A Paean To The Parkway
By Cynthia Owen Philip

I've been driving the Taconic State Parkway for fifty years. And I still love it. The way it follows what is essentially a straight north south line while twisting and turning and upping and downing to accommodate the ever-varying topography never ceases to thrill me. I particularly like the double and triple--and quadruple?--S-turns going north into the highlands of Putnam County. You really have to drive them. Going south I don't like them at all. I guess it's because I'm an uphill "I think I can, think I can, know I can" rather than a roller coaster sort of person. I must confess though that I'm entirely pleasured by the great downward swoop as you enter Dutchess County. The fields and mountains that suddenly appear remind me of the backgrounds in Italian renaissance portraits. Only better because it's my country.

I love the parkway, too, because nowhere is the change of seasons more marked. In winter, the landscape seems wide open. You can see through the bordering trees to the slumbering fields. The myriad stone walls of the hardscrabble country bespeak the immense effort of early settlers to wrest a living from that unforgiving ground. I'll never forget the lowering winter sun casting a golden halo around each and every proud trunk of an old stand of trees north of Baird State Park, their purple shadows etched in the white snow. And how can I describe the fairyland transformation on a sunny morning just after an ice storm, beyond saying it takes my breath away.

Then, spring approaches and the whole countryside is netted in a haze of lavender gray buds about to burst into tender green. The fields push up early grain or hay. In May there's dogwood, especially resplendent last year. In the highlands, it's followed by sweeps of hardy mountain laurel. Everywhere along the verge woodchucks fatten on fresh clover.

The fields and mountains that suddenly appear remind me of the backgrounds in Italian renaissance portraits. Only better because it's my country.

In summer the lanes are closed in by a luxuriance of leaves, more now that second growth trees have taken root than when the parkway was first designed. You don't even have to look closely to see what astonishing number of species abound. They grow a darker, duller green as the hot season takes over. Some fall prey to blight. Great clumps of locusts were brown and frizzled by this August. But, I remind myself, they're a weed tree. I believe they will survive.

Autumn brings fiery foliage, a blaze of gold, scarlet, and orange, intermingled with the pale yellow of birch and beech. Heaven with all the trumpets blowing. Slowly the leaves dry and swirl down. Before you know it, we're back again to the joys of winter.

I also find the parkway full of surprises. There's an ancient graveyard on the east side below the Red Hook turn. Beneath the bridge over the Roeliff Jansen Kill at Jackson Corners is an equally ancient mill now converted into a spiffy residence. Just recently someone has started clearing a swale south of the Bull's Head turn, for what purpose who can tell. The myriad stumps they've left stand like mysterious sentinels four or five feet high.

The names of the crossways never cease to intrigue me--Pudding, Hibernia, Pumpkin, Nine Partners, Bulls Head, Wilbur Flats. Why, how and when? And then there are the birds of the air--the lone herons and congregations of geese, the chattering crows and cruising hawks--and the wild flowers--butter and eggs, Queen Anne's lace, loosestrife, daisies and goldenrod. The scattered gnarled apple trees dotting the median, relics of orchards split in two by the Parkway, never fail to give my heart a pang.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about my love affair with the parkway is that, intimate though it be, I am in fact experiencing it in just the way the early designers wished me to. Back in 1924, when the parkway was first envisioned, the goal, according to historic preservation analyst Kathleen LaFrank, was to make a unified and coherent road that would take pleasure drivers from New York City into the sparsely settled northerly counties for their recreation, instruction and health. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the parkway's first chairman, and did much to set the tone. He backed up the designers' desire that it be part of the surrounding countryside, providing ample views of beloved Hudson Valley farms and of the Catskills and Berkshires beyond. His support ensured that native trees and shrubs would be preserved or prudently planted to enhance the natural landscape. He was also adamant that the service stations be constructed in the vernacular style and that the bridges be faced with local stone. Even when he became first state governor, then president of the United States, his efforts on behalf of the parkway never let up. Through a wide circle of property-owning residents, he garnered large donations of the land through which it runs.

During Roosevelt's lifetime the parkway extended from Hawthorne Circle in northern Westchester County to Freedom Plains (Route 55) in Dutchess County. By 1949 it had reached Layfayetteville (Route 199.) By 1963, the final segment, with long views across the spectacular farmland of Columbia County, to the Berkshire spur of the New York State Thruway, was completed. What is astonishing is that the original concept held fast through close to forty years, although state-of-the-art construction methods were always used.

Today the parkway faces a new set of challenges. The number of cars in a hurry is increasing by leaps and bounds. Peaks occur at the beginning and end of the workday and on weekend evenings, Fridays north, Sundays south. The problem is how to make the parkway safer for higher volumes and speeds. Presently it's being addressed by cutting out near-together access points and by eliminating grade crossings on those that remain. The present median closings are a first step in that direction.

At the same time design director Phil Crocker and cultural resource coordinator Mike George both assured me that every effort is being made to adhere to the original idea of a beautiful and coherent roadway. Shoulders have already been widened with no real aesthetic impairment, they pointed out. And the rebuilding of the descent into Dutchess County, past top-ranking accident spot Miller Hill Road, has extended that magnificent view. I do miss the old Hawthorne circle, but probably for nostalgic reasons, for I certainly do not miss the back-ups that were routine before the up-to-date interchange was built. When it comes to the giant Peekskill reconstruction, and the closing of the gas, coke and toilet stop north of the Danbury/Newburgh crossing, however, woe is me!

Since New York State has declared the parkway eligible for the National Register, public meetings have been and will continue to be held at which users and local residents can voice their opinions as to future improvements. Thus, I leave you with just one message. Stay alert to proposed changes. When the time comes, write local and state officials. Attend public meetings. The Taconic State Parkway is too great a treasure to let it become a stereotypical commuting thoroughfare.

Photo by John Gass. Courtesy NYS Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation, Taconic Region.