Roscoe Conkling Park: Short History
Thomas R. Proctor and his wife Maria Watson Williams gave the people of Utica several other parks before creating this, their grandest contribution to Utica’s park system: in 1897, Watson Williams Park (the creation of Maria and her sister, Rachel) was opened in 1897, not designed by Olmsted, covering nearly 8 acres, the fourth and then largest public park in Utica; in 1907, Horatio Seymour and Addison Miller parks, also not designed by Olmsted, each covering approximately 15 acres.
The Proctors had begun acquiring farmland on Utica’s southern perimeter in 1904, which would be transformed into Roscoe Conkling Park between 1906 and 1909. Having done some preliminary work by himself, Proctor realized that he lacked the expertise and time for such a large project, so he hired Olmsted to take charge of this project early in 1906. Some road building began before Olmsted was commissioned; he advised Proctor on its construction thereafter and provided guidance regarding road construction, the creation of focal points in the park, and what trees to plant and how best to plant them, when, and where.
The park was donated to the people of Utica in a ceremony attended by New York Governor and later US Secretary of State and Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in 1909; its donation was noted in the New York Times and across the state. The park was expanded as a result of Proctor’s acquisition of the Jewett Farm in 1913, which added the area bounded by Oneida Street and the Parkway up to the site of the present tennis courts, created the same year and improved by the WPA during the 1930s.
The Utica Zoo began in 1914 with the addition of a small herd of deer; it remained very simple until the construction of the first major structures in the 1920s. The Valley View Golf Course (which, like the Zoo, remains an autonomous unit within the park) was added in 1925, but it otherwise conforms to the Olmsted aesthetic in that it remains a large open field reminiscent of the rolling farmland it once was. In the 1940s, the City began adding ski facilities, beginning with a simple rope tow, and eventually leading to the installation of a chair lift in the 1960s. Although the Utica Zoo and the Valley View golf course were not part of the original Olmsted plan, both were created in the park with the support of Thomas R. Proctor, who was an avid sportsman.
The park was originally designed around several focal points named for trees—The Elms, The Maples, The Hemlocks—plus the areas known as The Plateau (today the site of the statue known as the “Eagle”) and the South Woods. Those focal points named for trees disappeared in the park’s early years, as did the structures located at them. The most notable original Olmsted features of this park include Master Garden Road, Steele Hill Road, the Switchbacks, decorative roadside boulder arrangements, and three various scenic viewing areas (most notably the Plateau) that are located on the park’s uppermost elevations.
Like the other parks in this system, it contains both Olmsted-era features and features built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal agency that put idled laborers to work during the Great Depression. The most notable WPA additions are the stone fireplaces (no longer operational) and two of the system’s six bathhouses, both located in the South Woods, and the Valley View Golf Course.