The Dutchess Rail Trail is a

rail trail A rail trail or railway walk is a shared-use path on a Right of way#Rail right of way, railway right of way. Rail trails are typically constructed after a railway has been abandoned and the track has been removed but may also share the rail corr ...

that stretches from the former Hopewell Junction train depot, north to the

Poughkeepsie Poughkeepsie ( ) is a city within the Town of Poughkeepsie, New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsie is in the Hudson River Valley region, midway between the core of the New ...

entrance of the Walkway over the Hudson. It's a shared use rail trail open for pedestrians and bicyclers. The Dutchess Rail Trail forms part of the Empire State Trail. Construction was initially set to begin in July 2007. It was built in five phases. The final stage from Morgan lake in the Town of Poughkeepsie to the Walkway over the Hudson was completed in July 2013. Conrail's Maybrook Line was double tracked, allowing for a simultaneous paved and packed dirt trail. In January 2012, a 1-mile stretch of property was purchased from

CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of track, it is the lead ...

. An effort was made to develop this stretch of property in 2013, resulting in connections with Walkway Over the Hudson and the

Hudson Valley Rail Trail The Hudson Valley Rail Trail is a paved east–west rail trail in the Lloyd, New York, town of Lloyd in Ulster County, New York, Ulster County, New York (state), New York, stretching from the Hudson River through the Highland, Ulster County, New ...

. The railroad line was built in 1892 by the Central New England Railway; it was severed by a fire on the Poughkeepsie Bridge on May 8, 1974.

Dutchess County Dutchess County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 295,911. The county seat is the city of Poughkeepsie. The county was created in 1683, one of New York's first twelve counties, and later org ...

originally purchased the Maybrook Line to build a limited access highway to Interstate 84 but did not want to pay the monetary and environmental costs of connecting from Hopewell Junction to I-84. At the Hopewell Junction terminus of the train, the Maybrook Trailway, another nearby trail, was later completed and connected in 2020 as part of the Empire State Trail project.

References

External links

Dutchess Rail Trail Map
{{Rail trails in New York Parks in Dutchess County, New York Tourist attractions in Poughkeepsie, New York