Today Rockwood Hall State Park is a bucolic hidden gem on the banks of the Hudson River open to the public, but the story of how it got there begins in 1886.
The property was sold to William Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Company to be used as summer home, he would make 3 million dollars worth of revisions to it. A Gilded Age mansion resembling a Scottish castle with 204 rooms, at the time Rockwood Hall was the second largest private house in America behind the Biltmore mansion in North Carolina. Famous landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted shaped the charming pastoral rolling hills thirty miles north of New York City, as he did to Central Park.
Hikers today can take the carriage roads where cars are no longer allowed and pass through the stone foundation of what once was, along the upper trail.
Follow the brook trail to find a sense of calm within the tranquil, little traveled woods.
On the lower trail you’ll find gorgeous views out to the palisades across the river, and you might just see a train whiz by.
It is easy to enjoy a two mile looping walk in the park, a section of nearby and much larger Rockefeller State Park Preserve.