The name "Schodack" is from the Mahican terms ishoda ("fire plain") and akee ("land"); the name refers to the area being the former home of the Mohicans' central council fire. During the time of the Mahicans, the area now occupied by the park was a group of six islands; it became a continuous peninsula in the early 1900s when a federal project to construct a deep-water navigation channel to Albany necessitated the construction of dikes and the deposition of dredged material along and between the islands.[3][6]