THE YATES COUNTY LAND BRIEF
Land in the
Finger Lakes Uplands and Gorges setting.
Yates County has 338.2 square miles of land in New York. 2 mapped landscape regions meet across Yates County: Finger Lakes Uplands and Gorges, Ontario Lowlands.
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.
Regional context: Northern Allegheny Plateau ↗ · Regional mapping across the county footprint
Where the landscape changes
Yates County intersects 2 mapped regional units. The largest mapped shares are:
- Finger Lakes Uplands and Gorges83%
- Ontario Lowlands17%
Eastern Great Lakes Lowlands in Yates County
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.
Read the regional source ↗Finding your parcel within Yates County
The atlas lists 14 cities, towns, townships, and Census communities associated with Yates County, including Jerusalem, Benton, Italy. The list includes overlapping geography types and does not divide the county into exclusive service areas.
Yates County by land and water
The Census records 37.6 square miles of water within Yates County, or 10% of its total area. That share is close to Yates County’s 10%. This is geographic context; waterfront status and usable land must be checked at the parcel.
For scale, Yates County has 406 times the land area of nearby Keuka Park CDP (0.83 square miles). These areas describe boundaries, not comparable property prices.
The Census boundary meets Ontario County, Schuyler County, Seneca County, Steuben County within New York. A tract near one of these lines should be matched to the county identifier on its own records.

