US Map / Cities / Buffalo

Buffalo Map

Buffalo stands at the exact point where Lake Erie empties into the Niagara River, a position that made it the western end of the Erie Canal and New York's second city.

Where is Buffalo?

Buffalo is at the far western corner of New York, about 20 miles upstream of Niagara Falls and directly across the Niagara River from Ontario. It is roughly 190 miles northeast of Cleveland around the lake shore, some 370 road miles northwest of New York, and about 290 miles west of the state capital, Albany. Toronto lies roughly 100 miles northwest by road, around the western end of Lake Ontario.

Buffalo at a glance

Buffalo in New York

Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the only city besides New York that New York places in the national top 100 — the New York county map shows how thinly settled the western and northern counties are by comparison. Upstate cities like Rochester and Syracuse string east along the same low corridor. Buffalo runs on Eastern Time, and the New York state page explains why the state's center of gravity sits 400 miles away at the other end.

The lake outlet, the canal and the snow

Everything about Buffalo follows from the outlet. Ships coming east across the Great Lakes could go no further, because the Niagara River drops over the falls a few miles downstream; cargo had to be unloaded here. The Erie Canal, opened in 1825, connected that break in the route to the Hudson and made Buffalo the transfer point between lake boats and canal barges, which is why the grain elevator was invented on its waterfront. The city also sits at the downwind end of Lake Erie: cold air crossing 200 miles of open, relatively shallow water picks up moisture and dumps it as lake-effect snow, in bands that can bury one neighborhood and leave the next clear.

Cities near Buffalo

Around the lakes are Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo and Pittsburgh; New York is the other end of the state. See the Great Lakes page for how the chain fits together.