The River Campus is located beside the Genesee River on a site previously owned by the Oak Hill Country Club. Famed landscape architectFrederick Law Olmsted, Sr. had designed a "River Walk" of oak trees along the river; and after the university purchased the site in 1923, his son Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. served as landscape designer and consultant to the campus architects. In 1999 certain areas of the campus were designated as the arboretum.
Although not located on the River Campus, the university grounds also contain two state champion trees, a weeping willow and a Ponderosa Pine. They are the largest known examples in the New York state.