Bear Mountain State Park
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Bear Mountain State Park is located on the west side of the Hudson River in Rockland County, New York. The park offers hiking, boating, picnicking, swimming, cross-country skiing, sledding and ice-skating as well as a zoo and trailside museums. Bear Mountain State Park also has a hotel and a dining facility.
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History
During the American Revolution when the control of the Hudson River was viewed by the British as strategic to dominating the American territories, the area which was to become the park saw several significant military engagements. The American Industrial Revolution was supplied, in part, from local forests and iron mines. Resource utilization extracted a heavy toll on the region, especially lumbering and agriculture, since the poor, thin soils on hillsides were easily depleted. By the early 1900s development along the lower Hudson River had begun to destroy much of the area's natural beauty.
Many unsuccessful efforts were made to turn much of the Hudson Highlands into a forest preserve. However, when the State of New York tried to relocate Sing Sing Prison to Bear Mountain in 1909, some of the wealthy businessmen who had made homes in the area, led by Union Pacific Railroad president E. H. Harriman, donated land as well as large sums of money for the purchase of properties in the area. Bear Mountain-Harriman State Park became a reality in 1910. By 1914 it was estimated that than a million people a year were coming to the park. Camping was immensely popular; the average stay was eight days and was a favorite for Boy Scouts.
The first section of the Appalachian Trail, taking hikers from Bear Mountain (elevation 1301 feet) south to the Delaware Water Gap, opened on October 7, 1923 and served as a pattern for the other sections of the trail developed independently by local and regional organizations. The Bear Mountain Zoo, through which the Appalachian Trail passes, is the lowest point on the 2,100 mile trail.
In the 1930s the federal government under Franklin D. Roosevelt was developing plans to preserve the environment as part of the Depression-era public works programs; the Civil Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration, spent five years on projects at Bear Mountain State Park.
Pumphouses, reservoirs, sewer systems, vacation lodges, bathrooms, homes for park staff, storage buildings and an administration building were all created through these programs. A scenic drive to the top of the mountain, called Perkins Memorial Drive, was constructed almost entirely by hand. Although powered construction equipment and newer easier-to-work-with building materials were available for use at the time, planners wanted the buildings constructed with the same principles and designs used to build the lodge in 1915. Workers used stone, boulders and timber to construct the new buildings.
Bear Mountain remains popular today, and welcomes more visitors annually than does Yellowstone National Park.
External Links
http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnis/web_query.GetDetail?tab=Y&id=969851
http://nysparks.state.ny.us/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/nysparks/parks.cgi?p+131