I have driven past Kensico Dam more times than I can count and never really thought about what happens at the bottom of it. Turns out the answer is: almost everything. Westchester County Parks runs eleven cultural heritage festivals a year, and nine of them take place on the plaza directly under that 307 foot wall of granite in Valhalla. The season wraps up September 13, and it has been going almost non-stop since May.
Eleven Festivals, One County
The 2026 lineup ran Polish, Asian American, Albanian, Irish, African American, Hispanic, Italian, Heritage of India, Jewish, Muslim and Arab American. Nine of those filled Kensico Dam Plaza, while the Irish and Arab American festivals happen at Ridge Road Park in Hartsdale instead. They all run noon to 6, rain or shine, seating is whatever blanket or folding chair you carry in, and coolers are not allowed. For the Kensico ones, admission and parking are free.
That is a genuinely wild amount of free programming for one county to put on in a single summer, and I think most people here know about exactly one of them, whichever one is theirs.
Fifty Years of the Same Field
Here is the part that got me. The Jewish Music and Arts Festival celebrated its 50th year on August 16. Fifty. This year it headlined Joe Buchanan and brought in Kosha Dillz, Ghazal Mizrahi and Israeli dancing, with puppets and face painting for the kids. And it is not even the only long runner. The Polish Heritage Festival that opened the whole season on May 31 was its 47th, with polka music, kids' activities, vendors selling Polish crafts and food, and the Polish Parade Marshal.
So there are people in Westchester who have been going to the same festival, in the same spot, under the same dam, since the 1970s. Their kids go now. That is the whole thing right there.
The Season Closes September 13
The last festival actually held at the dam this year was the Muslim Heritage Festival, on August 23. Ahlan-NY presented it and Westchester County Parks co-sponsored it, and the plaza filled up with live performances, cultural music, educational exhibits, a marketplace and a stack of international food trucks. County Executive Ken Jenkins called it a reflection of the county's diversity and the shared values that unite us. That is the kind of line a County Executive says at a podium. A field full of people shows up every year to back it up anyway.
The season itself does not end there. It closes September 13 with the Arab American Heritage Festival, and this one moves off the dam entirely to Ridge Road Park in Hartsdale. Same hours, noon to 6, rain or shine. Admission and parking are both free, which is not true of every festival on this list. The county is even closing a stretch of the Bronx River Parkway from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. that day, so the move is to come in off Route 22 instead. Expect Middle Eastern food from local vendors, plus live music and dance, to close out eleven straight weekends of this.
About That Wall
Kensico Dam was finished in 1917 after four years of construction. It stands 307 feet above its foundation and runs 1,843 feet long. Behind it sits the reservoir that supplies New York City with drinking water. That water leaves Valhalla and travels down to the Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers before it ever reaches a faucet in the five boroughs.
The plaza below it was built to be looked at. It has a long reflecting pool and a fountain, and a 1917 photograph shows the whole thing brand new. A century later it is where Westchester goes to eat, dance and hear music from wherever its families came from. Not a bad second career for a piece of water infrastructure.
Photos come from Wikimedia Commons, credited to Melissa Martin, Bestbudbrian, robb p and GaoKyle, plus a 1917 photograph of the dam and plaza from the New York Public Library's collection.
Follow us on Instagram @The914Collective for more Westchester stories, and read Not Upstate Magazine at thenineonefour.com.
Want more stories like this?
Sign up free for the Not Upstate Digital Magazine — a new issue every two weeks on the people, places, and culture of Westchester and the Hudson Valley.