Buttermilk Falls and the Treman Gift
Near Ithaca, New York
On the south edge of Ithaca, Buttermilk Creek does not fall all at once. Instead it tumbles down a natural rock staircase of roughly ten cascades and pools, dropping some six hundred feet on its way toward the inlet of Cayuga Lake. The frothy white water spilling over the rock ledges is what gave the place its name, Buttermilk Falls.
The main cascade near the entrance drops in a broad sheet, and a swimming hole at its foot has cooled off generations of Ithacans on hot summer afternoons. Climb the gorge trail and you rise the full six hundred feet alongside the creek, past smaller falls and sculpted potholes, all the way up toward Pinnacle Rock and the wooded glen above. Much of what makes this park walkable was built by hand.
Much of the stonework here is said to date from work crews of the Great Depression. And the land itself was a gift. Robert H.
Treman and his wife Laura donated it in nineteen twenty-four, the same generous couple behind nearby Robert H. Treman State Park. So when you cool your feet in the pool below the falls, remember you are enjoying a private fortune that two people chose to hand to the public, forever.
