Forest Park (Queens)
It sits on hills left behind by the Wisconsin glacier and is a haven for native plants and wildlife in the midst of the city's sprawl.
[5] The site of Forest Park was part of the ancestral lands of several Native American tribes, specifically the Rockaway, Lenape, and Delaware.
[8][9] In early 1892, New York state legislators introduced a bill to create one or more new parks in Kings County (where the city of Brooklyn was located).
[10] That May, the New York State Legislature passed Chapter 461 of the Laws of 1892,[11] which authorized the city of Brooklyn to identify sites for new parks.
[7][9] The legislation empowered the Brooklyn government to appoint a commissioner to "select and locate parks in the County of Kings, or adjacent thereto".
[8] By November 1894, Brooklyn park commissioner Frank Squier had suggested issuing bonds to buy land in Queens County;[17] a public hearing on the site was hosted the next month.
[25] Nonetheless, Supreme Court justice Charles F. Brown approved the report that June, allowing the Kings County treasurer to allocate funds to buy these sites.
[27] Flynn's partner Fred Cocheu also tried to prevent further land acquisition, claiming that the Kings County government could not legally acquire parkland,[28] but a judge refused to grant a further injunction.
[29] Squier's and Schieren's political opponents claimed that the purchases were wasteful, since the park was far removed from the most developed parts of Brooklyn.
[15] The newly acquired site was served by streetcar routes that traveled directly to Jamaica, Queens, and to central Brooklyn.
[15] A bridge was built in mid-1895, carrying the road across the LIRR's Main Line at the park's eastern end.
[8][54] During the park's centennial celebration in 1995, a hundred trees were planted as a part of Operation Pine Grove, funded by American Forests and the Texaco Global Re-leaf Program.
Its narrowest point is at Woodhaven Boulevard, where it is only 1,000 feet (300 m) wide because the park originally surrounded a water-supply structure on three sides.
[15][34] West of the former Rockaway Beach Branch (which runs just east of Woodhaven Boulevard), the northern boundary of the park is at Myrtle Avenue.
[39][67] As originally built, Oak Ridge had locker rooms, baths, and showers, and it led directly to the first hole of the park's golf course.
[69] Forest Park also offers a wide array of recreational facilities, the Carousel,[70][71] playgrounds,[72] a pond,[73] a barbecue area,[74] a nature center,[75] and two dog runs.
[68] Annual events such as the Halloween Walk, the Victorian Christmas, Nature Trails Day, orienteering and battle re-enactments draw the participation of the surrounding neighborhoods of Kew Gardens, Woodhaven, Richmond Hill, Forest Hills, and Glendale.
[13] Near this intersection, across from Oak Ridge, is a grove of trees that was planted in 1919 in memory of Queens residents who had died fighting in World War I.
The pond, named after a local resident killed in the Vietnam War, was buried in 1966 and restored four decades later.
The pond was used for ice skating during the winter, and it hosted fishing, swimming, and model boat sailing during the summer.
At the intersection of Park Lane South and Myrtle Avenue is the Joseph E. Schaefer Medal of Honor Memorial, an octagonal planting bed that was named after a Richmond Hill resident who served in World War II.
[81][82] Nearby is the Richmond Hill War Memorial, sculpted by Joseph Pollia in 1925; it depicts a "doughboy" or American infantryman.
[87][88] At the square is a granite marker that commemorates Raoul Wallenberg, a diplomat who saved Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.
It was dedicated in 1997 and is based on a sculpture that Nathan Rapoport created in 1968 for the 20th anniversary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
[89] Birds common to Forest Park include red-tailed hawks, a variety of woodpeckers, great blue herons, mallards, northern orioles, American kestrels, ruby throated hummingbirds, ring-necked pheasants, northern flickers, eastern wood pewees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, wood thrushes, red-eyed vireos, red-winged blackbirds, scarlet tanagers, and several species of sparrow including rufous-sided towhees.
In mid-summer, hatching butterflies begin to gravitate to the Joe Pye Weed, dogbane, milkweed, thistle, and other native plants.
Wildflowers such as white wood aster cover the forest floor in spring, as the azaleas, dogwoods, forsythia, and other flowering plants begin to bloom.
Forest Park is accessible by the New York City Subway's Queens Boulevard Line (E, F, and
The southern part of the park is accessible via the Jamaica Line (J and Z trains) at 75th Street–Elderts Lane, 85th Street–Forest Parkway, and Woodhaven Boulevard.
[100] The Brooklyn-Queens Greenway bike path also runs through Forest Park, connecting westward to Ridgewood Reservoir and eastward to Kew Gardens.
