Sunken Meadow State Park Maxes Out, Briefly Shuts on Fourth

Sunken Meadow State Park was shut down for a few hours Monday due to an influx of visitors pushing the park’s capacity past its limit by early afternoon.

“We were full for awhile,” said Regional Director for the State of Office, Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Ron Foley. “We shut down at 1:30 p.m. to just kind of let everybody on the main entrance road get down to the main park.” The park allowed additional visitors again at 3:15 p.m.

The park, which typically reaches its capacity about six weekends out of the summer and will usually close for two to three due to large crowds, had more than 25,000 visitors. Maximum capacity for the park is between 25,000 and 35,000 visitors.

Sunken Meadow is one of the busiest in state parks in New York coming in behind only Jones Beach, which is the busiest, and Robert Moses.

“It has been a good year so far,” said Foley. “It depends on the weather. Attendance overall in the region was off due to the overcast weather on Sunday.”