Rockefeller State Park Preserve, Part 1

While my Philadelphia adventure was over, the trip itself had one last stop as I visited Rockefeller State Park Preserve in Pleasantville, NY on the way home. This extensive preserve in the Sleepy Hollow area offers manicured carriage roads, historic bridges, scenic views, and the remains of a grand estate. I visited two units of this extensive park. The first part will cover the history of the park and the larger Preserve Entrance unit, while the second part will cover the Rockwood Hall unit and description of the former estate.

Located just north of the greater New York City area, the park offers a quiet nature break for city dwellers and a respite from East Coast traffic for travelers. The park has been on the National Register of Historic Places as Rockefeller Pocantico Hills Estate Historic District since 2013. West of the park is Tappan Zee or the widening of the Hudson River, while Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, formerly known as the burial ground of Old Dutch Church, is visible from the trails. This small town graveyard was made famous by early 19^th century by author Washington Irving in his short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” published in 1820. The writer is now buried in this cemetery, not to be mistaken with the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery of Concord, MA, which is the final resting place of Transcendentalists authors and their families including the Alcotts, Emersons, Hawthornes, and Thoreaus.

The estate was originally owned by the Rockefeller family who became synonymous with excessive wealth during the Gilded Age. The Rockefellers have received multiple mentions on this blog as the even richer friend of other rich people, but my visits to their many other properties all took place before the start of the blog. John D. Rockefeller Sr. was the family patriarch who made his money in the oil monopoly Standard Oil and retired to Kykuit, an existing estate just south of the park now managed by Historic Hudson Valley. Other parts of the park were originally estates owned by his younger brother, William, who worked alongside him as the President of Standard Oil, and his son John D. Rockefeller Jr., who generously gave away the family money to charitable organizations.

The Rockefellers began establishing their estate in 1893. Like other rich people who wanted their own whimsical forest like a medieval feudal lord, they borrowed concepts from the firm of Frederick Law Olmsted, which had begun working with the family a few years earlier in 1887. (Back in 2022, I visited the Olmsted office where the original plans were drawn.) The most fun part about the carriage roads were the bridges spanning the little rivers with many showcased on the Thirteen Bridges Loop. Another architectural feature was the Old Croton Aqueduct (OCA) Weir Chambers. These allowed workers to control the flow of water through the pipes, enabling them to drain the line and make repairs.

The Rockefeller family eventually owned about 3,000 acres (12.1 km sq) of land, which they traveled using 55 miles (88.5 km) of carriage roads. The happiness associated with the property abruptly ended in 1978 when John D. Rockefeller III died nearby in a car accident at age seventy-two. The family initially donated 743 acres (2.9 km sq) to New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation and continued donating over the next forty years, bringing the current total to about 1,800 acres (7.3 km sq). Another contribution to the property came from an unexpected source. People from the small Japanese town of Yatsuka-Cho, Shimane gave five hundred peonies to the park after the attacks on New York City on September 11, 2001. Other flowers from this shipment currently live at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Throughout the park are small reminders that the land is very old. One cannot visit a park in the United States without informational signage about the Ice Age glaciers. At this park, a fairly large glacial erratic or deposited rock received its own sign. The Big Tree Loop of the park belongs to the Old-Growth Forest Network, just like Laurel Hill Association in Stockbridge, MA. This designation indicates that the trees somehow escaped the clearcut logging commonly practiced from the colonial era through the present day. No Old-Growth Forests exist near me, the closest of these being in Plymouth, MA to the east, Newport, RI to the south, and Tolland, CT to the southwest. I look forward to visiting other members of this organization in the future.