Ashokan Rail Trail

The Ashokan Rail Trail is located on the north side of Ashokan Reservoir and Esopus Creek in the towns of Hurley and Olive, New York, United States. It is an 11.5-mile-long (18.5 km) pathway along the former route of the Ulster and Delaware Railroad (U&D) between West Hurley and Boiceville. It was opened partially in 2019 and fully in 2020, allowing the general public recreational access to that land for the first time in over a century, since New York City built the reservoir for its water supply system.

After Conrail discontinued freight service along the tracks in 1976, they were used by the Catskill Mountain Railroad (CMRR) for excursion trains along that portion of the U&D line it owned between Kingston and Phoenicia, under a lease from Ulster County, which had acquired them from the bankrupt Penn Central. The CMRR was never able to fully rehabilitate the tracks as the lease required, and damage caused by Hurricane Irene in 2011 was beyond its ability to repair, and in 2017 Ulster County terminated the railroad's lease on section where the rail trail is now, replacing the damaged Boiceville Trestle in the process with a newer, flood-resistant structure.

Discussions continue over plans to connect the rail trail to longer regional trails in the state's Empire State Trail network. The county has yet to designate a use for the 1.7-mile (2.7 km) section of the rail line just east of the West Hurley trailhead in the towns of Woodstock and Kingston. The CMRR has advocated for rail-with-trail on the segment and has applied for a permit to build a station complex to serve the rail trail. Local conservationists have advocated for an extension of the rail trail on that section, arguing that environmental and engineering issues make the rail-with-trail option more costly than the railroad estimates. Discussions of the issue have become increasingly divisive.