Long Dock Beacon

Long Dock is a regional park of 23 acres located sixty miles north of New York City within the historic Hudson Highlands. Jutting 1,000 feet out into the broad Hudson River estuary, the site is at once a serene point of reflective beauty and a dramatically exposed peninsula that must survive the forces of one hundred miles of upstream river. The site is entirely made land, originating in the 1820s as a shipping pier. The site later expanded to become a ferry terminal for railroad cars and then for many decades a gasoline and fuel depot. When a regional land trust acquired the site in 2000, the site was derelict, contaminated, overgrown, and regularly inundated — an emblem of the region’s long dysfunctional relationship with the Hudson River.

The park was achieved in four distinct phases, from 2004 until 2019, while under remediation. Phase one included a boardwalk and site-specific work by sculptor George Trakas, in 2009. One year later, Peter J. Sharpe Park opened with an arts and environmental education center and a new pavilion for kayak storage and rentals.

In 2011, during the third phase of construction, storm surge from Hurricane Irene flooded the entire site for several days; with the working wetlands and protective landform buttresses already in place, but not yet completed, the park landscape survived its most difficult test and proved its mettle. From the meadows that cover the buttresses and the newly planted wetlands, which have matured now for almost a decade, Long Dock draws upon the benefits of a functioning constructed wetland and intertidal ecosystem, for the first time in its history. Having now survived three major hurricanes, it is this robust ecological function that positions Long Dock as an important model of contemporary resilient green infrastructure. 

While the southerly side of Long Dock presents a wild riparian parkland, the north shore is a crisp, ordered plaza for events and communal gatherings. The north shore improvements, concluded in 2019, following almost two decades of in situ remediation and capping, created a generous public space framed by trees, landform, and a series of picnic pavilions. Here the promise of Long Dock is fulfilled: creating the capacity to reconnect Americans to the challenging history and promising future of the Hudson River.