Erie County adds bridge and stairs to Emery Park disc golf course

Erie County’s new bridge and stairs at Emery Park were more than a cosmetic touch-up. On the park’s 18-hole Black Diamond Disc Golf Course, the work changed how players moved through a rugged layout shaped by a major ravine and Cazenovia Creek, making one of the toughest transitions safer and easier to handle.

The county framed the project around access and playability, not aesthetics, and that distinction mattered. Disc golf courses live or die on the quality of their walkways, crossings and pinch points, especially at public parks where wet ground, drainage and elevation changes can turn a casual round into a slog. A bridge reduces the chance of players trudging through mud or skirting fragile banks, while stairs help visitors negotiate slopes without treating the course like a backwoods trail.

Erie County Parks said accessibility remained a priority across its system and said it worked with the Erie County Office of Disability and community partners on park-wide access and inclusion. For Emery Park, that approach fit the ground it sits on. The park in South Wales was among the first county land acquisitions in 1925, and the Erie County Parks Commission dates to May 1924, which makes the preservation of existing recreational assets just as important as building new ones.

That is especially true at Black Diamond, which the Niagara Region Disc Golf Association built in 2008. Since then, the course has become one of Emery Park’s defining attractions, and county materials note that it has been increasing in popularity. Erie County Parks also works with Niagara Regional Disc Golf to maintain courses in four county parks, Emery Park, Ellicott Creek Park, Chestnut Ridge Park and Como Lake Park, signaling that disc golf is now part of a broader public-lands portfolio rather than a side project.

The county said it has invested more than $47,888,720 in the parks system since 2012, a figure that puts the Emery Park work in a wider context. Small infrastructure projects like a bridge and stairs may not grab attention the way a brand-new course does, but on a place like Emery Park they can determine whether a hole feels welcoming to a first-timer, manageable for older players and safe for anyone dealing with the park’s steep, creek-carved terrain. Erie County posted about the improvements the same day, underscoring how seriously it has begun to treat disc golf infrastructure as part of the county’s recreation strategy.