New York State Route 917A, an unsigned reference route also known as Prospect Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway, is a toll road maintained by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation[2] and is the highway by which one reaches the summit at 5.88 miles (9.46 km), where a view for one hundred miles (160 km) can be seen.

[3] Prospect Mountain originally had to use an incline railway car to access the house at the top where people could dance and eat.

[6] In July 1910, the Forest, Fish and Game Commission built a 35-foot-tall (11 m) wooden fire lookout tower on the mountain.

The same year a 47-foot-tall (14 m) Aermotor LS40 steel fire lookout tower and observer cabin was built on the mountain by the Conservation Department.

[7][8] For 30 years, people studied what to do with the land, which was owned by the state, and in 1954, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey signed legislation to build a highway up the mountain.