Stony Brook State Park is a
state park located in
Steuben County,
New York.
[ It is located south of ]Dansville, Livingston County, New York
Dansville is a village in the town of North Dansville, with a small northern part in the town of Sparta in Livingston County, in western New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the village population was 4,433. The village is named after ...
Dansville, Steuben County, New York
Dansville is a town in Steuben County, New York, United States, not to be confused with the nearby village of Dansville in Livingston County. The population was 1,842 at the 2010 census. The town was named after Daniel Faulkner.
The Town of Da ...
on New York State Route 36
New York State Route 36 (NY 36) is a north–south state highway in the western part of New York in the United States. The highway extends for from the Pennsylvania state line at Troupsburg, Steuben County northward to Ogden, Monro ...
.
History
Stony Brook became a summer tourist spot in the late 19th century, following the construction of a railroad in 1883. The resort fell into decline by the 1920s. New York state resurrected the area by buying the land and establishing the state park in 1928.
Stony Brook was enhanced in the 1930s by improvements constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...
and the Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
. The footprint of these government programs is evident throughout the park in the form of hiking paths, bridges, picnic areas, and buildings.
Park description and facilities
The signature attraction of the park is the eponymous brook, which is an example of small, post-glacial streams in the Finger Lakes
The Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north–south lakes located south of Lake Ontario in an area called the ''Finger Lakes region'' in New York, in the United States. This region straddles the northern and transitional ...
area. The small creeks and brooks in this area cut through the Great Lakes
The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lak ...
-area escarpments following retreat of the ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...
glaciers, creating deep, narrow gorges, with many waterfalls, which are uncommonly accessible.
Initially , the park is now .[ It offers two stream-fed swimming pools, picnic tables and pavilions, a playground, a nature trail, hiking, fishing and bow-hunting (deer), a campground with tent and trailer sites, and cross-country skiing. The park has an upper and lower entrance, connected only by Route 36 and trails.
As do some other parks in the region, such as Fillmore Glen State Park, Robert H. Treman State Park, and ]Buttermilk Falls State Park
Buttermilk Falls State Park is a state park located southwest of Ithaca, New York, United States. Like Robert H. Treman State Park, a portion of the land that was to become the state park came from Robert and Laura Treman in 1924.
History
But ...
, the park features a semi-natural swimming pool, created by a small dam constructed in the lower reaches of the stream.
See also
* List of New York state parks
* Glacial geology of the Genesee River
References
External links
New York State Parks: Stony Brook State Park
{{authority control
State parks of New York (state)
Civilian Conservation Corps in New York (state)
Works Progress Administration in New York (state)
Parks in Steuben County, New York