Valley Stream State Park

Valley Stream State Park is a state park located in the Valley [Stream, New York|Incorporated Village of Valley Stream], in Nassau [County, New York|Nassau County], on Long Island, in New York, United States. It is one of three state parks located within the Town of Hempstead.

Park description

Valley Stream State Park is a day-use facility, convenient to the Southern State Parkway. The park offers a nature trail, cross-country skiing, a playground and playing fields, horseshoe, volleyball, basketball, and bocce ball courts, picnic tables and pavilions, fireplaces and grills, and recreation programs.
Like Hempstead [Lake State Park], Valley Stream State Park contained Cornell's Pond, a feeder reservoir for the Ridgewood Reservoir.

History

This park opened in 1928 together with Southern State Parkway, Hempstead [Lake State Park], Belmont Lake State Park, and Heckscher State Park. Initially the park included Cornell's Pond, which had a freshwater beach that charged an admission fee of 10 cents. Crowded and unsanitary conditions led local residents to lobby for its closing in 1947. In 1958, the state to transferred the park's southern portion with this pond to the Village of Valley Stream. It reopened as the village-operated Arthur J. Hendrickson Park.