Autumn in the City - 7 Parks

Fall has blown in. Here are seven city parks where you can watch the season turn over a new leaf, in living color.

Think you have to road-trip to the countryside to see fall leaves changing color? Think again: Some of the best places to spot those gorgeous hues are in urban areas -- yes, right in the heart of them -- around the country. Your local city park can be a great leaf-viewing venue. Here are some of the major ones around the country, and some surprises.

Boston: Boston Common and Boston Public Garden



When most Americans think fall foliage, they immediately think of the Northeast, which arguably has the country's most dramatic fall colors. Long drives up the Maine coast, through New Hampshire and Vermont typically dominate the agenda.

But what about the cities? Steal away to the country's oldest park, Boston Common, or its neighbor, the nation's first public botanical garden, Boston Public Garden, downtown around Oct. 15. The week after that is when the trees should be at their peak (there are over 600 varieties in the Public Garden). The famed Swan Boats may not be in operation (they stop running in late September), but there's plenty of leaf-peeping to be done from land along the Public Garden's pathways.

New York City: Central Park



The scene in "When Harry Met Sally" where the title characters discuss their recurring sex dreams is as famous for its backdrop as its content: Autumn in Manhattan is almost synonymous with the words "Central" and "Park." The color here is unparalleled in the city: Planted by park designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux with fall in mind, the maples, oaks, elms and more create a rich panorama of reds, oranges and golds. (Brooklyn's Prospect Park, also designed by Olmsted and Vaux, merits honorable mention for its fall color.) Some of the park's best leaf-viewing destinations include the reservoir, the Literary Walk (on the east edge near 66th Street) and Belvedere Castle (mid-park at 79th Street), which provides a panoramic view of color from its top. (More top-down views of the park can be gleaned from Rockefeller Center's Top of the Rock observation deck or from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's rooftop sculpture court.) For smaller crowds, meander to the very northern tip from West 100th Street past the pool, working your way up to Harlem Meer. Note: Leaf color can peak in the 843-acre park anywhere between the last weeks of October and the last weeks of November, depending on the climate.

Washington, D.C.: Rock Creek Park



When the leaves peak in mid- to late October in D.C., Washingtonians head out U.S. 66 to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, one of the area's most famed locations for fall color. But they could avoid what can become a parking lot, staying inside the Beltway to view color in Rock Creek Park, the 12-mile expanse of green space that extends from the Potomac River to the Maryland border. You can hike the elevated Ridge Trail for a view of trees below or follow the trail next to the creek itself, where trees often form a canopy over the water. You can tour by bike, too; Ross Drive is less crowded than the trail following the creek and has great color as well. Driving is also an option: Rock Creek Parkway cuts through the park, turning into Beach Drive, and makes for great scenic driving when it's not rush hour. For an out-of-park aerial view, try a walk across the Taft Bridge on Connecticut Avenue, where you'll overlook a huge expanse of the park's trees below.

St. Louis: Forest Park

Bigger by 500 acres than Cental Park, St. Louis' Forest Park is an oasis of trees, and like its Manhattan counterpart, it's where people go to play. It's home to the city's zoo, several museums and tons of trees, so it's also a hot spot for fall foliage viewing. To make the most of your leaf-peeping experience, get the self-guided walk map at the park's visitor center (located in the historic Lindell Pavilion), which will allow you to look at 90 different varieties (many of them marked by a tour sign naming the tree type) around the Jewel Box conservatory, the grounds of which are also the city's arboretum.

Kansas City: Loose Park

It's not Kansas City's largest park--that honor goes to Swope Park, which is also chock-full of leaves--but Loose Park is the most popular for looking at leaves. The site of a Civil War battle as well as the Wrapped Walkways, one of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's famous environmental art installations (a la Central Park's The Gates), this park in the fall is a spectacular setting in one of the city's oldest neighborhoods, and its equally mature trees attract people from all corners. Foliage here typically peaks in late October, but the entire month can be beautiful.

Sacramento: William Land Park

Sacramento's claim to fame, as big as the politics and the Governator it hosts, has long been that there are more trees per capita here than anywhere else in the world, except Paris (though in recent years, that claim has been challenged). That puts the unlikely state of California on the map for some fall foliage, with Sacramento (the "City of Trees," as it's known) front and center. Head first to William Land Park. In the park itself and in the surrounding neighborhood of the same name, you'll find leaves at their California finest. (This is by no means a Northeastern fall, but it's some of the best foliage you'll find on the Left Coast.) Also sporting color is McKinley Park, in the equally old and tree-laden neighborhood of East Sac, where you'll find gingkos, elms and black locusts turning yellow, dawn redwoods that burn bronze, and scarlet oaks that turn, well, scarlet in autumn.

San Francisco: Golden Gate Park



In many ways, Golden Gate Park is the City by the Bay's answer to Central Park: It covers slightly more ground (a little more than 1,000 acres), it's also laid out as a long rectangle spanning the city, and it provides a playground of green space for an otherwise cement-filled city. It's nowhere near as filled with fall color as Central Park, but that doesn't mean you can't find any. Sycamores throughout the park turn gold in October. For the highest concentration of color, head to the Japanese Tea Garden (nearest the Ninth Avenue entrance). In October the maples turn a shade of orangey-red that nearly matches the pagodas they're tucked among. The gingkos turn yellow in mid-November.