We had an exceptionally nice Fall day October 14 for our tour on the Cascadilla Gorge Trail. Our hiking tour became not only a chance to oxygenate and enjoy the beauty of the Fall colors but more over a way to admire the history that the Gorge guards. The sedimentary rock deposits made 400 million years ago in the Paleozoic era, hide fossilized records of the time when life was moving from water to land, and fish were developing extremities to walk. The carving of the bedrock on Cascadilla Creek is impressive as it drops 400 feet from campus to downtown Ithaca. Those rocks were once the floor of an ancient Ocean. In 1828, while fallowing Fall Creek into Tompkins County, Ezra Cornell, then 21 years old, contemplated for the first time the beauty of the region where he decided to settle and later found Cornell University. He worked early on blasting a 200 feet tunnel into Fall Creek and then helped construct a stone dam to contain the waters of Beebe lake. Although he then lost his job was forced to leave Ithaca, and suffered the loss of four of his children, his perseverance and hard work paid off when he built his fortune aiding Samuel Morse expand the telegraph becoming the largest stock holder in Western Union. At age 50, he was the richest man in Tompkins county and purchased a 300-acre farm in East hill, and became a philanthropist joining efforts in the NY State Senate with Andrew White to combine part of his fortune ($500,000) with the money from the Morrill land grant act (federal grants in the form of land rather than cash) to found Cornell University. The University was founded in 1865, in the farmland that Ezra Cornell donated. Two gorges, Fall Creek Gorge and Cascadilla Gorge, bound Central campus. During our walk in Cascadilla Gorge trail, we learned about its history and how its construction came about. Cascadilla Gorge was donated to Cornell by Robert Treman in 1909. At the time, (early 1900) there was no trail so it was very difficult to appreciate safely the scenery starting at Beebe Lake and continuing to the narrow gorge of Cascadilla Glenn. The unique water settings, the texture of the geological formations, and the unique vegetation were inaccessible and hard to appreciate as there was no safe way to visit. In 1915, Charles N. Lawry, landscape architecture, sent to Cornell’s Committee for Buildings and Grounds a proposal on how to make accessible Cascadilla Glenn from Lynn Street to the Upper Dam. He wrote about the need to remove a house and construct a bridge to give access to the first falls. The path will reach the falls without the use of steps, and a rail addition was suggested as well as other modification with an estimated cost of $21,438. The Cascadilla Gorge trail was first built from 1929 to 1931 with a donation of $175,000 from Henry Sackett, Cornell alumnus and trustee. The trail was closed in 2008 due to safety concerns, and reopened in 2014 after extensive renovations that costed $2.75 million, with repaired stairs and retaining walls, new railing and draining systems. Cornell University provides $250,000 annually to maintain both Cascadilla and Fall Creek Trails. It is awesome to think that the scenic beauty of those trails that we enjoy in our hiking trip, made Ezra Cornell settle here in 1828 and persevere to found our University, which continues after 152 years to make contributions in so many fields for the benefit of mankind.