History
Stretching 33 miles (53 km) from Montgomery to Kingston, the Wallkill Valley Railroad operated from 1866 until its last regular freight run on December 31, 1977. During the 1980s, its owner, Conrail, began to salvage the former corridor's steel rails and sell off sections of the rail bed. State law mandated that in such sales, offers be made first to the state, then to the involved counties and municipalities. The state bought a 1.4-mile (2.3 km) portion of rail bed between Shawangunk and Gardiner in November 1985 for the construction of the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in the hamlet of Wallkill.
While Montgomery and Shawangunk purchased their sections of the railroad – 2.0 and 2.3 miles (3.2 and 3.7 km), respectively – in 1985, eventually creating the 3.22-mile (5.18 km) Walden–Wallkill Rail Trail, the towns of New Paltz, Gardiner and Rosendale initially declined to purchase their sections of the rail line. The town of Shawangunk has been evaluating plans to bypass the state prison to connect the Walden–Wallkill and Wallkill Valley trails since 2004, and such a connection was listed as a project in a 2008 county-wide transportation plan. The latest proposal involves diverting the trail along Birch Road. The Wallkill Valley Rail Trail was the seventeenth rail trail created in New York state, and became a National Recreation Trail in 2007.
Read more about this topic: Wallkill Valley Rail Trail
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