page_title: Wallkill Valley Rail Trail
section_title: New Paltz and Gardiner
hierarchical_section_title: Wallkill Valley Rail Trail / History / New Paltz and Gardiner
caption_attribution_description: English: The bridge between the Sojourner Truth park in New Paltz, New York, and the adjacent Wallkill Valley Rail Trail.
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: Converting the former corridor to a rail trail was first considered in a 1983 environmental report commissioned by the town of New Paltz. The study considered repurposing the corridor as a road for cars, but determined that the right-of-way, "lend[ing] itself to multiple and simultaneous 'people-oriented' transit", was "ideally suited for use as a trail for hiking, strolling, running, cycling and cross-country skiing". In 1988, New Paltz invited a local non-profit, the Wallkill Valley Land Trust, to acquire the portion of the rail line between New Paltz and Gardiner. The Wallkill Valley Land Trust in turn requested assistance from The Trust for Public Land, and the purchase was completed on January 18, 1991.
  While the town and village of New Paltz immediately purchased their sections from the Wallkill Valley Land Trust – roughly 4 and 3 miles (6.4 and 4.8 km), respectively – Gardiner did not purchase its 6-mile (9.7 km) section until much later. Portions of the New Paltz–Gardiner section were informally open since June 1991, but the formal opening ceremony of the full 12.2-mile (19.6 km) trail between New Paltz and Gardiner took place on October 9, 1993.
  The Gardiner section was in such a state of disrepair in 2004 that the Wallkill Valley Land Trust almost closed it. Gardiner received a $100,000 grant from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in December 2006, and the purchase was completed in 2007. The state provided an additional $5,000 to maintain the trail.
  Purchasing the section allowed Gardiner to fix the drainage problems that had deteriorated the surface of the trail, and to ban the use of motor vehicles, something the Wallkill Valley Land Trust had not done. Though the section was worth $307,300, the Wallkill Valley Land Trust sold it to Gardiner for $70,000.
  In 2009 and 2010, the Tea Party movement held protests along the Gardiner section of the trail. In November 2009, New Paltz received grants from the Greenway Conservancy, a state organization, to fund several rail trail–related projects. This included $17,750 to create a link between the New Paltz section of the trail and the Hudson Valley Rail Trail in nearby Lloyd, which was in turn being extended eastward to the Poughkeepsie Bridge; the connection with the bridge was completed in October 2010. The Wallkill Valley Railroad had considered such a connection after the bridge opened in 1889, but never built one. The grants also included $7,000 to create 400 feet (120 m) of ADA-accessible trail, to connect the parking area of a local park, named after Sojourner Truth, with the rail trail. The town had intended to connect the parking area with the trail since the late 1990s, but concerns over traffic, as well as state requirements, had added to the time and cost of the path; it was completed by June 2010. The connections are part of a county-wide plan to create a bicycle path along NY 299, to link regional rail trails.
caption: A footbridge connecting the parking area of the Sojourner Truth park with the trail
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