heavy rains. The park's paths would also be restored with the addition of three new pedestrian bridges; a playground; four activity centers, of which two would be outdoors and two would be indoors; a skate park; an athletic field; and three basketball courts built within the park. "Comfort stations" and food concessions would also be added. The Van Cortlandt Golf Course was renovated in 2016. The skate park, new playground, and path improvements were completed in 2020. NYC Parks started renovating the Woodlawn Playground in 2021 for $1 million. Geography At , Van Cortlandt Park is the third-largest park in New York City, behind the Staten Island Greenbelt () and Pelham Bay Park (). It has numerous attractions and features that are both recreational and educational. Geology The different parts of Van Cortlandt Park have a varied geology. The Northwest Woods and Old Croton Aqueduct Trailway have a steep terrain dotted with Fordham gneiss, a metamorphic rock that is very hard to weather. The Tibbetts Brook valley is set in Inwood marble, which weathers more easily. The east side of the park near Indian Field contains Yonkers granite, an igneous rock that mixed with Fordham gneiss as a hot magma before later cooling. Watercourses Van Cortlandt Park contains the Bronx's largest freshwater lake, the eponymous Van Cortlandt Lake. The lake is deep at various times of year, and has an area of . The lake is used for recreational fishing, as it includes species such as largemouth bass, black crappie, brown bullhead, bluegill, pumpkinseed, golden shiner, common carp, white sucker, and yellow perch. It is fed by Tibbetts Brook, a stream originating in Yonkers, which runs through a series of culverts before draining into the south edge of the lake at approximately West 242nd Street. There are efforts to daylight this south end into the former New York and Putnam Railroad right-of-way that runs through the park as part of the park's faster plan. There is no surviving documentation for the creation of Van Cortlandt Lake. In 1699, Jacobus Van Cortlandt dammed Tibbetts Brook to power a sawmill, creating a mill pond at the site where the lake is. Later, he also added a gristmill. The sawmill was relocated around 1823 and stayed in operation until 1889. The gristmill was destroyed by lightning in 1901. By the time the park was created, Van Cortlandt Lake needed to be cleaned, as