Kingston's Secret Quarry Just Became the Best New Swimming Hole in the Hudson Valley — And It Took the State 20 Years to Build One

A local's guide to the turquoise water everyone's suddenly talking about

I've spent two decades in this valley chasing swimming holes the old-fashioned way — half-remembered directions from a guy at the hardware store, a "no trespassing" sign you pretend not to see, a scramble down a bank that ruins a perfectly good pair of sneakers. So forgive me if I sound a little stunned writing this next sentence: New York State just handed us a legitimate, lifeguarded, ADA-accessible swimming hole, for free, and it's better than any of the secret ones.

It's called Lake Sophia, it opened July 17 in Kingston, and if you haven't been yet, cancel your plans.

From Quarry to Quarry-with-a-Lifeguard

Here's the part that makes this more than just "new pool, please clap." Lake Sophia isn't a pool. It's a genuinely spring-fed former limestone quarry — the kind of place that, in any other decade, would've stayed fenced off and rumored-about forever, the local swimming hole everybody's cousin supposedly snuck into in 1994. This one sits inside the 508-acre Sojourner Truth State Park on the western edge of Kingston, ringed on three sides by limestone cliffs, and the water genuinely glows an almost unreal turquoise — not filter-and-Instagram turquoise, actual mineral-content turquoise, the kind of color that makes you want to double check you're still in Ulster County and not Sardinia.

The park itself has a real history worth knowing before you cannonball into it. The land was quarried for brick-making and stone for generations, part of the industrial waterfront that once lined this stretch of the Hudson. Scenic Hudson bought the property from a developer in 2019 to keep it from becoming another riverfront housing project, then handed it to New York State, which paid $13.5 million to formally acquire it through the Environmental Protection Fund. Governor Hochul dedicated the park during Black History Month in 2022, naming the whole 508 acres after Sojourner Truth — the abolitionist and women's rights icon who was born into slavery just up the road in Esopus back in 1797, and who, as the park's own materials nicely put it, "walked away by daylight" into freedom. Lake Sophia itself carries the name of Truth's daughter, which turns a swimming hole into something with actual historical weight, not just a place to work on your tan.

The whole build ran about $75.6 million, funded largely through the state's Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, and it's the flagship project of the state's "NY SWIMS" initiative — an effort to get more free, safe, climate-resilient swimming access into communities that have been asking for exactly that for years. And that "years" is not an exaggeration: this is the first new swimming facility New York State Parks has opened anywhere in the system in more than two decades. Two decades. If you're the type who likes trivia, that means the last time this happened, you were probably still using a Discman on the way to whatever swimming hole you actually had access to.

What You're Actually Getting

This is not a sad municipal pool with a concrete deck and a whistle-happy teenager. The numbers alone are absurd for a free public facility: a 12,000-square-foot swim crib with a gently sloped ramp and an ADA-compliant gangway for anyone who needs easier access, plus a separate 16,000-square-foot deep-water swimming area — combined, more square footage than two Olympic pools. There's a proper bathhouse with restrooms, showers, and changing stalls (though notably, no lockers, so plan your valuables accordingly), fine sand along the shoreline, umbrellas up on the cliff tops, and food trucks with electrical hookups for when you inevitably get hungry watching other people do cannonballs.

Lifeguards are on staff, which — speaking as someone who has swum in plenty of unofficial Hudson Valley holes over the years, some of them almost certainly haunted — is a genuinely nice change of pace.

Practical details, because I know you're already checking your calendar:

Lake Sophia is open daily, 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., through Labor Day weekend, with the broader park open dawn to dusk year-round. Admission to the park runs $8 per vehicle.

The new main entrance is directly off Route 32, at 100 Sojourner Truth Way in Kingston, and the terrain around the water is crushed stone and natural rock, so wear real shoes, not the flip-flops you were planning on.

Also, heads up: no food or drinks at the water's edge, no pop-up tents, no ball or frisbee games, no diving or jumping from the fences, and no dunking your friends, however tempting.

Opening Day Was, Predictably, a Whole Scene

More than 200 people — officials, state workers, and local swimming diehards — showed up for the ribbon-cutting on July 17, and in true Hudson Valley fashion, a trio of local teenagers reportedly had their shirts off and were ready to jump in before the ceremony had even finished. State Senator Michelle Hinchey called the project a genuine gift to the community, and Kingston Mayor Steve Noble, who took one of the first official dips, admitted with a straight face that he'd been told to "go jump in a lake" by more than a few constituents over the years and was finally, officially, doing exactly that.

I can't blame him. There's something almost funny about a state government spending $75.6 million and twenty years of institutional patience just to arrive back at the thing every kid in this valley has wanted since forever: a clean, cold, beautiful hole in the ground, full of water, that you're actually allowed to jump into.

Get there early on weekends. Bring your own sunscreen, your own snacks, your own trash bags, and, for once in this town's history, absolutely no need to check whether you're trespassing.

— Filed with wet hair, because I did the responsible journalistic thing and tested the water myself.