The comparison with Lake Como must be handled with a little caution: Hammondsport is not Cernobbio, Keuka Lake is not a destination of international luxury and from Manhattan you will not arrive in three and a half hours, but in just over five hours drive. Despite this, however, the combination with the most famous Italian water mirror in the world works very well to explain a rather unusual landscape of the State of New York, made of narrow water between hills, vineyards and small inhabited centers. Hammondsport is located at the southern end of Keuka Lake, one of the eleven Finger Lakes, narrow and long lakes (from here the term “finger”, because they remember the fingers of the hands) which also include Lake Ontario, and in recent years the tourism of the State of New York has begun to present it also as “Little Lake Como”. The main reason is geographical: Keuka Lake, like Como, has a Y shape, due to the glacial history of the area.
Keuka Lake is also one of the places where the history of wine in the State of New York passes. The Keuka Lake Wine Trail brings together six family-run wineries and remembers that here, in 1860, an important part of the American wine industry began. Pleasant Valley Wine Company, near Hammondsport, presents itself as the oldest winery in the Finger Lakes region and as “U.S. Bonded Winery No. 1”; its stone buildings are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. A little further north, on the southwestern slopes of the lake, Dr. Konstantin Frank Winery tells another decisive step: in 1958 Frank planted the first wine varieties in the area, helping to change the perception of wines produced in the north-east of the United States.
Keuka is also called “Crooked Lake”, due to its irregular shape, and is calm enough to lend itself to swimming, kayaking, paddleboarding and boat trips. Depot Park and Champlin Beach Park are the two easiest points to get in touch with the water. Who wants to add a piece of local history can pass from the Finger Lakes Boating Museum, which also organizes exits on the Pat II, a restored 1924 electric boat used for lake tours, with a guide able to tell all the curiosities of the area.
The village center is around Pulteney Square, a green square surrounded by low buildings, shops, restaurants and historical structures. Hammondsport is small, walks around and the center works a bit from the harvesting point of the country. The interesting part is that the village does not live only of lake tourism. The Glenn H. Curtiss Museum, dedicated to one of the pioneers of American aviation, born in Hammondsport, tells the role of the village in the industrial and technological history of the early twentieth century.
Hammondsport works mainly as a long weekend and not as an improvised trip from New York City. The distance from Manhattan obliges you to stay at least one night, better two, and to choose a few objectives: a wine cellar with a view, a few hours on the lake, a walk in the center, maybe the Curtiss museum or a part of the Keuka Lake Outlet Trail, which connects Keuka and Seneca Lake along an old railway track. And all this can be a way to live sweet life without flying to Italy.
L’articolo Hammondsport, the “small lake of Como” of the State of New York proviene da IlNewyorkese.
