The Long Path is a 347.4-mile (559.1 km) long-distance hiking trail beginning at the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey and currently ending at Altamont, New York, in the Albany area. While not yet a continuous trail, relying on road walks in some areas, it nevertheless takes in many of the popular hiking attractions west of the Hudson River, such as the New Jersey Palisades, Harriman State Park, the Shawangunk Ridge and the Catskill Mountains. It offers hikers an incredible diversity of environments to pass through, from suburbia and sea-level salt marshes along the Hudson to wilderness and boreal forest on Catskill summits 4,000 feet (1219 m) in elevation.
When originally conceived in the 1930s, it was to be the antithesis of a hiking trail, with neither a designated route nor blazes, simply a list of points of interest hikers could find their own routes to. However, increasing development after World War II in Orange and Rockland counties made that less workable, and it was revived in the 1960s as a standard trail. Future plans call for it to be extended through the Adirondacks to the Canadian border.
Read more about Long Path: The Long Path Today, Management, Marking, End-to-end
Famous quotes containing the words long and/or path:
“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”
—Bible: New Testament Jesus, in Matthew, 5:5.
The third of the Beatitudes, from the Sermon on the Mount. The words recall those in Proverbs 37:11, “But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.” In his Notebooks, the author Samuel Butler wrote, “I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.” (Samuel Butler’s Notebooks, p. 220, 1951)
“We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in the New World that is ours.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)