Stewart Park History

Stewart Park, Ithaca's beloved public park located at the southern end of Cayuga Lake, offers a multitude of outdoor recreation and leisure opportunities set alongside an exquisite lake vista. Once a location of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫˀ people’s village of Neodakheat, the area opened as privately-owned Renwick Park in the 1890s. On July 4, 1921, the park became Stewart Park, the City of Ithaca’s first public park, re-named for Mayor Edwin C Stewart, who generously supported the park with enthusiasm and money, but died a month before its opening.

Step onto the Cayuga Waterfront Trail to encounter the park's story, an interesting history tracing its many lives, from precolonial days, to a cinematic spotlight on the silent film industry, to current revitalization efforts by the Friends of Stewart Park.

Friends of Stewart Park acknowledges that Stewart Park and the Cayuga Waterfront Trail are located on the traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫˀ Nation, one of the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Stewart Park, Ithaca, New York state, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ dispossession, and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ people, past and present, to these lands and waters.