Myers Park: the coolest thing in Lansing

Last week, local realtor Jamie Jones challenged the townspeople of Lansing to name the “coolest thing about living in Lansing.” Over and over, people responded “Myers Park.”

The area that is now Myers Park is about 10,000 years old. In his book “Gorges History, Landscapes and Geology of the Finger Lakes Region,” Arthur L. Bloom notes that there is roughly 1 mile of bedrock gorge between Ludlowville Falls and Myers Point.

Bloom points out that “the erosion of this mile-long segment would nicely provide the volume of sediment to build the present delta at Myers Point.”

Sometime around 1792, Andrew Myers, his wife and their two children came down the lake and landed on that point. The family built a cabin and a mill there.

Myers built bateaux, flat-bottom boats that could carry six or eight tons of freight. He loaded his boats with potash and sailed them up the lake, and on the rivers and canals to Albany and beyond. These early canals were not much more than ditches, but the flat bottom bateaux could travel on the shallow canals and be dragged through the swampy connecting areas.

The International Salt Company (then known as the Cayuga Salt Company) began producing table salt and other salt products on the north side of the point in 1891. Wells were drilled into the layer of salt beneath the lake. Water was pumped down, and the brine that came back up was processed into salt in a large, brick production complex.

The burgeoning operation’s workforce built homes in the area. A contingent drawn from Syria built a community and a church on the land overlooking the point.

The salt operation was shuttered in 1962. The buildings were already partially torn down when they burnt that year, and the site was bulldozed in the aftermath. In 1959, as salt production on the point wound down, the International Salt Company donated 24 acres of land on the south side of the point to the town for a lakeside park.

The first meeting of the Lansing Park Commission was Feb. 22 of that year, according to Lansing Town Historian Louise Bement’s brief history of the park written for the December 2019 town newsletter.

Bement wrote that Paul Trinkl, Frank Nagy, James Cirona and Dr. C.E. Camp met to develop their vision of the park as “an area for enjoyment by families and individuals, free of commercial activities.”

Most of the donated land was marsh and ponds. The Town of Lansing Highway Department brought heavy road construction equipment to the site and, under the direction of Donald Sharpsteen, built access roads, developed a lagoon on the north side of the park, cleared trees and leveled the south side. A large lawn was seeded in the center of the park and parking lots were established on the sides.

The marina was improved with more boat slips and a launching ramp, Audrey Simpson donated shrubs, and the Lansing Lions Club installed the first playground. By the Fourth of July, 1959, permanent fireplaces had been built in the western part of the park, and the Lions built a pole pavilion for the first of its annual barbecues.

In 1965, the Lions built the first of seven other pavilions. Pavilion E was donated by the Lansingville Fire Department, and Pavilion G was donated by Blanche and John Farkas. The lighthouse on the tip of the point was built and donated by a volunteer force led by John Dean and Maureen Caroll in 1998.

Today, Myers Park is 31 acres of lawns, graceful old trees and the beautiful lakeshore, with sweeping views up and down the lake.

There are those seven pavilions for cookouts and birthdays, picnic tables and barbecue grills for smaller gatherings, campsites and boat slips, an outstanding playground built by volunteers, swimming in the lake, volleyball and basketball, horseshoe pits, kayaking, kiteboarding and skipping stones into the sunset.

It’s a breathtaking wonder, empty and icy in a cold winter’s sunshine, and a warm, friendly place filled to the brim for “Music in the Park” on a summer evening. No wonder we love it so much.