Red House Beach is the guarded swimming beach on Red House Lake, in the Red House Area of Allegany State Park. The park is run by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, covers roughly 65,000 acres of Cattaraugus County, and was dedicated in 1921. The beach sits on the southeast shore, a graded strip of sand below the hill where the Tudor style Administration Building looks out over the water, with an old stone and timber bathhouse beside it.

The lake is not natural. Red House Brook was dammed in the park's first decade of development, flooding the old town center of Red House and leaving about 110 acres of shallow water at roughly 1,400 feet of elevation. The Department of Environmental Conservation puts maximum depth at 20 feet, and most of the lake is far shallower, which is why it warms early in the season and why the marked swim area is a modest rectangle rather than a long run into deep water.

Swimming is limited to the posted season and hours. For 2026 that is June 20 through September 7, daily from 11:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. State Parks states the rule plainly: swim only in designated areas, and only when a lifeguard is on duty. Shoreline fishing is allowed everywhere around the lake except inside the swim area.

Entry is a vehicle use fee of $7 per car and $35 for a commercial bus, collected 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. In 2026 that means weekends and holidays from May 23 to June 21, daily from June 27 to September 7, then weekends and holidays again from September 13 to October 12. An $80 Empire Pass covers day use for the year at most State Parks facilities. The beach itself costs nothing once you are through the gate. Red House Campground runs May 15 to October 31, with tent and trailer sites at $20 to $33 a night plus a $5 nightly surcharge for non residents.

State Parks samples its beaches at least once a week for E. coli, treating 235 colonies per 100 mL as an exceedance, and posts results at the park office and at the beach when a sample comes back high. Lab turnaround runs close to a day, so a posting reflects the previous day's water. Blue green algae are handled differently and sampled only after a bloom is reported. Red House has seen one: a harmful algal bloom was reported at this beach in August 2023 and park staff kept checking it. Call the park at (716) 379-6450 to confirm the day's status before driving in.

No gas or electric motors are permitted on the lake, so it stays quiet. Rowboats and canoes rent at the boathouse, and a launch for cartop boats sits at the north end off ASP Route 1. A paved path of about five miles loops the shoreline and crosses Red House Creek on a covered bridge, the only one in Western New York. The lake holds stocked brown trout plus largemouth bass, bluegill, pumpkinseed, yellow perch, black crappie, rock bass and brown bullhead. The ridges above the beach are unusual for the state: Allegany lies inside the Salamanca Re-entrant, the one pocket of New York the Pleistocene ice sheets went around instead of over, so this is preglacial topography. Do not confuse this beach with the one at Quaker Lake, in the park's separate Quaker Area to the south.