Business View Civil and Municipal | Volume 2, Issue 7

55 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 2, ISSUE 7 TOWN OF LLOYD , NEW YORK strawberries, and apple orchards in addition to the variety of products that were manufactured in town. That was back then. Now, we have the Walkway Over the Hudson, which is a connector across the Hudson River and a section, in my opinion, of the extension of the Empire State Trail.” Built as a double-track, steel cantilever railroad bridge that was completed in 1889, the original Walkway formed part of the Maybrook Railroad Line of the New Haven Railroad. At the time of its opening, it was the longest and highest railroad bridge in the world, stretching 1.28 miles long and soaring 212 feet high to the open sky. “At the height of the coal industry, the bridge actually helped develop the whole East Coast,” Glasner says. “They shipped a lot of goods by rail from Pennsylvania out west or going east across the river and then up to Boston and other industrial centers.” And then, fatefully, on May 8, 1974, a fire started by a spark from a train’s brakes devastated the tracks after a water line meant to help fight fires on the bridge failed. “It destroyed the railroad use of the bridge,” Glasner confirms. “But thanks to the vision of some very determined individuals, it was redeveloped and opened as a pedestrian walkway and it’s now a State Historic Park.” The bridge was designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2009. “Several years ago, the Town of Lloyd created its own rail trail, when rail trails were still kind of unknown,” picks up Town Supervisor Fred Pizzuto. “It was just kind of sacrosanct to the area. Now it ends at the West Shore, where the railroad bridge anchors into Ulster County. It’s now part of New York’s Empire State Trail, which runs from one end of the state to the other. The fortunate piece that we get to enjoy is that we have basically untold acres of land to develop into visitor parking, unlike where the bridge comes out on the east side in Poughkeepsie.