This tour will guide you through the Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park, the world's longest elevated pedestrian bridge at 1.28 miles from gate to gate. he Walkway spans the majestic Hudson River between Poughkeepsie and Highland, New York, in the heart of the beautiful, historic Hudson Valley.
On this tour you will hear about this region's environment, Native Americans, European settlers, unusual endangered fish, impressive early engineering feats, and much more.
The Walkway is open seven days a week, 365 days per year from sunrise to sunset -- and occasionally after dark for special events. Walkway Over the Hudson is one of the most accessible parks in the world for visitors with mobility challenges because it is flat, paved, and stair-less. For more information about the Walkway, visit walkway.org.
Sample Stories
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Ulster Welcome Center
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In 2018, the Walkway Over the Hudson opened this $5.4 million Ulster Welcome Center. A 3,500-square-foot visitor center and plaza, it features amphitheater seating for special events and programs for hundreds of people, a covered 1,400-square-foot patio, a bus drop-off location to provide easier access, and upgraded and environmentally friendly pathways, plus concession stands and public restrooms.
The facility utilizes the latest energy efficient measures, including LED lighting, insulated building shells, and modern heating, ventilation, and air conditioning equipment, powered by solar panels. In fact, more than 30 percent of the energy needed to power the Ulster Welcome Center is generated by its solar panels.
In the plaza outside the Welcome Center, Walkway visitors can rent bicycles, eat a healthy snack provided by our vendors, buy Walkway souvenirs, and learn more about the bridge and the park via informative panels all throughout the area.
This is also the location of the Walkway's signature annual event, Starry Starry Night. Held under a remarkable clear-top tent on the first Friday in October, Starry Starry Night brings together friends of the Walkway from across the state to celebrate another year of progress and success in the park. The catered event, which includes a silent auction, awards ceremony, and fireworks show, is open to the ticket-holding public.
Birth of the Walkway
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After a fire damaged the railway that ran along this route, the skeleton of the dormant Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge loomed over the Hudson Valley for decades. Ideas about what to do with the structure bounced around the community. The dream of the Walkway Over the Hudson began in the mid-1990s, when a dedicated group of local citizens led by a man named Bill Sepe began a grassroots campaign to turn the bridge into a pedestrian path.
In June 1998, the organization now known as Walkway Over the Hudson officially assumed ownership of the bridge, hoping to turn it into what it is today. Throughout the ensuing decade, the group accumulated allies both private and public, amassing nearly $40 million from both the state and federal governments, agencies focused on historic preservation, and from private philanthropic organizations to complete the project. Attorney Fred Schaeffer was one of the leaders of that group.
"A lot of people thought of it as a rickety old road bridge that should be torn down. There were some sections of the bridge where some of the wooden walkways deteriorated and was falling off. Somebody would see a piece fall off and they would say, 'Oh, the bridge is falling down,' and people actually believed that the best thing for this bridge would be to tear it down and eliminate it and not save it. And probably the hardest part of this project in the beginning was making people understand that it's a great structure, it shouldn't be torn down, and that it is a doable project.
"This bridge, when it was built, was one of the greatest structures built in the 19th century, and it literally was built to last forever. And it was overbuilt actually so that it's not your ordinary type of bridge that is built nowadays where you have to constantly repair it and replace it, and do a lot of structural work. It's a great structure, and it was educating the public to that, and then also to the fact that it is a great thing to be able to walk out over the river and enjoy the view."
The Walkway Over the Hudson opened on October 3, 2009, and was an immediate success, visited by nearly 40,000 people from across America on its first weekend.
