Huntington History

Starting in the 1960s, as rail lines were being abandoned, efforts were made to convert those lines into hiking and biking paths. The movement has grown over the decades thanks to federal legislation enacted in 1983. Today, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy reports there are over 2,000 rail trails, covering over 24,000 miles in the United States. But that total does not include two former rail rights of way that are now trails in (or near) the Town of Huntington.

The first of these trails is not actually in the Town of Huntington. It is just over the County line in the Town of Oyster Bay. And trains never rolled down tracks there. That right of way traces its origin to the 1850s. If things had gone according to plan, Cold Spring Harbor would have its own train station.  As it is, the station called “Cold Spring Harbor” is actually in West Hills.

When originally built in the 1840s, the Long Island Rail Road provided a link between Brooklyn and Boston.  Trains would leave Brooklyn every day, except Sunday, and about four hours later arrive in Greenport on the North Fork where passengers and freight would transfer to steamboats to take them to Connecticut to continue their journey to Boston by train.

This arrangement bypassed the villages along the north shore.  It soon became apparent that the rail road’s financial success depended on providing service to those towns.   In 1853, at the height of Cold Spring Harbor’s whaling activities and under the leadership of the Jones family, the Hicksville and Cold Spring Branch Railroad was incorporated to provide train service to our village.  The separately owned line would be leased to the Long Island Rail Road.  The new branch line reached Syosset the following year.  

Before the Civil War, a right of way was cleared and graded along the west side of the valley south of St. John’s church.  Grading was completed as far south as Stillwell Lane when the outbreak of war interrupted the work.  

After the war, The Long Island Rail Road decided to extend the line to Huntington.  Disputes over the purchase price for land in Huntington led the Rail Road to locate the line a mile and a half south of Huntington—and also Cold Spring Harbor.

The “Cold Spring Harbor” station was originally west of Avery Road in Woodbury; in 1903 it was moved to its current location.

While no trains run to the head of the harbor, hikers can walk the right of way that was cleared almost 170 years ago.  The Nassau-Suffolk Greenbelt Trail, which starts next to the Cold Spring Harbor Library, crosses over Harbor Road about 1500 yards south of Lawrence Hill Road.  After running along the stream, the trail leads uphill to the unused rail road right of way.  Hikers walk through a narrow ravine dug out through the hillside and then over a narrow plateau created with the dug-out dirt.  The quiet beauty of the valley is never interrupted by the sound of a rumbling train.

The second rail trail did see active train use. When the Long Island Rail Road by-passed Cold Spring Harbor and Huntington villages in 1867, it also by passed Centerport. Like Huntington Station, the Centerport station was located well south of its namesake hamlet. Both stations grew to become independent and vibrant communities–Huntington Station and Greenlawn.

Further east, the rail line terminated at the intersection of Route 25A and Church Street, a mile from Northport’s Main Street, which is closer than the stations for Cold Spring Harbor, Huntington, and Greenlawn are from their respective downtowns. When the railroad was extended further east to Port Jefferson, a second Northport station was built at Larkfield Road in 1873 The line to the old Northport station became a spur. Passengers used both stations until 1899 when passenger service on the spur was discontinued. The spur continued to be used for freight until 1978. The rails were dismantled in 1985.

The abandoned line remained unused until the Town of Huntington entered into a ten year license agreement with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2008. In 2017, that agreement was extended on a month to month basis.

The Northport Rail Trail runs 0.65 miles from Laurel Hill Road to a point on the west side of Elwood Road 250 yards south of Route 25A. The old rail line east of Elwood Road is now a car wash with a very long driveway.