Glacier Formed Lucifer Falls At Robert H. Treman NY State Park Ithaca Stock Photo

The gorges, waterfalls, and pools at Robert H. Treman State Park and in the surrounding Finger Lakes Region were formed by retreating glaciers 10,000 years ago. As the Finger Lakes' glaciers melted, Enfield Creek began to flow, clearing rocks and debris from a gorge that existed even earlier than the most recent glaciers. Hike through the rugged gorge called Enfield Glen. You can hike past 12 waterfalls on the Gorge Trail, including 115 foot-high Lucifer Falls. Most of Robert H. Treman State Park is Hemlock-northern hardwood forest, a mixed forest in which hemlock is codominant with other tree species including sugar and red maple, yellow and black birch, red oak, white pine, black cherry and basswood.The total elevation change of the gorge trail is 1035 feet. The rock wall is about 380 million years old. The rocks in Enfield Glen (the Treman Gorge) are shale and sandstone formed in the Late Devonian era. The alternating layers represent repeated shifts in sea level, and make for excellent fossil-hunting. The straight lines in the gorge are cracks that geologists refer to as joint lines. Many of the joint lines were formed from natural gas that vented up and out of the rocks many millions of years ago. They overlap throughout the region at near right angles giving the rocks a "quarried" look.