niles, Owasco, Scipio, Venice	Auburn
Skaneateles Lake						Cayuga County: Niles, Sempronius Cortland County: Scott Onondaga County: Skaneateles, Spafford	Skaneateles
Otisco Lake						Onondaga County: Marcellus, Spafford

Seneca, Cayuga, Skaneateles, Owasco, Keuka, and Canandaigua are considered the major Finger Lakes, while Conesus, Hemlock, Canadice, Honeoye, and Otisco are considered the minor Finger Lakes.
Numerous nearby lakes have been excluded from the traditional list of the lakes. All eleven are part of the Lake Ontario drainage basin. Waneta and Lamoka lakes, located southeast of Keuka Lake, are sometimes called the "fingernail" lakes, but are part of the Susquehanna River watershed, draining into a tributary of the Chemung River. Silver Lake, which has the same geological characteristics as the Finger Lakes and is sometimes regarded as the "12th" Finger Lake, has traditionally been excluded due to its distance from the others, west of the Genesee River. Onondaga Lake and Cazenovia Lake to the east have similarly been excluded. Oneida Lake, to the northeast of Syracuse, is sometimes included as the "thumb", although it is shallow and somewhat different in character from the rest.
File:Overview of the Great Lakes from orbit.jpg|thumb|left|The Finger Lakes are in the center bottom of this west facing image; Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake Ontario are three of the Great Lakes

Quaternary geology

These glacial finger lakes originated as a series of northward-flowing streams. Around two million years ago, the area was glaciated by the first of many continental glaciers as the Laurentide Ice Sheet moved southward from the Hudson Bay area. During the glacial maximums, subglacial meltwater and glacial ice widened, deepened, and accentuated the existing river valleys to form subglacial tunnel valleys. Glacial debris, possibly terminal moraine left behind by the receding ice, acted as dams, allowing lakes to form. Despite the deep erosion of the valleys, the surrounding uplands show little evidence of glaciation, suggesting the ice was thin, or at least unable to cause much erosion at higher elevations. The deep cutting by glacial erosion left some tributaries hanging high above the lakes—both Seneca and Cayuga have tributaries hanging as much as above the valley floors. Based on sediment cores, seismic stratigraphy, and radiocarbon dates, the finger lakes became ice-free about 14,400 BP calendar. At this time scouring by ice and meltwater ceased and these lakes filled initially with proglacial lake rhythmites. The deposition of proglacial lake rhythmites occurred between 14,400 and 13,900 BP calendar. After the margins of the Laurentide Ice Sheet retreated into the Ontario lowlands after 13,900 BP calendar, the accumulation, at first, of massive gray clays followed by dark gray to black, laminated, organic-rich muds, accumulated without interruption until present within the Finger Lakes.
Detailed studies of Marine Isotope Stage 3 and 4 age sediments exposed at a locality called the Great Gully on the eastern flank of the Cayuga Lake, near Union Springs, New York, record the presence of a paleolake that existed prior to Cayuga Lake. This paleolake, which is called Glacial Lake Nanette, was a proglacial lake that filled the bedrock valley currently occupied by Cayuga Lake from about 50,000 BP calibrated until it was overridden by a glacial readvance that occurred prior to 30,000 BP calendar and buried it beneath younger glacial till. This research shows that bedrock valleys, in which the Finger lakes lie, existed prior to the Last Glacial Maximum and developed over multiple glaciations.
Finally, although sub-glacial scour during the Last Glacial Maximum removed the majority of pre-existing sediment down to the bedrock bottoms of the Finger Lakes, patches of interglacial deposits are likely preserved locally within or near hanging valleys on the margins of their valleys. For example, the principal site that has been well-studied is the Fembank exposure of interglacial deposits on the west margin of Cayuga. This deposit provides direct evidence that some version of Cayuga Lake and its bedrock valley existed prior to Last Glacial Maximum.

Ecological concerns

Much of the Finger Lakes area lies upon the Marcellus Shale and the Utica Shale, two prominent natural gas reserves. Due to the recent increase in fracking technology, the natural gas is now accessible for extraction. While some large landowners have leased their lands, and a number of small landowners would like to follow suit, many residents of the Finger Lakes oppose the fracking process due to concerns about groundwater contamination and the industrial impact of the extraction-related activities. The first direct actions and local legislative actions against fracking occurred in the Finger Lakes bioregion. In December 2014, the government of New York banned all fracking in the state, citing pollution risks.
Trash from New York City is also sent to landfills in the area.
Since 2017, all of the Finger Lakes have experienced at least one outbreak of toxic algae, and for most of the lakes it has become an annual occurrence.

History

The Finger Lakes region is a central part of the Iroquois homeland. The Iroquois tribes include the Seneca and Cayuga nations, for which the two largest Finger Lakes are named. The Tuscarora tribe lived in the Finger Lakes region as well, from ca. 1720. The Onondaga and Oneida tribes lived at the eastern edge of the region, closer to their namesake lakes, Oneida Lake and Onondaga Lake. The easternmost Iroquois tribe was the Mohawk.
The Finger Lakes region contains sites of unknown cultural affiliation and age. The Bluff Point Stoneworks is one such site as its age and who may have constructed these enigmatic stone structures has not been determined.
During colonial times, many other tribes moved to the Finger Lakes region, seeking the protection of the Iroquois. For example, in 1753, remnants of several Virginia Siouan tribes, collectively called the Tutelo-Saponi, moved to the town of Coreorgonel at the south end of Cayuga Lake near present-day Ithaca and lived there until 1779, when their village was destroyed by the Sullivan Expedition.
Iroquois towns in the Finger Lakes region included the Seneca town of Gen-nis-he-yo, Kanadaseaga, Goiogouen, Chonodote, Catherine's Town and Ganondagan State Historic Site in Victor, New York.
As one of the most powerful Indian nations during colonial times, the Iroquois were able to prevent European colonization of the Finger Lakes region for nearly two centuries after first contact, often playing the French off against the British interests in savvy demonstrations of political competence. The renowned ingenuity and adaptability of the Iroquois people were key tools of resistance against hostile European powers rapidly spreading throughout North America, eager to dominate and increasingly brutal toward Native Americans in the Finger Lakes and beyond.
By the late 18th century, with the French governmental influence gone from Canada, Iroquois power had weakened relative to the steady growth in European-Americans' populations, and internal strife eroded the political unity of the Iroquois Confederacy as it faced pressures from colonists itching to move west and a desire to keep them out of Amerindian lands. During the American Revolutionary War, some Iroquois sided with the British and some with the Americans, resulting in civil war among the Iroquois. In the late 1770s, British-allied Iroquois attacked various American frontier settlements, prompting counter-attacks, culminating in the Sullivan Expedition of 1779, which destroyed most of the Iroquois towns and effectively broke Iroquois power. After the Revolutionary War, the Iroquois and other Indians of the region were assigned reservations. Most of their land, including the Finger Lakes region, was opened up to purchase and settlement.
Roughly the western half of the Finger Lakes region comprised the Phelps and Gorham Purchase of 1790. The region was rapidly settled at the turn of the 19th century, largely by a westward migration from New England, and to a lesser degree by northward influx from Pennsylvania. The regional architecture reflects these area traditions of the Federal and Greek Revival periods.