History, Natural History & the Arts
The Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks) has opened the new Sentry Bridge at Watkins Glen State Park, restoring full access to the renowned Gorge and Southern Rim Trails.
The bridge reconnects visitors to the park’s iconic waterfalls, overlooks and trail network in one of New York’s most visited parks. [Read more…] about New Watkins Glen State Park Sentry Bridge Installed
As Rick Cotton retires as the latest in a long line of executive directors of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, it’s worth thinking about the original, lurching journey to create the agency a century ago.
The Port Authority, which last year recorded gross operating revenues of almost $7 billion on assets of more than $63 billion, oversees many of New York City’s bridges, tunnels, marine terminals, and airports and a 1,500-square-mile port district. It was created in 1921 via a two-state compact ratified by Congress. That launch had not been assured, nor was getting there smooth. [Read more…] about NYC Mayor John Hylan and the Fight to Create the Port Authority
The most traveled of the New York State Bridge Authority’s bridges, the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge carries more than 25 million crossings a year on Interstate 84.
In February 1951, NYS Assembly Majority Leader Lee B. Mailler of Cornwall introduced a bill calling for test borings to be conducted for a bridge over the Hudson River between Beacon and Newburgh. [Read more…] about The Newburgh-Beacon Bridge: A History & Engineering Primer
What follows is a booklet by Irene E. Wegle, Corresponding Secretary of The Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands from the November 2, 1963 opening of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge.
The Newburgh-Beacon Ferry, which has been in operation on the Hudson River between the cities of Newburgh and Beacon, is [sic, was] the oldest in the United States, having been given its franchise from Queen Anne of England in 1743. [Read more…] about The Newburgh-Beacon Ferry, 1743-1963
The Open Space Institute (OSI) has opened the Schunnemunk Meadows Trail in Orange County, a new 1.7-mile, four-season multi-use path features gently graded stone surfaces, a pedestrian bridge designed with West Point cadets, fishing access points, EV-charging stations, and stormwater improvements and serves as a gateway to Schunnemunk State Park. [Read more…] about Skunnemunk State Park Upgrades Include New Meadows Trail
This year’s 200th anniversary of the Hyde Hall covered bridge in Glimmerglass State Park near Cooperstown in Otsego County, NY, the oldest covered bridge still standing in America, is being celebrated on October 11, 2025. It’s all traceable to George Clarke (1768-1835).
Clarke, whose family property empire included tens of thousands of acres in New York, England, and Jamaica, bought land in Cooperstown in 1817. It was on and above Otsego Lake, eight miles north of Cooperstown and with a commanding, majestic view of the lake and the surrounding countryside. [Read more…] about America’s Oldest Covered Bridge Turns 200
This article was original published in the July 6, 1867 Scientific American.
Our engraving [presented here] represents this structure [the Livingston Avenue Railroad Bridge in Albany] as it appeared in March, 1866, which was shortly after its completion. [Read more…] about Albany’s Livingston Avenue Railroad Bridge: Some History & Future Plans
The Hudson River Valley Greenway has recently committed $75,000 to support a historic preservation feasibility study for the 325-foot former railroad bridge over the Wallkill River at Springtown Road in New Paltz — a crucial connector on the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail (WVRT), which is part of the Empire State Trail. [Read more…] about The Wallkill River Railroad Bridge in New Paltz
During Theodore Burr and Jonathan Baldwin’s trek in 1792-1793 from western New England to Oxford NY, they arrived via a ferry on the west bank of the Hudson River at a place called Catskill (or Kaatskill).
While Burr and Baldwin may have disembarked at a place not too far from the junction of the mighty Hudson River and the Kaatskill Creek, a 46-mile southward flowing tributary of the Hudson, with its scattering of buildings, it is possible the ferry continued to carry them upstream to a settlement then called Madison, which today is the hamlet of Leeds. [Read more…] about A History of Early Bridges Over Catskill Creek
Although there are gaps in the available historical record concerning Theodore Burr’s 1800 bridge spanning Schoharie Creek at Esperance, there are enough tantalizing facts to encourage continuing research for documents, including drawings. [Read more…] about The Early Timber Bridge Over Schoharie Creek at Esperance
What is now New York State saw multitudes of American settlers moving inland from the Atlantic seaboard, especially those “locusts of the east” from New England. Traveling long distances overland before the 20th century was however, difficult to say the least.
