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PrintWestchester’s Recreation and Preserve Acreage On Par With National Parks
Nearly a quarter of Westchester’s total land is for recreational use, and is nearly equivalent to some of the country’s most recognizable National Parks.
Easy Being Green
Unlike many other regions, Westchester has set aside nearly 70,000 of its 287,500 acres—or roughly 24 percent of its total land—for open space and recreation. We’ve got hills (climbed to Anthony’s Nose in Peekskill recently?); we’ve got trails (the ones through the Rockefeller State Park Preserve and the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation are perennial favorites); we’ve got bike paths (the North and South County Trailways); we’ve got beaches (on the Sound and the Hudson). Basically, no matter what kind of landscape you might want, there’s a place out there in Westchester and a group dedicated to maintaining it for public use. (Well, if you’re looking for a tropical rainforest or a frozen tundra, you’re on your own.)
The amount of open space in our county puts us on par with:
■ Arches National Park in Utah (76,519 acres)
■ Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota (70,400 acres)
■ Dry Tortugas National Park in Florida (64,700 acres)
For the record, the largest national park is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska, which has 13.2 million acres (but, on the other hand, all of them are in Alaska), and the smallest is Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial in Pennsylvania, which has a scant .02 acres (or roughly the size of one of our SUV parking spots). If you need us, we’ll be gazing over the Hudson River to the highlands while strolling through the woods on the Aqueduct Trail.
