Edgewood Oak Brush Plains Preserve

Edgewood Oak Brush Plains State Forest is an 813-acre property. There are more than 23.5 miles of trails and paved/unpaved roads that allow visitors to explore the natural beauty of the property.

This land was originally part of a much larger property acquired by the State of New York in the 1930s for the construction of psychiatric hospital facilities. In 1983, the Office of Mental Health (OMH) transferred 631 surplus acres to DEC, and in 1987 that land was dedicated to the State Nature and Historic Preserve. In the mid 1990s, DEC purchased an adjoining 100 acres, and in 1999 OMH transferred another 81 acres to DEC.

Today, Edgewood is dominated by pitch pine-scrub oak barrens, a rarely occurring community characterized by dense shrub thickets, compared to more tree dominated pine barrens communities that occur across Long Island. These unique barrens occur in only three places on Long Island, six in the State, and are considered a globally rare habitat. The barrens are interspersed with stands of bigtooth aspen as well as grasslands that have emerged on formerly developed portions of the property.