From Grassroots to Groundbreaking

The idea for the Fjord Trail didn't start in a design studio. It started with residents of Cold Spring and Philipstown talking about a genuine safety problem: growing numbers of hikers walking the shoulder of Route 9D, a 55-mile-per-hour highway, to reach Breakneck Ridge. Neighbors who watched the traffic every day saw it as an accident waiting to happen.

Early conversations focused on practical fixes squeezed into existing roadway and village streets. But the project sits at a genuinely complex intersection - the Hudson River, state parkland, a highway, a commuter rail line, and two thriving communities - and practical fixes alone couldn't address it. That complexity pulled in regional and state agencies, and the scope grew.

“It started with neighbors worried about a highway. It became a plan nineteen partners believed in.”

In partnership with New York State Parks, a coalition of local nonprofits and municipal leaders began to see a larger opportunity: not a patch for one dangerous stretch of highway, but a 7.5-mile linear park connecting the Village of Cold Spring to the City of Beacon - one that could connect people to the Hudson's edge, to the region's natural and cultural history, and to each other.

With early philanthropic support from the late Dr. Kathryn W. Davis, and design input from a Steering Committee of nineteen public and nonprofit partners, that vision became the plan HHFT works from today. In 2020, Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, Inc. was formed as a nonprofit subsidiary of Scenic Hudson, Inc. to implement it - and to operate and maintain the trail, in close collaboration with New York State Parks Taconic Region staff, once it's built.

The Visitor Center planned for the historic Dutchess Manor site will eventually serve as HHFT's operational home base. Until then, the organization's work continues section by section - the same incremental, coalition-built approach that got the project this far.