Hook Mountain State Park, Natural landmark and state park in Rockland County, United States.
Hook Mountain State Park is a 676-acre undeveloped park on the western shore of the Hudson River in Rockland County, New York. It protects a stretch of the Hudson River Palisades, where a wooded slope of rust, orange and brown autumn forest drops to a cliff of dark, vertically fractured rock. The park has no summit of Hook Mountain and no developed facilities; the Long Path crosses the mountain's summit inside neighbouring Rockland Lake State Park.
Dutch settlers called the point Verdrietige Hook, "Tedious Point", perhaps because the mountain stayed in view so long when sailing the Hudson, or for the troublesome winds there; it was also known as Diedrick Hook. Quarrying threatened the Palisades in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the land was acquired for the Palisades Interstate Park in 1911. In 1980 parts of the park and neighbouring Nyack Beach were designated a National Natural Landmark for their stretch of the Palisades Sill.
Since 1971 the mountain has hosted an annual hawk monitoring station, and in 1997 the New York Audubon Society named it an Important Bird Area as a feeding ground for migratory songbirds and hawks. The park is also designated a Bird Conservation Area by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.
The park can be reached on foot with several entry points available, including access through adjacent state park facilities. Best visiting hours are from sunrise to sunset, with autumn months being the most popular time for observing migrating birds.
Despite its name, Hook Mountain State Park does not contain Hook Mountain's summit: the summit, the golf course and every trail leading up lie inside Rockland Lake State Park. The park's own land is the wooded slope and cliff face along the Hudson, acquired in 1911 to keep quarrying out.
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