Inside scoop: The pool is almost exactly one acre in size.
Address: Bounded by Shore Boulevard, Ditmars Boulevard, 19th
Street, 21st Street and Hoyt Avenue, Astoria.
Baisley Pond Park is known in the West Indian community as
a great place to play cricket. But tennis, handball, and basketball
players use the almost 110 acres, too, as do bicycle riders,
rollerbladers, joggers, picnickers, and naturalists. Located near
the North Conduit Avenue, the grounds also host an annual
gospel festival and puppet shows.
Inside scoop: Inside the park, the Sutphin Playground has a
sculpture of an American mastodon, an extinct elephant-like
animal that recalls the 1850s, when workers dredging the pond
found the bones of a mastodon that lived in the area almost
10,000 years ago, just after the end of the last ice age. Plus, the
Mother Carter Garden, which is surrounded by an ornamental
fence and has seating with views of the pond, memorializes
Laura “Mother” Carter (1914-1999), a beloved community
leader.
Address: 118-21 Lakeview Blvd., South Jamaica.
Cunningham Park is about 360 acres in total, but it features a
240-acre wildlife preserve consisting of real forest habitat, vernal
pools, and kettle ponds. The area has countless sports fields, treelined
jogging paths, play areas, and barbecue pits. Named after
W. Arthur Cunningham, a World War I veteran who was elected
city comptroller in 1933, the park hosts annual events, including
shows by the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan
Opera.
Inside scoop: The park has a 6.5-mile mountain bike trail with a
dirt jump park and pump track.
Address: Near the convergence of the Horace Harding
Expressway and Grand Central Parkway, bounded by Long
Island Expressway, Francis Lewis Boulevard, 210th Street,
Hollis Court Boulevard, Hollis Hills Terrace, Avon Road, 193rd
Street, Union Turnpike, 199th Street, and Peck Avenue, Fresh
Meadows.
Forest Park is a windy and hilly 538 acres with natural hiking
and horse-riding paths through what is called “knob and kettle”
terrain, thanks in large part to a glacier that passed through
about 20,000 years ago. Despite a few years of lumbering and
a chestnut blight in 1912, the park is filled with healthy, tall,
natural growth, 150-year-old trees (hickories, black cherries,
dogwoods) that create canopies. Visitors can explore an
abandoned railroad station, a 110-acre, nine-hole golf course, and
108 QUEENS IN YOUR POCKET • www.itsinqueens.com