Sterling Forest State Park is a state park located in the Ramapo Mountains in Orange County, New York. Established in 1998, it is among the larger additions to the New York state park system in the last 50 years. History Sterling Forest was originally part of a vast tract of land called Cheesecock that a group of English colonists bought from the Iroquois Indians in 1702. The land eventually came to belong to the Sterling Iron Works, which mined and shipped iron ore from a number of sites within the park. The last of the mines was closed in the 1920s. By the mid-1990s the Sterling Forest Corporation, a subsidiary of Trygg-Hansa, a Swedish insurance company, held title to 17,500 acres of the forest. The corporation was actively pursuing development of the property, proposing construction of 14,500 residential units and 7.4 million square feet of commercial and light industrial space. At risk was a largely undeveloped habitat of eastern hardwood forest, lakes, and streams in the nation's most densely populated metropolitan region. Public advocacy for conservation of Sterling Forest had existed since the 1950s, but without success. By the 1990s, this advocacy was centered on the Public/Private Partnership to Save Sterling Forest, a coalition of twenty-nine New York and New Jersey nonprofit organizations chaired by Robert O. Binnewies, Executive Director of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. The Public/Private Partnership worked for almost a decade to secure funding commitments from the federal government, the State of New Jersey, the State of New York, and private sources to achieve acquisition of most Sterling Forest Corporation holdings. In 1998, The Trust for Public Land and the Open Space Institute negotiated a purchase on behalf of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission of 15,805 acres of corporate holdings for $55 million. Governors George Pataki (NY) and Christine Todd Whitman (NJ) jointly announced that Sterling Forest State Park was established. Among additional acquisitions subsequent to establishment, in November 1999, The Trust for Public Land and the Open Space Institute succeeded in purchasing 659 acres from New York University for inclusion in the park. In December 2000, The Trust for Public Land and the Open Space Institute negoitiated for the purchase of 1,065 acres from the Sterling Forest Corporation to expand Sterling Forest State Park. In 2005, The Trust for Public Land in conjunction with the State of New York Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation