Letchworth State Park’s nature center and sugarhouse will be center stage for the annual Maple Weekends sugaring festival and pancake breakfasts in late March.
The last two weekends in March will be Maple Weekends statewide. Festivities at Letchworth are on March 18, March 19, March 25, and March 26 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Humphrey Nature Center.
Volunteers with the Friends of Letchworth State Park preservation nonprofit will serve pancakes, butter, sausage, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, orange juice, milk, and, of course, maple syrup.
All educational activities are free. Pancake breakfast tickets will be $8, kids under age five eat free. Tickets will be available at the door and online, with proceeds to benefit Friends of Letchworth State Park projects. Follow Letchworth State Park on Facebook and Instagram (@letchworthstatepark) for announcements when breakfast tickets go on sale online.
There will be four interactive educational stations for visitors to participate in syrup making: sap collecting, traditional stone boiling, evaporator boiling in the sugarhouse, and syrup grading/tasting.
Letchworth State Park produces maple syrup mostly for educational purposes. While some of the park’s syrup will be for sale at the nature center, the syrup served with the pancake breakfasts is donated by local maple producers for Maple Weekends.
Maple syrup production is one of the region’s claims to fame. According to the USDA Ag Census, Wyoming County produced 91,765 gallons of maple syrup in 2017. That is enough syrup to fill 30 concrete mixer trucks, and over 17,000 gallons more than the next-highest maple producing county that year. Wyoming County includes the southwestern part of Letchworth State Park in the mid-point of the Genesee River’s roughly 160-mile valley from northwestern Pennsylvania to Lake Ontario.
The park can temporarily close some roads due to winter weather conditions. All Maple Weekends attendees should plan to use the Castile entrance to the park, 6787 Denton Corners Road, Castile, which is open year-round. Once inside the park, follow signs for the Humphrey Nature Center, about one mile south on Park Road from the Castile entrance. As usual, there will be no vehicle use fees until later in the spring.
The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation oversees more than 250 individual parks, historic sites, recreational trails, and boat launches, which were visited by a record 78 million people in 2020. For more information on any of these recreation areas, call 518-474-0456 or visit http://parks.ny.gov.
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