New York State
Discover New York State
Introduction
New York is really two destinations that happen to share a name. New York City is one of the most visited cities on earth and the reason most people come. The other 47,000 square miles behind it are mountains, lakes, farmland and small industrial cities, and see a fraction of the traffic.
Upstate, the Adirondacks form the largest protected area in the contiguous United States — bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon combined — and unusually, people live inside the park. The Finger Lakes to the west are long glacial troughs with a serious cool-climate wine industry along their slopes.
Niagara Falls sits at the far western corner on the Canadian border, and the Hudson Valley runs north from the city past estates, art museums and the military academy at West Point.
Long Island stretches more than a hundred miles east of the city, ending in beaches and potato fields that feel a very long way from Manhattan.