NY 90 makes a sharp bend to the southwest, keeping the Water Street until leaving the hamlet of Locke at Maple Avenue.

Winding southwest out of Locke, NY 90 parallels Hemlock Creek past a junction with Bird Cemetery Road (CR 51).

The route then continues southwest past Goodrich Hill Road (CR 160) and soon bends westward for a short distance.

Just east of Goosetree, the route turns northward at a junction with Goose Street (CR 159) before crossing into the town of Genoa.

The two-lane rural roadway continues west past the northern terminus of East Genoa Road (CR 26E).

Crossing northwest through Ledyard, NY 90 passes numerous farms as it nears the eastern shores of Cayuga Lake.

Running along the eastern shores of Cayuga Lake, NY 90 crosses through the campus of Wells College and becomes a two-lane residential lakeside roadway.

Just north of Great Gully Cove Road, the route enters the town of Springport, winding northward through the hamlet of Farleys before reaching the village of Union Springs.

Continuing north through Springport, NY 90 becomes a rural roadway along Cayuga Lake again, reaching the hamlet of Cross Roads.

Turning northward, the route comes within feet of the New York State Thruway (I-90) and bends eastward as it crosses on a parallel for several blocks.

[3] The earliest predecessor to NY 90 was the fifth segment of the Great Western Turnpike, chartered in 1814 to run from Homer to Cayuga Lake.

It originally began at US 11 in the hamlet of Messengerville and passed through Virgil, Cortland to King Ferry, where it ran along the eastern edge of Cayuga Lake to its terminus at NY 31 in Montezuma.

[2] In the early 1980s, the state of New York assumed maintenance of an east–west highway connecting NY 90 in Virgil to the village of Dryden.