06/23/2026
Our speakers on Monday were Paul Yost, the outgoing president and Amanda Kline, the secretary of the Friends of the Milton State Park.
Paul presented a power-point presentation about the history of the West Milton Island which was first settled in 1762. It was eventually purchased by the Straub brothers, whose father settled Milton, where they established a grist mill. Throughout the 1800’s and the early 1900’s various people owned parts of the island and farmed the land. In 1966, the Milton Rotary Club decided to consolidate the various properties from numerous owners and donate the land to the Milton Borough. In turn, the Milton Borough worked with the state and the DNCR so the state could take ownership of the island and create the Milton State Park.
The Friends of the Milton State Park organized in 2005 and began to formulate plans for how they could make the park more accessible to everyone. The next year they were able to lay out plans for the first trail – the South Trail – to present to the DNCR and begin construction of the trail and then later in 2006 they also constructed the Mid Trail. As time has progressed, a North Trail was also added to the mix. These trails gave access to the lower end of the island for walking and observing the beauty of the river. Unfortunately, for many years, the island was used as a community dump and the Friends organization discovered loads of trash that needed to be cleared away to make these trails usable. It took several of the largest trash containers available to clear out all of the debris that had accumulated over decades of trash dumping to rid the park of this obstacle. In addition, Japanese knotweed also hinders the beauty of the island and keeping it at bay on the 20- to 30-foot-wide trails is a full-time job in the summer. In 2009 the group decided to add a playground for children on the south side of the island.
Today, the trails are used during the entire year with spring, summer and fall finding people hiking, running, walking the dog, and just embracing the outdoors and in winter cross country skiing being added to the other activities. The Milton School District uses the south trails for its cross-county competition course for its interscholastic meets. The biggest way that you can help at the park is to pick up branches and twigs that you find on the trails and toss them into the knotweed so grass cutting can continue on a regular basis as well as to donate monies to the Friends organization so they can continue to add new trails and maintain this wonderful asset to Milton and the surrounding communities. The park ranger for the Milton State Park is Ben Bender who is stationed at the Shikellamy State Park.
