AboutTown

You might think the newly opened span in Rosendale is just a junior act following Walkway Over the Hudson. You would be wrong.

Postcard circa 1909 of Rosendale Trestle.

The Wallkill Valley Rail Trail (WVRT) bridge over the Rondout Creek is an intimate experience with different construction and a very different history running its course. There is much to see and admire in this latest jewel in the necklace of Ulster County attractions.

Known as the “Rosendale trestle,” it is a continuous truss railroad bridge 940’ long sitting at the western edge of the village Rosendale. Running 150’ above the Rondout Creek, Route 213, and the former Delaware & Hudson Canal, it kisses Jopphenbergh “mountain,” site of one of the luckiest cement mining stories on record. When the men mining it went outside to eat, the mine collapsed. The trestle is also one of the very few curved rail trestles, a feature that can be appreciated in the postcard below.

Postcard postmarked 1913 showing Lawrenceville. Many of the houses are still with us and visible from the trestle.

When it opened to rail traffic on April 6, 1872, the Rosendale trestle was the highest span bridge in the United States. It has been reinforced many times in its history and concern for its structural integrity (given the loads carried by modern trains) was cited as a major reason Conrail closed the line in 1977. The trestle was part of the rail line that ran through Gardiner and New Paltz and became the WVRT.

Like Walkway Over The Hudson after its fire on May 8, 1974, the Rosendale bridge owners sold it for one dollar to a private businessman who was unsuccessful in generating the revenue to pay taxes on it. For a brief time, bungee jumping bounced around there.

The Rosendale trestle was seized by the county for taxes and later renovated part way across as a pedestrian walkway. It was closed, substantially improved and reopened to the public this past June. It is one of two rail bridges the WVRT has rescued from the scrap heap. The WVRT crosses Springtown Road near the other bridge which spans the Wallkill River.

2013 photo showing new railing and Joppenbergh Mountain.

Also like Walkway, the Rosendale trestle has substantial railings that cradle you and yours in safety, actually and psychologically. Looking down on buildings, roads, trees, water, and a generous helping of history is only part of this structure’s charm. Its history is Ulster County’s. Its cargo trains carried agricultural products from Ulster’s interior to hubs for shipping to major population centers. The engineers of those trains looked down on cement mines, lime kilns, a busy canal and its tow path, a village boasting more than 5,000 residents, bars on every block, hotels, and boarding houses. Rosendale jumped way before bungees.

The trestle was a 1.5 million dollar project overseen by the Wallkill Valley Land Trust and The Open Space Institute. Bob Anderberg of Open Space and Wallkill Valley Land Trust Executive Director, Christine DeBoer, have done a stellar job with this project and are to be thanked, along with the hundreds of volunteers who worked to bring the beautiful addition to Ulster County back “on line.”

2009 photo looking east toward Rosendale.

2009 photo looking west toward High Falls, a view of the area known as Lawrenceville.