Trains & Trolleys at Kingston Point Park

Hudson River Maritime Museum Collection

Summer visitors at Kingston Point Park wait for a Hudson River Day Line steamer to come into port and pick them up for their journey home. The train in the background is part of the Ulster & Delaware Railroad, and is back from the Catskills, c. 1905.  The U&D Railroad served as the Gateway to the Catskills transporting visitors from the Hudson River waterfront to summer resorts in the cooler Catskill Mountains. 

Donald C. Ringwald Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum

Trolley terminal at Kingston Point Park, ca. 1906. Designed by noted architect, Downing Vaux, Kingston Point Park opened in 1897. The park was financed by S.D. Coykendall, son-in-law of founder Thomas Cornell and second president of the Cornell Steamboat Company.  By the 1890s the Cornell Company transportation holdings included rail as well as boats. The Ulster & Delaware Railroad extended from Kingston Point Park west into the Catskills. The Kingston City trolley system ran throughout the city and out to Kingston Point. Both rail systems were owned by the Cornell company. The park was built to provide a landing for the Hudson River Day Line and its thousands of passengers who could spend a day there or take the Ulster & Delaware Railroad from the park up to the Catskills.  Before the steamboat landing at Kingston Point was built, large steamers docked across the Hudson River at Rhinecliff. Passengers took the Kingston-Rhinecliff ferry, also controlled at the time by the Cornell Steamboat Company, to reach Kingston. 

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