Wallkill Valley Rail Trail

The Wallkill Valley Rail Trail is a 23.7-mile rail trail and linear park that runs along the former Wallkill Valley Railroad rail corridor in Ulster County, New York. It stretches from Gardiner through New Paltz, Rosendale, and Ulster to the Kingston city line. The trail is separated from the Walden–Wallkill Rail Trail by two state prisons in Shawangunk, though there have been plans to bypass these facilities, and to connect the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail with other regional rail trails. The northern section of the trail forms part of the proposed Empire State Trail.
Plans to create the rail trail began as early as 1983, when New Paltz considered uses for the then-defunct Wallkill Valley corridor; the railroad had ceased regular traffic in 1977, and by 1983 had begun to remove its tracks. In 1991, a local land trust purchased the 12-mile section of the former rail corridor between New Paltz and Gardiner, and conveyed the New Paltz section to the town and village of New Paltz. The trail was formally opened between New Paltz and Gardiner in 1993, though Gardiner did not purchase its section from the trust until 2007. The length of the trail was effectively doubled by a county land seizure in 2009, extending the walkway north from Rosendale through Ulster to Kingston. The extension included the Rosendale trestle, a 940-foot bridge across the Rondout Creek. There are several other bridges that carry the trail, though none are as long.

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