Juniper Valley Park is a public park

Park

A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...

 located within Middle Village

Middle Village, Queens

Middle Village is a neighborhood in central Queens, a borough of New York City. The neighborhood is located in the western central section of Queens, bounded to the north by Eliot Avenue, to the east by Woodhaven Boulevard, to the south by Cooper Avenue, and to the west by Fresh Pond Road...

, Queens

Queens

Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, United States. The park's 55.247 acres (223,576.9 m²) offer tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

, handball

American handball

American handball is a sport in which players hit a small rubber ball against a wall using their hands.- History :...

, basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 and bocce

Bocce

Bocce is a ball sport belonging to the boules sport family, closely related to bowls and pétanque with a common ancestry from ancient games played in the Roman Empire...

 courts, as well as seven baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 fields, and a quarter-mile running track

Track and field

Track and field is a sport comprising various competitive athletic contests based around the activities of running, jumping and throwing. The name of the sport derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area...

 around a turf football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

/soccer field. Since the 1930s it has been run and operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation

The City of New York Department of Parks & Recreation is the department of government of the City of New York responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecological diversity of the city's natural areas, and furnishing recreational opportunities for city's...

.

Geology and ecology

The park occupies the central portion of what had been Juniper Swamp, a low-lying area formed by runoff from the melting of glacier

Glacier

A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...

s that created Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

 some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. Before the 20th century, Juniper Swamp occupied an area bounded roughly by what are now 69th Street, Caldwell Avenue, 80th Street, and Juniper Valley Road. The post-glacial climate helped form peat bog

Bog

A bog, quagmire or mire is a wetland that accumulates acidic peat, a deposit of dead plant material—often mosses or, in Arctic climates, lichens....

s, the acidic nature of which was subsequently favored by flora unique to New York City as well as wild blueberry

Blueberry

Blueberries are flowering plants of the genus Vaccinium with dark-blue berries and are perennial...

 plants harvested by early settlers.

History

During the American Revolutionary War

American Revolutionary War

The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...

 in the 18th century, occupying British

Kingdom of Great Britain

The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...

 troops cut down most of the trees in the vicinity, and some of the swamp's peat was mined to burn for heat. White cedar

Chamaecyparis thyoides

Chamaecyparis thyoides , is a species of Chamaecyparis, native to the Atlantic coast of North America from Maine south to Georgia, with a disjunct population on the Mexican Gulf coast from Florida to Mississippi...

 and the opportunistic eastern red cedar, Juniperus virginiana

Juniperus virginiana

Juniperus virginiana is a species of juniper native to eastern North America, from southeastern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, east of the Great Plains...

, that subsequently took hold lent its name to the swamp. In what was perhaps the first recreational use of the area, during winter, the swamp's frozen ponds were a popular location for ice skating

Ice skating

Ice skating is moving on ice by using ice skates. It can be done for a variety of reasons, including leisure, traveling, and various sports. Ice skating occurs both on specially prepared indoor and outdoor tracks, as well as on naturally occurring bodies of frozen water, such as lakes and...

.

In 1822 Thomas Pullis purchased 32 acres (8 ha) of land for farming at the eastern side of the swamp. The family cemetery he established by 1846 on its grounds remains today within Juniper Valley Park as one of the few surviving farm burial grounds in New York City.

In 1916, for a new railroad route, the New York Connecting Railroad

New York Connecting Railroad

The New York Connecting Railroad or NYCR is a rail line in the borough of Queens in New York City. It links New York City and Long Island by rail directly to the North American mainland. Amtrak, CSX, Canadian Pacific Railway, Providence and Worcester Railroad and New York and Atlantic Railway...

 carved a deep cut through the eastern side of the swamp, thereby draining much of its water. The railroad now marks the western edge of the park.

A key figure in the eventual transformation of the swamp into the park is Arnold Rothstein

Arnold Rothstein

Arnold Rothstein , nicknamed "The Brain", was a New York businessman and gambler who became a famous kingpin of the Jewish mafia. Rothstein was also widely reputed to have been behind baseball's Black Sox Scandal, in which the 1919 World Series was fixed...

. Rothstein is widely suspected of significant involvement in the throwing of the 1919 World Series

1919 World Series

The 1919 World Series matched the American League champion Chicago White Sox against the National League champion Cincinnati Reds. Although most World Series have been of the best-of-seven format, the 1919 World Series was a best-of-nine series...

, known as the Black Sox Scandal, and soon thereafter using his gains to purchase 88 acres (35 ha) of Juniper Swamp. In the 1920s, he tried to sell the swamp to New York City for use as an airport, but only after first attempting to increase its apparent value by constructing on it a phantom village of 143 homes that were little more than facades.

In the 1920s, the area of the swamp east of the railroad and west of what became the tennis courts was called Metropolitan Heights Fairground and was used as a race track

Race track

A race track is a purpose-built facility for racing of animals , automobiles, motorcycles or athletes. A race track may also feature grandstands or concourses. Some motorsport tracks are called speedways.A racetrack is a permanent facility or building...

 for horses, dogs, automobiles and motorcycles. The track was 7/8ths of a mile in length.

Before Rothstein could unload the swamp, he was murdered in 1928 due to what many suspect was non-payment of gambling debts. In 1931, New York City acquired Juniper Swamp at the rate of $5,700 per acre as settlement with the Rothstein estate for back taxes, and immediately tagged it for development as a public park. News of the park, coupled with improvements of Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

 (WPA) efforts, ushered in a wave of housing growth in the vicinity that continued through the 1960s.

Briefly the swamp was again mined for peat to support road projects of Robert Moses

Robert Moses

Robert Moses was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of...

. By 1942 the WPA had completed improvement efforts on the portion of the park east of 76th Street to include eight tennis courts, four baseball fields, handball courts, and a sprinkler/wading pool. The park's western third was left in its original swampy condition except for some paved walking paths and simple lighting. Improvement of the western portion would wait until the addition in 1967 of parking lots, more baseball fields, a running track, and football/soccer field.

In the 1980s, the parking lots were closed due to excessive noise at night. The lots were removed in the 1990s. In May 2001, the old worn-out cinder track

Cinder track

A cinder track is type of race track, generally purposed for athletics or horse racing, whose surface is composed of cinders. For running tracks, most cinder surfaces have been replaced by all-weather synthetic surfaces, which provide greater durability, more consistent results, and are less...

 around the Brennan field was replaced with a 400-meter all-weather rubber based track

All-weather running track

An all weather running track is the common term to describe a rubberized artificial running surface for the sport of Track and field athletics. Throughout the history of the sport, there has always been a search for a consistent surface that gave competitors an equal advantage, to test their...

. The old concrete bleachers have been replaced with aluminum seating. The renovation project costing $1,560,000 was funded by the former Queens City Councilman Thomas Ognibene.

External links

• Juniper Valley Park, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
  New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
  The City of New York Department of Parks & Recreation is the department of government of the City of New York responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecological diversity of the city's natural areas, and furnishing recreational opportunities for city's...
  
  
• Juniper Park Civic Association