The Taconic State Parkway (often called the Taconic or the TSP) is a limited-access parkway between Kensico Dam and Chatham, the longest in the U.S. state of New York. It follows a generally north–south route midway between the Hudson River and the Connecticut and Massachusetts state lines, much of its upper section along the westernmost flank of the Taconic Mountains. It is open only to passenger vehicles, as with other parkways in New York, and maintained by the state Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), the fourth agency to have that responsibility.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had long envisioned a scenic road through the eastern Hudson Valley, was instrumental in making it a reality as a way to provide access to existing and planned state parks in the region. Its winding, hilly route was designed by landscape architect Gilmore Clarke to offer scenic vistas of the Hudson Highlands, Catskills and Taconic regions. The bridges and now-closed service areas were designed to be aesthetically pleasing. It has been praised for the beauty of not only the surrounding landscape and views it offers, but the way the road itself integrates with and presents them.
It was completed in its present form in the early 1960s. In 2005, the entire highway, including its supporting structures, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its historic importance in the development of parkways in the 20th century, and Roosevelt's role in creating it. It is the second-longest continuous road listed on the Register after Virginia's Skyline Drive, and the longest limited-access highway.The next longest is the Baltimore–Washington Parkway at .
The parkway continues to provide access to several state parks, including Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park. It has also become an important regional artery, one of the primary routes to northern New England and the Capital Region of New York from the Hudson Valley, New York City and Long Island. The southern sections, particularly in Westchester County, have become a commuter route into the city for residents who moved into towns that became suburbanized as a result of the parkway. The state and regional transportation planners have worked to adapt to this change since the 1940s.
Route description
The Taconic's character changes with its surroundings. In the busy suburbs of its first few miles, it is a narrow at-grade roadway, paralleling a commuter rail line through a small downtown. Soon after that, it becomes a wide divided highway, with median strips and gentle turn radii similar to an Interstate Highway carrying much commuter traffic.
In the Hudson Highlands, it narrows again as it curves back and forth and climbs up and down quickly to its highest point. When the terrain levels out again, it widens and begins to assume its scenic character in a growing, exurban area with at-grade intersections. Its northernmost section, located on the ridges between the Hudson Valley and the Taconic Mountains along the state borders to the east, offers mountain and hilltop vistas as the road itself continues to curve gently through bucolic surroundings. This winding route contributes to its length, which makes the Taconic New York State's longest parkway.
Westchester County
The Taconic begins at Kensico Circle, just south of Kensico Dam, in the town of North Castle, also the northern terminus of the Bronx River Parkway. The roadway here is a narrow, four-lane expressway. It curves northwest to a traffic light at Cleveland Street in the hamlet of Valhalla. The Valhalla station on Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line is on the west side, with the downtown area on the east. It is the only densely developed community the road goes through rather than near.
After crossing under the stone arch bridge carrying Legion Drive over the parkway, the first of many such rustic overpasses, the Taconic begins a long section going past Gate of Heaven Cemetery and paralleling the railroad tracks past the small Mount Pleasant Metro-North train station, built to allow access to the surrounding cemetery of that name. The road then crosses over the train line into a wooded area where the two roadways split wide apart, merging with the Sprain Brook Parkway.
At the merge, the Taconic becomes a wider, six-lane freeway. For the remainder of Westchester County, the Taconic has been rebuilt, widened, and modernized to meet the needs of commuter growth, bearing little resemblance to its original design. A thousand feet () to the north, after a small interchange with NY 141, a three-level stack interchange allows access to the Saw Mill River Parkway northbound (and southbound from the southbound lanes). North of the interchange power lines and Saw Mill River Road (New York State Route 9A or NY 9A and NY 100) on the west parallel the parkway past undeveloped Graham Hills County Park. The next exit, at Bedford Road (NY 117), serves Pleasantville to the east. Just north of it, a short fork allows traffic to divert to NY 9A and 100, which split away toward Ossining.
The Taconic continues north through a minimally developed area of low hills, past another exit serving Pleasantville, and then across another town line into New Castle. Route 100 returns to parallel the highway on the west again, then joins NY 133 at the next exit, serving Ossining and Millwood. About a half mile () north of that exit, northbound traffic can also exit, and southbound traffic enters, at Pines Bridge Road.
The roadways grow far apart over the next mile before coming together again at the NY 134 exit, as Turkey Mountain, one of the Manhattan Hills, looms ahead.. "From the highest point in Putnam County, where it achieves an elevation of nearly ...." The Taconic then enters Yorktown, the last town along the Taconic in Westchester County, and split again until they are apart, with neighborhoods and houses between them, to the two bridges over New Croton Reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system. Once on the other side, in the town of Yorktown, they converge again to their previous width. The next exit, at Underhill Avenue, provides access to downtown Yorktown and the reservoir.
