THE CAYUGA COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Ontario Lowlands setting.
Cayuga County has 691.6 square miles of land in New York. 3 mapped landscape regions meet across Cayuga County: Ontario Lowlands, Finger Lakes Uplands and Gorges, Erie/Ontario Lake Plain.
Glacially shaped lowlands and irregular plains border the Great Lakes and adjacent hills. The lakes influence regional weather, while local landforms reflect both glacial deposits and former shorelines.
Regional context: Eastern Great Lakes Lowlands ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Cayuga County intersects 3 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Ontario Lowlands64.3%
- Finger Lakes Uplands and Gorges34.9%
- Erie/Ontario Lake Plain0.8%
Northern Allegheny Plateau in Cayuga County
Rolling hills, broad valleys and low mountains are mantled by glacial deposits. Sandstone, shale and siltstone underlie a mix of open land and woodland across the northern plateau.
Read the regional source ↗Finding your parcel within Cayuga County
The atlas lists 34 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Cayuga County, including Sterling, Venice, Genoa. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Cayuga County by land and water
The Census records 172.1 square miles of water within Cayuga County, or 19.9% of its total area. That share is close to Cayuga County’s 19.9%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Cayuga County has 708.6 times the land area of nearby Weedsport village (0.98 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Cortland County, Jefferson County, Onondaga County, Oswego County, Seneca County, Tompkins County, Wayne County within New York. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