In the 1600s their movement was constrained by topography, and settlements were limited to areas in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys previously inhabited or improved by Indigenous People. Some Indigenous portage trails were described by the earliest settlers as wide paths that a capable ox team and wagon could manage. [Read more…] about Early Upstate New York Roads: Some History
When Theodore Burr traveled in 1792-1793 from Litchfield, Connecticut, to Oxford in Chenango County, NY — a distance of some 200 miles — with his carpenter friend Jonathan Baldwin from neighboring Massachusetts, Burr considered himself a carpenter/millwright/housewright like his father.
As a carpenter, he had experience creating structures that would span broad open spaces using some form of a roof truss, that is, a triangular frame comprising level beams and oblique timbers jointed together. There is no record that either he, his father, or friend had ever erected a bridge before arriving in New York State. [Read more…] about An Early Truss Bridge Constructed at Oxford, NY in 1800
Into the waning decade of the 1700s, only fords, ferries, or makeshift timber bridges, all highly vulnerable to frequent destruction by ice and flood, were used to cross streams. As Americans in greater numbers began moving west to more remote parts of New York and Pennsylvania, carpenters and entrepreneurial inventors began envisioning new designs but still using posts, beams, and trestle bents for crossing narrow and slow-moving streams in order to expedite the movement of people and goods as well as to make a profit. None of these earliest timber bridges were covered with a roof and siding.
These early timber bridges were precursor structures to the arches and trusses that soon followed, making it possible to span broader streams with stronger structures, many of which heralded the arrival of the covered timber bridge era. [Read more…] about The Great Cayuga Lake Long Bridge: Beams & Trestles
At Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site you can see all three of the major phases of the Erie Canal – from the original “Clinton’s Ditch,” to the enlargements of the mid-19th century to the Barge Canal of today. You can also see Lock E-12 operated by the New York State Canal Corporation between Tribes Hill and Fort Hunter in Montgomery County, NY.
This lock has a movable dam and is one of only two which also serve as an automobile bridge. It’s known as the “James Shanahan Lock.” [Read more…] about James Shanahan: Stone Mason & Railroad and Canal Builder
As old wooden truss bridges began disappearing from the scene over the past half century, interest in them increased — how to document them, how to preserve them, and how to increase awareness of them.
One way this was accomplished by covered bridge enthusiasts was organizing groups devoted to covered bridge lore. One such group is The New York State Covered Bridge Society (NYSCBS), organized in 1966, that serves to promote, maintain, preserve, and protect, covered bridges throughout the state. [Read more…] about The New York State Covered Bridge Society
A new signature 266-foot pedestrian bridge designed and built for Ralph Wilson Park is on its way from Albany to Buffalo on the Erie Canal beginning Friday, July 5. Currently at the Port of Coeymans, near Albany, the large commercial shipment will travel on two barges and arrive on the shore of Ralph Wilson Park (the former LaSalle Park) in mid-July. [Read more…] about New Park Bridge Heading To Buffalo On The Erie Canal
New York’s first known covered bridge was built in 1807. It crossed the Neversink River in the hamlet of Bridgeville located southeast of Monticello in the Sullivan County town of Thompson.
The Bridgeville Bridge was an important link in the Newburgh-Cochecton Turnpike, a toll road running from the Hudson River to the Delaware River that was incorporated by a legislative act on February 28, 1806 that was to include a “a good and sufficient bridge across the Neversink-river.” [Read more…] about Neversink & Delaware River Covered Bridges: Some History & Design Notes
The State Assembly and State Senate have both acted to pass the New York Wildlife Crossings Act, which was sponsored by Senator Leroy Comrie and Assembly Member Robert Carroll. The bill requires the Department of Transportation (DOT) to assess roadways “in the state for potential wildlife crossings to improve wildlife habitat connectivity, reduce wildlife vehicle collisions, and increase public safety for New York motorists.” [Read more…] about NYS Legislature Passes New York Wildlife Crossings Act
Do photographs lie? Theodore Burr is credited with erecting the first timber bridge spanning the Hudson River in 1804. After the crossing dropped into the river after a fire in 1909 — more than a century later — the timber superstructure was exposed and then photographed. The oft-repeated commentary since has been that the structure was what Burr originally erected in 1804.
‘Tis a mystery, a fallacy, in many ways that can be refuted. [Read more…] about The 1804 Waterford Union Bridge: Correcting The Record
If you’re looking for a lovely spring ride, a picturesque picnic spot, and a bit of history to boot, why not visit the Copeland Covered Bridge? Located in Edinburg, in the quaint community of Beecher Hollow, this one-lane, 35-foot long bridge has the distinction of being the last remaining covered bridge in Saratoga County. [Read more…] about Copeland Covered Bridge in Saratoga County
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