For generations, public parks have embodied a simple democratic ideal: protected landscapes held in common, open to anyone willing to lace up a pair of boots and head outside. But for many New Yorkers, that promise has always come with an asterisk. If the trail is too steep, the overlook reachable only by stairs, or the information about accessible facilities buried in an obscure webpage, “open to everyone” can become more aspiration than reality.
That is the challenge the Palisades Parks Conservancy hopes to address as it works with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission across 29 parks and historic sites stretching from Rockland County through the western Hudson Valley. Together, those parks welcome roughly nine million visitors each year, yet an estimated 26 percent of New Yorkers live with some form of disability—a reminder that accessibility is not a niche concern but a mainstream public issue.
“When we’re talking about bringing people to the parks, we’re not talking about numbers necessarily,” says executive director Remy Schwartz. “We’re talking about expanding audiences and bringing people in that might not otherwise come to the park—whether it’s knowledge, physical barriers, transportation barriers, accessibility barriers, cost. It’s a long list of things.”
The shift is subtle but significant. Rather than viewing accessibility primarily through the lens of legal compliance—installing ramps, widening doorways, checking boxes—the Conservancy sees it as rethinking who parks are designed to serve. “When people hear accessibility, they think wheelchair ramps,” Schwartz says. “It can’t be monolithic.”
That broader definition includes visitors who are blind or have low vision, people with cognitive disabilities, autistic visitors, older adults using walkers, families pushing strollers, and anyone who benefits from better information about what they’ll encounter before setting foot on a trail. The Conservancy has even explored audio-guided trail experiences that would allow blind visitors to engage with landscapes through sound and description rather than sweeping vistas alone.
Across the country, park agencies have increasingly embraced that wider understanding of accessibility. The National Park Service, for example, has expanded accessible trails, overlooks, and visitor facilities while promoting universal design principles. In New York, the state’s accessibility initiatives include the Autism Nature Trail at Letchworth State Park, a sensory-friendly trail system designed for visitors of varying abilities and often cited as a model for inclusive outdoor recreation.
Closer to home, the Conservancy’s most visible project sits atop Bear Mountain State Park. This summer, the organization will dedicate a wheelchair-accessible viewing platform honoring donor Nancy Perkins, whose family helped shape the early history of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. Although Perkins Memorial Tower offers one of the Hudson Valley’s iconic panoramas, its five flights of stairs have long placed that experience beyond the reach of many visitors. The new platform provides sweeping views of its own, alongside accessible parking and improvements to the nearby All Persons Trail, an approximately 1.2-mile accessible loop that connects visitors to a section of the Appalachian Trail.
For Schwartz, projects like this illustrate that accessibility and conservation need not be competing values. “We’re not putting an asphalt path through the middle of the forest,” he says. “It’s crushed gravel. It looks very much like the quintessential hiking trail.”
The Conservancy’s work extends beyond infrastructure. At Rockland Lake State Park, it has partnered with Achilles International, a nonprofit that provides adaptive athletic opportunities for people with disabilities, to launch weekly adaptive workouts, bringing together volunteers and athletes with disabilities for guided runs, handcycling, and other outdoor recreation. On July 26, marking the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Conservancy will host its second annual community picnic and swim at Lake Welch in Harriman State Park alongside Achilles, the Wounded Warrior Project, and Helen Hayes Hospital in West Haverstraw. The event is designed less as a special program than as an invitation to participate in a quintessential Hudson Valley summer afternoon.
“We’re trying to make sure people know the park is specifically catering to this population,” Schwartz says.
Some of the biggest barriers, however, aren’t physical at all. While preparing for accessibility initiatives, Conservancy staff reviewed the New York State Parks website and found that information about accessible facilities was often difficult to locate or too sparse to be useful.
“If you’re a hunter or a dog owner, this website is way more informative for you than if you’re someone with a disability,” Schwartz says. “The information is a big piece of it.”
He also points to the bureaucracy surrounding New York’s Access Pass program, which provides free park access for eligible visitors with disabilities but requires medical documentation and periodic renewal. While emphasizing that he sees these programs as important steps forward, Schwartz believes they could be simpler and more welcoming.
“I’m super glad they exist,” he says. “I’m not trying to make perfect the enemy of the good. But I do think we have a responsibility to say, ‘Let’s do better.'”
More projects are already on the horizon, including an accessible boardwalk at Iona Island Marsh and a new ADA-compliant swimming area at Sojourner Truth State Park in Kingston. Schwartz hopes accessibility will eventually become as routine a part of park planning as environmental review is today—not an add-on, but an expectation.
The broader question reaches beyond any single trail or overlook. Outdoor recreation has become central to the Hudson Valley’s identity. We celebrate new rail trails, restored fire towers, scenic overlooks, swimming holes, and mountain summits. As those investments continue, the measure of success will not simply be how many people visit these landscapes, but how many people can truly experience them.
The ideal of public land has never been that nature belongs only to the fit or the fearless. It belongs to everyone. Making that promise real may be one of the most consequential conservation projects of all.
