One-minute hike: Haunting charm of Beechwood State Park

Walking the trails at Beechwood State Park in Sodus, Wayne County, you’d think Wes Craven and Alfred Hitchcock handled maintenance.

“I know that every time someone walks through for the first time, they go, ‘Oh, look at these raggedy old buildings,” said Sodus town supervisor Steve LeRoy. “I’m sure they do. I get that.”

But the former Camp Beechwood, operated for almost 70 years by the Girls Scouts of Genesee Valley before the state bought it, is staging a comeback.

Slow, to be sure. That’s how it is when the supervisor doesn’t want to raise taxes for the park, is relying on a state grant and the donations of time and money from volunteers to reclaim about 300 acres between Lake Road and Lake Ontario.

“If you could have seen it before,” LeRoy said of the site that Sodus took over about 10 years ago on a rent-free lease.

“What we took over was an absolute jungle,” he said. “You couldn’t see those buildings. The trails weren’t mowed. The buildings were completely overgrown. It was real bad. To the point of not being usable. We’ve done a tremendous amount of work in there.”

The potential of the site is obvious to anyone who pokes around the old cabins, walks into the mess hall and follows the (unmarked) trails back to the main grass path. It be a great outdoor museum to Scouts in general (LeRoy said Boy Scout Eagle projects have helped improve some areas). It could be a nature museum with signs identifying the different types of trees. An outdoor museum of local history would complement the Sodus Bay Lighthouse just a few miles away.

Students in eco- and nature tourism at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry came out with recommendations in 2011 on how to “turn the park into a community focal point.” The 102-page report provided suggestions on funding, ways to connect local volunteers and businesses, develop trails, manage and maintain the park, and promote the result.

The report pointed out the obvious — no electricity, no restrooms, lack of money for development and vandalism that gives the place its slasher-film look.   The report also had a vision of the park that included its historical, recreational and economic potential.

LeRoy said a few thousand people visit the park each year, and it’s as popular in winter for cross-country skiing as it is in summer for walking. No motorized vehicles are allowed.

Right now, the site has a port-a-john, but no running water. People do appear to camp there.

The wild unkemptness that is Beechwood’s charm and that LeRoy wants to preserve is, right now, its invitation to vandals.

“Everything we try to do has been met with continual vandalism,” he said. “I hope that when they grow up and they’re adults with their own kids they look back and say, ‘Boy, was I a jerk.’ You know it’s kids.”

LeRoy said the town will use a $76,000 state grant to install water, dusk-to-dawn lights and surveillance cameras at buildings and trail junctures. He said improvements really can’t be made until the park is more secure after hours.

LeRoy said he doesn’t envision the park turning into Durand Eastman or even Forman Park in Pultneyville. There’ll be a water fountain, electricity and benches, but no paved roads and there may never be trail markers.

The directionally challenged shouldn’t worry, he said. The park isn’t that big, and it’s clearly bordered by Lake Road, the lake, farmland and Maxwell Bay. I'm here to prove him right.

In its current state and even its future development, Beechwood does make for great wandering — of the feet and the imagination.