PUT-IN:  The most popular put-in is in Veterans' Memorial Park.  There is a ramp for car-top boats and lots of parking.

Several dead-end streets also allow access to the river.  Try the end of Gesner Avenue.

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ROUTES: Trips here can take you south under the Tappan Zee Bridge to  Piermont and its marsh or across to Tarrytown and the Lighthouse at Sleepy Hollow.  North takes you to Nyack Beach, Haverstraw and Stony Point.  If you choose to cross the Hudson, the shipping channel is on the east side.  Look for the high section of the Tappan Zee Bridge as well as the usual marker buoys, but pleasure boats frequent the entire area so take care to watch at all times. 

When you put-in here, you are paddling through some interesting history.  The Nyack Turnpike (now Route 59) was an important farm-to-market road built over several years in the early 1800's.  This road helped farmers bring their crops over-land to this spot where they were put on boats and moved along the Hudson to their final destinations.  The bay you are paddling was one of the most important harbors in Rockland at one time. 

As you look up and down the Hudson from this spot, you can see that there is a natural break here in the ridge called the Palisades that borders this side of the River.  For this reason, the Native Americans of the area used this land as an important riverside settlement during the warmer months. 

Interesting Fact:  The Nyack never lived here!  The Nyack are a group of Native Americans who lived in what is now Brooklyn.  As they were forced to leave their homelands by white settlers, they may have stopped for a brief time in this spot.  Though the town was named for them, they never stayed for long, if they stayed at all.  The original inhabitants of this area were a group of Lenni-Lenape called the Tappans, for whom the sea, or zee, was named by the Dutch.

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