History of the Park

Millerton’s Community Park, Eddie Collins Memorial Park, is a 17-acre municipal park on Route 22 just north in the Village of Millerton, New York. It has a long history as a center of community sports, recreation, and social life. It is the only public facility with a Little League field, soccer field, basketball courts, a playground for children with physical disabilities, and open space for large gatherings and events that serve residents of the Village of Millerton, Town of North East, and adjacent communities in NY and Connecticut.

The park is on municipal land within walking distance of Millerton’s Main Street historic district and the Harlem Valley Rail Trail. Once situated alongside a former railway terminal, it was first used for recreation in the early 1900s for horseracing and playing baseball – the new “national pastime.”

In 1963, the park’s informal status as the home of local baseball was made official. A brick arch in honor of Major Leaguer Edward Trowbridge Collins, born in Millerton in 1887 and inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, was installed at the park’s entrance.

In 1966, a swimming pool—Denney Pool, named after donor William G. Denney—with a splash pad for toddlers and a bathhouse was constructed with considerable community support. In 1972, with youth participation in baseball at its peak, the Village dedicated a second ball field—the Clifford C. Andrews Little League Field—to honor a member of the Millerton Lions Club. By 1980, a pavilion, picnic tables, and a basketball court had also been added.

In the early 2000s, significant upgrades improved the park thanks to $1 million in anonymous donations. An expansive playground for children, with a rubberized surface for safety and equipment accessible to children in wheelchairs, was installed. The two existing ball fields were modernized with new infields and fencing, and an electronic scoreboard was added to the Little League field. A third ball field with a backstop, fencing, and bleachers was constructed for softball enthusiasts.

The last significant improvement to the park happened in 2003 when a small skateboard area was built with funds raised by a local youth organization. In 2015, the aged pool was closed due to irreparable structural damage, while other facilities suffered from a lack of proper maintenance and the detriments of aging.

Since 2017, the Village of Millerton has pursued an ambitious plan to redevelop the recreation park due to neglect and disrepair. With help from a dedicated committee of volunteers and supportive political leaders, the Village has secured several million dollars through grants from NY State and Dutchess County as well as private donations for the project and established an endowment to offset future maintenance costs. The plan's first phase was completed in 2023, while construction for the second phase, which includes a much-desired new swimming pool and bathhouse, is expected to begin in 2025 and conclude in 2026.

Although the park has undergone multiple transformations over the last century, a constant throughout is that it has been a place where local and neighboring residents participate together in all kinds of community activities. The park is where generations of children have learned  and will again learn to swim and where children and teenagers engage in team sports—developing emotional maturity and physical skills. Hundreds of families in and outside the area can enjoy exercise, and connections with other families. Countless birthdays and family reunions can continue to be celebrated. Communal recreation is, and will always be, an integral part of Millerton’s community park, where visitors can create a lifetime of memories and develop lifelong friendships.