Humble Bee Hollow

Garrison, NY

Hours: Open dawn to dusk, seven days a week.
Note: Long-term restoration in progress.
Report a concern.

HHLT is delighted to announce the name of our new 74-acre preserve off Snake Hill Road in Garrison, NY, on part of the former Garrison golf course. We welcome you to Humble Bee Hollow.

This preserve’s evolving landscape reveals a story of regrowth and renewal, where former greens and fairways are returning to a natural state as meadows, forests, and wetlands. Together, in collaboration with our partners and community volunteers, we are working to enhance its biodiversity, creating a thriving haven for pollinators, songbirds, and other wildlife. Humble Bee Hollow offers not only a peaceful refuge for nature, but also a serene space for visitors to reconnect with the outdoors, and appreciate the ongoing restoration of balance between humans and the natural world. May this space remind visitors that, much like the humble bumble bee, we each play a vital role in conserving our wild places.

Humble Bee Hollow features northern hardwood forest with mature oaks and hemlocks, as well as open fields that serve as important foraging areas for the Northern long-eared bat. Its streams and wetlands are home to jewel-colored dragonflies and damselflies, as well as diverse species of amphibians and reptiles including the Eastern Box Turtle. Local birders say the preserve already provides vital habitat for many native and migratory songbirds such as red-shouldered and red-tailed hawks, Louisiana waterthrush, ovenbirds, veery, blackburnian warblers, and the blue-headed vireo. Philipse Brook runs through the preserve, along with an unnamed tributary and associated wetlands that are all part of the Foundry Brook-Hudson River watershed.

Hiking the Trails

Currently, the preserve offers a 2-mile network of former golf-cart paths that are accessible from Snake Hill Road, and these trails offer opportunities for passive recreation such as hiking, birding, and snow-shoeing. While our trails are currently open to the public, visitors should always proceed with caution and watch for evidence of our work — and nature’s work — in progress.

Amenities include a parking area and picnic pavilion. There are no restrooms at the preserve and no drinking water. You can access a digital map by scrolling down on this page, or via the mobile app Avenza Maps, which shows your location in real time during your visit. Another trail resource is AllTrails. 

Please note: There are no restrooms and no drinking water on site.

Getting There

The main entrance is off Snake Hill Road in Garrison, NY, as indicated by the map below (click here to download the map as a pdf).

A Brief History

The earliest inhabitants of this area were the Wappinger, part of the Eastern Algonquin-speaking Lenape people. Dutch and English farmers moved into the area in the late 1600s, and in 1697, a royal “Highland Patent” was granted to Adolph Philipse by the British crown. Under the Philipse Patent, European tenant farmers leased tracts of land from the Philipse family and set about the business of clearing the rugged, forested land for farming. They raised corn, buckwheat, rye, oats, potatoes and turnips. After the American Revolution, these lands were stripped from the Loyalist Philipse family. Many of the tenant farmers stayed on and their families cultivated the land for generations.

When the railroad opened here in 1849, wealthy New Yorkers started building summer estates in the Hudson Highlands with picturesque names like Brookside, Windfield, and Mountain Home. Many have been lost to fire or time, but some structures remain. Our 57-acre site was part of Walnut Ridge, an estate built in the 1850s by Manhattan bankers A.B. & C.W. Bean that featured two mansions, farm buildings, a windmill, and an ice pond. In 1905, William Brown bought the estate and turned it into “Bill Brown’s Physical Training Farm” — a discreet spot for athletes, celebrities, and other wealthy patrons to get fit, and occasionally to “dry out.” Brown added facilities for tennis, swimming, horseback riding, and squash, plus a nine-hole golf course. His guests reportedly included Babe Ruth, Johnny Weissmuller, Joe Louis, Tyrone Power, and Henry Fonda. Brown died in 1943; by the 1960s, the site was in disrepair. The Osborn family had the idea of turning it into a golf course and country club. Dick Wilson designed an 18-hole course perched 800 feet above the Hudson River. Golfers enjoyed its views of the Highlands and the course’s tricky topography including woodsy, rolling hills; tough tee shots over deep ravines; side hill lies; and challenging greens.

The Preserve Today

In recent years, market factors have conspired to make golf financially unsustainable, and the Garrison Golf Course’s owner Chris Davis grew increasingly concerned about the ecological impacts. “Each year, we use over 1 million gallons of water for irrigation and apply fertilizers and pesticides,” Davis told the Highlands Current in April 2021. “I’m determined to see all that land returned to a more natural, ecologically healthy state.” When Davis closed the golf course later that year, he donated 57 acres of the land to HHLT. We are grateful and excited to contribute our own chapter to this land’s fascinating history. HHLT staff are now working with community volunteers and partners like One Nature to transform this land’s former greens and fairways into healthy and resilient habitats.