Hiking, boating, picnicking, swimming, cross-country skiing, sledding, ice skating as well as a zoo and trailside museums, continue to draw families to the park.

The first section of the Appalachian Trial was created at Bear Mountain, taking hikers south to the Delaware Water Gap. It opened on Oct. 7, 1923, and served as a pattern for the other sections of the trail, developed independently by local and regional organizations and then joined.

In the mid-1930s the federal government led by Franklin D. Roosevelt was embarking on its own plan to preserve the environment. The Depression-era public works programs, including the Civil Works Administration and then the Work Progress Administration, spent five years on projects at Bear Mountain State Park.

Pumphouses, reservoirs, sewer systems, vacation lodges, bathrooms, homes for park staff, storage buildings and an administration building were all created through these programs. A scenic drive to the top of the mountain, called Perkins Memorial Drive, was also contstructed - almost totally by hand. And although construction equipment and newer easier-to-work-with building materials were available for use at the time, planners wanted these new buildings constructed with the same principles and designs used to build the lodge in 1915. Workers used stone, boulders and timber to construct the new buildings, a process which took them five years.