Brighton is in central Monroe County, bordered to the north and northwest by the city of Rochester. According to the
U.S. Census Bureau, the town of Brighton has a total area of , of which , or 1.23%, are water. Brighton has lacked a central village since the city of Rochester annexed the area around East Avenue and Winton Road, formerly the village of Brighton, in 1905. The central entertainment and commercial hub is the Twelve Corners, so named because three intersecting roads, Winton Road, Monroe Avenue and Elmwood Avenue, define twelve distinct corners. Residents tend to gravitate to nearby
Pittsford Plaza for shopping, as well as
Eastview Mall and Commons, in bordering
Pittsford and nearby
Victor. The town's high school (
Brighton High School) and middle school (Twelve Corners Middle School) are located at Twelve Corners. Brighton is bordered by the city of
Rochester to the northwest, by the town of
Irondequoit for a very short distance to the north, the town of
Henrietta to the south, the
Genesee River and Chili to the west, the town of
Pittsford to the southeast, and the town of
Penfield to the east. Brighton is located some east of
Buffalo and west of
Syracuse. The
Erie Canal courses through Brighton, accompanied by the acclaimed
Erie Canal Heritage Trail, one of the longest continuous stretches of maintained off-road trail in the United States. The Pinnacle Hill Range, a line of glacially-formed hills of unique habitat including old-growth oak woodland, is largely leveled or otherwise destroyed, but does have degraded remnants on Pinnacle Hill and the east side of Cobbs Hill. The latter is dedicated as Washington Grove and very popularly used; the former is the highest (though eroded) peak in Rochester and mainly used for unregulated mountain biking with an extensive and wide network of trails on its steep, sandy slopes. The largest wetland in Brighton is a former clay-mining operation filled with lesser cattails along the Brickyard Trail, recently made a park in 2017. A fairly large area of west Brighton is undeveloped and wooded, including Lynch Woods Nature Park, from which one can access the Lehigh Valley Trail, which extends to Victor in the east and Rush to the west, and connects to the Genesee Valley Greenway, Auburn Trail, and Erie Canal trails. Most of Brighton however is completely developed, consisting of asphalt and lawn geography. ==Demographics==