Past the Baldwin Road exit a half mile () north of Underhill, the Taconic curves westward along the south side of Mohansic Lake. When the road returns to a northerly course, an exit allows entrance to Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park. It is followed by the Crompond Road (U.S. Route 202 or US 202 and NY 35) exit, which serves Peekskill to the west as well as Yorktown. Just beyond it, the Bear Mountain State Parkway, a legacy of the Taconic's original planned route and purpose, leaves to the west as the road drops into a wide valley carved by a tributary of the Hudson, the first place where the road begins to respond to the increasing relief of the landscape.
The Taconic then passes through undeveloped woods, part of another local park, and under a footbridge carrying a hiking trail. Curving northeast, the exits for NY 132 and US 6 (recently improved), with residences on either side of the parkway, herald Shrub Oak and Jefferson Valley. A short distance past that exit, the parkway crosses into Putnam County.
Putnam County
The road narrows to a four-lane divided highway as it reaches the county line in the town of Putnam Valley, with the shoulders replaced by soft curbs, in preparation for the rugged terrain of the next . From this point north, the original design of the Taconic is still intact for the most part, aside from safety improvements such as the removal of almost all at-grade intersections. Curves become sharper, with the widest having a radius of . It remains generally level for the first , past the Bryant Pond Road exit serving Mahopac. The land around the road is heavily wooded and less developed than in Westchester.
to the north, the road begins to descend in alongside a steep ridge, narrowing to less than , with a high stone retaining wall along the east side, to Peekskill Hollow Creek and the exit for the similarly named road, briefly entering the town of Carmel in the process. It starts to climb again just past the exit, and to the north it goes into an S-curved section with both segments having extremely narrow radii. The Taconic moves to the east in the process then resumes its roughly northward ascent up the Roaring Creek valley into Clarence Fahnestock State Park. For the next it crosses this protected area of the eastern Hudson Highlands, with no development visible from the highway.
The roadways begin to separate as the parkway's ascent continues through heavily wooded terrain past rocky cliffs and outcrops between two lakes. Next to a now-closed overlook on the eastern side, with the two roadways apart in the densely wooded country. Signs on both roadways mark the Taconic's highest elevation, almost above sea level.
A short distance beyond that, a stone bridge marks the NY 301 exit that serves as the main access to the state park, and the bathing area and hiking trails at nearby Canopus Lake. The parkway begins to descend again, entering its last Putnam County town, Kent. It bends east again, and within it crosses into Dutchess County.
Dutchess County
Continuing its easterly slant, the Taconic starts leveling out in Dutchess County, the largest county segment of any of the four counties along the road, entering the town of East Fishkill. Just south of the Miller Hill Road exit, the first in the county, the road widens, with grassy slopes on its east side. At this point the hills farther north are visible in the distance, and the valley to the west, between Hosner and Shenandoah mountains, opens up occasional scenic vistas to the west.
A grade crossing with a flashing overhead warning beacon was replaced in 2000 by a grade-separated exit, making the Appalachian Trail's crossing here less hazardous. The Taconic levels off into a narrow section bearing due northeast along Hosner Mountain's steep west slope, with stone walls on either side. This ends after a mile with the Interstate 84 (I-84) interchange.
North of the Interstate Highway, the parkway bends to the northwest and starts to assume the character it retains through most of Dutchess County, with a wider, intermittently cleared median and gentler turns (their radii reaching almost , more than twice that of the widest curve in Putnam County), taking it through the now lower hills. There are still no shoulders. A closed rest area sits in the median between I-84 and the NY 52 exit farther north.
The road then bends back toward the northeast, narrowing again through some wooded stretches over the next few miles to the Beekman Road (County Route 9 or CR 9) exit. This area, rural and agricultural when the highway was built, has become more developed in the last decades, with residential subdivisions and golf courses replacing the silos and haystacks as landmarks off the road.
A long curve back to the northwest again takes the Taconic to the first of its two interchanges with NY 82, at Arthursburg. Almost a mile to its north, the Arthursburg Road at-grade crossing was closed, and a southbound off-ramp and on-ramp were built. The road bends back north into the town of LaGrange to the next exit a half-mile () beyond, at Noxon Road (CR 21), a new exit accessible only to northbound traffic via an off-ramp.
The road widens through a wooded area and then narrows past another service area just before Todd Hill Road. The road drops to cross a creek, then rises again to the NY 55 exit, one of two roads serving the city of Poughkeepsie to the west, near Freedom Plains. Its slow undulation with the landscape continues past the now closed Skidmore Road grade crossing as it heads due north into the town of Pleasant Valley and the less developed half of Dutchess County.