Where to See Great Fall Foliage on Long Island

One Long Island road where you can see lots of fall foliage is: Route 25A. Also known as Northern Boulevard, 25A runs along the North Shore of Long Island. Once you get past the shopping malls in western and central Nassau County, the scenery becomes more rural, and the road is tree-lined. Much of the North Shore of Long Island is wooded.

As you follow 25A, you can look at fall foliage and make detours in some of Long Island's quaint villages such as Oyster Bay; Cold Spring Harbor; Huntington and Port Jefferson, which, according to a village website, is approximately 56 miles away from New York City.

You can also see a lot of Long Island's fall foliage in the state parks. Here's a link to a website that shows where all of them are.

The Hempstead Lake State Park; Connetquot River State Park and Belmont LakeState Park, which is 42 miles from Manhattan, are a few that have great fall foliage displays. If you like to bike, the Bethpage State Park is connected with the MassapequaPreserve and the Trail View State Park (they have a great bike trail, you can check out my previous article, here.)

Further to the east, there are several Nature Conservancy Preserves and state Department of Conservation parks that boast beautiful fall foliage on Long Island.

The Randall's Pond Preserve off Randall's Road in Ridge may not be well known outside the immediate area, but is quite scenic. In Bridgehampton, on the South Fork, their Long Pond Greenbelt Preserve includes a string of ponds bordered by wetlands and forests, a great place to see fall foliage on Long Island.

The Mashomack Preserve also has great fall colors. It's on Shelter Island, the island between the two Forks of Long Island. You have to take a brief ferry ride to get there. This Nature Conservancy Preserve is free, although they do encourage people to make a donation.

There are also several county parks in Nassau and Suffolk that include great fall foliage. As visitors and residents of Long Island know, it's not just New England and upstate New York that get the fiery gold, orange and red fall foliage.

Before you go, a final tip: check out this page from The Weather Channel. It will show you when fall foliage is peaking on Long Island.