the REAL Undead Burg & Darkroot garden?

It's an overlook. To try to snap the U.S. out of the Great Depression the president at the time started a lot of public works projects just to give people jobs. There was a lot of work done at parks and in NY, most of the beautification was stone work walls, etc. I was at one of the larger State Parks (which is very close to where I live) with my family. The biggest attraction is The Gorge or aka The Grand Canyon of the East. It's lot smaller than the Grand Canyon if I recall the specs correctly but it's the largest of it's kind in my region. We're high up enough where the green below is ambiguous but it's tons and tons of densely packed trees. Regarding the pics with spacing I was lucky enough to be near a section where the trees are thin, a lot of spots are just as dense as your forest (and look like similar tree types too).

that place looks amazing, was gonna ask you if they were all trees at the bottom. Looks like youre a good hundred plus feet up!

I believe that's one of the steeper places in the park which would put it between 400 and 500 feet. Here's the Wikipedia link for the park which has some nice shots of other parts, as well as the footbridge across the river which might look kinda similar to your pictures. All the stone work in most NY parks is reminiscent of that style. I can try to share some pictures of Watkins Glen State Park which my wife and I visited recently. I might have canyon shot that looks similar to the view above the Hydra ladder (so we can stay on topic of course).