Land Trust Buys $1.3 Million Homestead to Expand Access to New York’s Buttermilk Falls State Park

Photo credit: Jeff Lovett via Google Maps More than a century after a generous land donation helped create Buttermilk Falls State Park, a small but important piece of its neighboring landscape is being returned to public use. The Open Space Institute has acquired a four-acre property between the park’s existing entrance and Route 13 in Tompkins County for $1.3 million, purchasing it from the Margaret M. Rumsey Trust, as per their website. The organisation plans to transfer the land to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation as an addition to Buttermilk Falls State Park. The property includes a former bed-and-breakfast and sits at the foot of the gorge that gave the park its name. Once transferred, it could support a redesigned park gateway with reconfigured parking, improved traffic circulation, better wayfinding, housing for staff, and a new trailhead. For a park that welcomes nearly 400,000 visitors each year, the acquisition represents an opportunity to make access safer, smoother, and more welcoming. Read more about it here, as per Open Space Institute:A park born from a family giftButtermilk Falls State Park traces its origins to 1924, when Hug...