Geologists tell a different tale to account for the 11 Finger Lakes, which stretch from Conesus Lake on the west to Otisco Lake on the east, with Hemlock, Canadice and Honeoye also in between. Vast glaciers first advanced into upstate New York from the Hudson Bay area about 1.2 million years ago. As ice ages came and went, waves of glaciers bulldozed across our region, gouging and widening creekbeds and river valleys into deep channels. As the glaciers melted, they filled the channels with water and sealed them off with huge deposits of stone and soil. When the last glacier melted about 13,000 years ago, the Finger Lakes were complete.
Glaciers are what make a lake a Finger Lake.
So they don't make the cut. It was a lush area. The first signs of farming and permanent Native American settlements date between 3,000 and 3,500 years ago. Europeans arrived in the area in the early 1700s, usually explorers, Jesuit missionaries or scouts establishing company trade routes, Barber said. Many early settlers had been soldiers in the 1779 campaign of General John Sullivan.