Shequaga Falls
A 165-foot waterfall in Montour Falls, visible from the village street, free to visit, and accessible year-round.
Shequaga Falls drops 165 feet in a single plunge through the center of Montour Falls, a village of under 2,000 people at the southern end of Schuyler County. The falls are visible from the main street, a view that most drivers along Route 14 between Watkins Glen and Corning pass without stopping to investigate. The falls are accessible on foot from the village's public parking areas, are free to visit, and represent one of the taller free-falling waterfalls in New York State. Open year-round; no facilities at the falls themselves.Shequaga Falls drops 165 feet through a notch in the shale cliffs directly behind the main street of Montour Falls, five minutes south of Watkins Glen. It is taller than the individual drops in the Watkins Glen gorge and almost entirely missed by visitors who came for the gorge. That is a mistake.
Montour Falls was named for Catherine Montour, a figure of considerable complexity in the history of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Revolutionary-era frontier: sometimes called Queen Catherine, she was of mixed French and Seneca heritage and led the Seneca Nation settlement at Catherine's Town, which was among those destroyed in the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign of 1779. The falls behind the village carry the Seneca name Shequaga, meaning "tumbling waters." They drop 165 feet through a narrow shale gorge carved directly behind the buildings on Main Street, visible from the road and accessible on foot from a small park at the base. The approach is a five-minute walk from street parking. The falls run hardest in spring snowmelt and after heavy rain. Five minutes south of Watkins Glen on Route 14: pull into Montour Falls and park on Main Street.
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