Quick answer
The Staten Island Greenbelt is a 2,800-acre system of connected parks, forests and wetlands running through the middle of Staten Island. Its trails climb Todt Hill, at 410 feet the highest natural point on the East Coast south of Maine, and cross High Rock and William T. Davis parks.
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The city's other wilderness
Every New Yorker knows Central Park. Far fewer know that the city owns a bigger, wilder stretch of land on Staten Island. The Staten Island Greenbelt packs about 2,800 acres of forest, wetland and kettle ponds along the spine of the island — the second-largest parcel in the city's park system — and its trails connect High Rock, LaTourette, Willowbrook and the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. It is the land New Yorker's actually reach for when they want to forget there is a city at all.
The highest hill south of Maine
The Greenbelt's signature feature is Todt Hill, at 410 feet the highest natural point on the Eastern Seaboard south of Maine. The climb is gentle, and the payoff is broad: from the ridge you look down over forest in every direction, with hazy skyline glimpses when the air clears. The glacial hills hold kettle ponds and thick wood where wild turkeys, white-tailed deer and box turtles are everyday locals, and hawks and owls patrol overhead. It ranks among the most biologically diverse spots in all five boroughs.
Roots in a road that never got built
The land's rescue reads like a small conservation triumph. Olmsted proposed a linear park here back in 1871, but the modern Greenbelt was born when citizen groups mobilized to block a proposed parkway that would have bisected the woods. Their campaign saved High Rock and won the network formal status in 1984. Start at the Greenbelt Nature Center on Rockland Avenue, pick up a trail map, and follow the ridge — a morning's ramble that ends with the whole of metropolitan New York resting quietly at your feet.