High Tor State Park

The Park is great! The Park Ranger Tom however, was really scary. He was screaming and kicking things around at his employees with little kids around. That kind of behavior is unprofessional Tom. With a bunch of children around, the person who was supposed to be responsible seemed like the most immature. I’ll never bring my child around this man. Grow up Tom!

I used to come here as a child with my family over 20 years ago and had such beautiful childhood memories here. Today I wanted to share that joy with my 5 year old son on his first trip to High Tor State Park… WRONG! This once peaceful, quiet park is now over runned by hookah smoking, loud mouthed, ghetto people from mainly NYC. There was several groups of people playing extremely loud music from their cars… they even had back up batteries connected. The police cars came every 30 minutes or so to keep the peace because apparently many fights break out here now. One staff member told me each year it gets worse. The pools are just as bad. There was literally a row of 10 children ages 7 – 13 forming a side by side line and jumping into the pool all at once with little disregard to the other young children in the pool. The male adults in the pool would lift their women up on their shoulders and throw them into the pool with again a total disregard to the other children in the pool (must be the parents of those jumping children) Adults kissing in the pool as if they were in their private pool, cursing, screaming, loudness. just utterly terrible. I hardly saw the parents watch their kids. The staff members of the pool/​picnic area were extremely kind and sweet. sorta like they were 20 years ago however u can tell they’re tired of dealing with this level of cheese each and all day. The only reason why I’m giving this park 2 stars is because it’s still very well maintained, clean (staff members were literally going around giving out garbage bags and picking trash off the floor because apparently people don’t bring their own bags and police themselves) and beautiful. I don’t plan on returning here on a weekend any time soon.
P. S. The reason why people go upstate NY is to escape the drama of NYC and to enjoy peace and tranquility… NOT bring it with them!