Pictures of Scenery at Rockefeller State Park Preserve
This gallery features pictures of the vistas, fauna, and animals at Rockefeller State Park Preserve in Pleasantville, NY. The park’s location in the Pocantico Hills, Pleasantville, Sleepy Hollow areas of Westchester County, along the Hudson River, offers great scenery year-round. You can find pictures from all four seasons in the park here.
Some of my favorite scenery in and around the park includes:
Swan Lake, located near the park office and gallery, provides excellent opportunities to capture scenic pictures no matter the season. In the summer, flowers and plants around the lake offer fantastic views, especially under a clear blue sky. In the fall, the changing leaves and changes in the direction of sunlight give the lake a different perspective. If you visit on a cold fall morning, you’ll often find fog has formed on the lake, providing some great picture-taking opportunities. Since the lake is small, it can ice over in the winter, taking on a new appearance, especially when the lake and surroundings are covered with snow. Springtime brings dogwood and other flowering trees, ducks and geese preparing their nests, and birds like great blue herons and egrets.
The park office and gallery have beautiful peony gardens that bloom in May. On warm sunny days, photographers gather around the bushes to capture wonderful pictures of the blooms. I like to take photos here early in the morning or after some rainfall to photograph the blooms with water droplets.
The Pocantico River runs through the park and has many picture-taking areas. The most famous is the stone arch bridge, which is the subject of many posts and articles about the park. I like walking the Pocantico River Trail and photographing the rapids/waterfalls, especially after a hard rain or during the spring snow melt. I’ve seen great blue herons hunting in the river and different species of ducks. The change of seasons along the river offers many different photo opportunities, especially in the fall with the changing leaves.
The 13 Bridges Trail has, as its name suggests, 13 bridges and follows Gory Brook through the park. The brook’s twists and turns give a variety of views for picture-taking. Late Spring and Fall are my favorite times to take pictures on this trail. I’ve been surprised a few times by a great blue heron flying low along this winding trail, unfortunately appearing too quickly to get a picture.
The Rock Wall and other trails near the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. The low rock walls that wind through the fields in this park area make an excellent place for birds to perch, and I’ve gotten some nice pictures here. The walls provide enough visual interest to be photo subjects on their own. Cows, sheep, and goats can sometimes be found grazing here, helping make these trails even more interesting. Also, the buildings of the Stone Barns Center are amazing places to get some architectural shots. The contrast of the stones against the blue sky creates some amazing views.
The Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture’s summer gardens are extremely colorful. Sunflowers (header photo) and other flowering plants surround the vegetables planted in the gardens. If you go to the trail at the top of the gardens and look west, you’ll see a vista of the Hudson River.
Nearby, the Brook Trail follows a meandering brook that eventually ends in Swan Lake. The trail includes some bridges and old concrete and stone weirs and pools, which apparently were used to create an environment for farming fish. The brook, weirs, and pools are great for taking scenic pictures.
The last area I’ll leave you with is the Rockwood Hall section of the park along the Hudson River. On a clear day, you have awesome views of the river, the Palisades, and the Gov. Mario Cuomo (Tappan Zee) bridge south to Manhattan. The ruins of Rockwood Hall also offer some photo opportunities, as do the trails that wind through this section. My favorite is the Rockwood Hall Brook Trail.
Click on a picture below to open the full-size gallery. Controls at the bottom center of the photos let you navigate through the gallery, start a slide show, or close the gallery. Enjoy the pictures!
