Bill Paterson Nature Center

This is muttontown preserve another entry....Some of the trails are well maintained, but the trails' have a lot of fork roads; you need a map. You may get the map behind the house. After you finish, you can drive the car to the Chelsea Mason to walk around, or you can use the trails to walk to the Mason.

Nature center with its 2 trailheads is a gateway to preserve’s trails. Decent capacity parking lot to accommodate hikers. Nature center and its restroom amenities are visibly dated but they are there and much appreciated when center is open. You could cover major trails in 2-3 hours going through meadows and forested areas. King Zog’s ruins are accessible via one of the marked trails. I have made a loop starting on east side trails next to 106 route passing few nice meadows, then turning on trail close to Muttontown Rd and then to ruins trail and finally returning via west side trails skirting Chelsey Mansion area.

There's just a bunch of trails, not much to see if its not fall foliage season. If you're a hiker, this place is for you.

This is the entrance to a very beautiful Preserve, it has free parking, expect to spend a good part of your day if your planning to hunt for the ruins because they are well hidden and near the back end of the Preserve, have fun. If you know your lost, listen for highway traffic on 106, new hikers tend to get spun around in this Preserve.

Although it is a very nice nature preserve that allows horse trails and plenty of walking trails, the trails are not well marked or maintained. Even with the printed maps from the visitor center it is still easy to lose track of your location and find corresponding trail markers. (A great Eagle Scout project would be to fix up the trail markers.) If you go, leave yourself plenty of time to navigate the trails. No matter what you will find plenty of wildlife (or signs of wildlife all around).