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New York State Route 52
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Route information
Maintained by NYSDOT
Length	108.72 mi (174.97 km)
Existed	1930–present
Major junctions
Major intersections	NY 17 in Liberty US 209 in Ellenville I-84 in Newburgh US 9W in Newburgh US 9 in Fishkill I-84 in Fishkill Taconic in East Fishkill
Location
Country	United States
State	New York
Counties	Sullivan, Ulster, Orange, Dutchess, Putnam
Highway system
New York Highways Interstate US State Reference Parkways
← NY 51 → NY 52A

New York State Route 52 is a 108.72 mi (174.97 km)-long state highway in the southeastern part of the state of New York. It generally runs from west to east, beginning at the Pennsylvania state line at the Delaware River near Narrowsburg, crossing the Hudson River on the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, and ending in Carmel. NY 52 and NY 55, both major east-west routes of the Mid-Hudson Region, run basically parallel to each other, intersecting in downtown Liberty.

With the exception of the section overlapping Interstate 84, NY 52 is a two-lane road for its entire length, often through lightly developed rural areas. The road west of the Hudson River serves a number of small communities in the southern Catskills, while it closely parallels I-84 east of the Hudson.

Route description

Route 52 runs through distinct regions: an eastern third in a rugged, lightly-populated area from the Delaware River valley, south of the Catskills to the Shawangunk Ridge; the middle into Orange County and including the bridge and the I-84 overlap; and finally the last east of the Hudson from I-84 to the eastern terminus.

Delaware to Shawangunks

Although much of its length runs through less remote territory than NY 55, at its western end it is 52 that lies further from New York City. From the bridge at Narrowsburg it joins NY 97 briefly, strikes out into the countryside trending gradually northwards, picks up NY 17B for a short distance at Fosterdale, and it is firmly headed north.

The western half of Sullivan County is actually less developed and populated despite its flatter topography, as the summer resort industry Sullivan is known for was and is concentrated in the eastern towns of the county, closer to the Catskills. Much of the surrounding land is farms or woods. There is no direct trunk route for 52 to follow, and it overlaps several county roads (indeed, some sections are maintained by the county). Some older-style New York State Route signs, with the "NY" on top, can be seen here.

At Kenoza Lake NY 52A, 52's only suffixed subroute, goes off to the west near a historic stone bridge. A few miles later, at tiny Jeffersonville, the only incorporated village in the eastern half of the county, 52 finally bends back eastward. The roadway becomes smoother and its right-of-way wider. The trip through the hamlets of Youngsville and White Sulphur Springs to Liberty passes much more quickly than the previous section.

In Liberty, the first large town along 52, it meets up with 55 and the two even share a few blocks downtown. At the village's eastern limit, it crosses the NY 17 Quickway, exactly a hundred driving miles from the city. Beyond 17, it passes some shopping plazas, then heads out into the country again along a good quality roadway, recently repaved.

Sullivan's eastern half offers the hamlets of Loch Sheldrake and Woodbourne, both of which bustle in the summertime, particularly with Orthodox Jews from the city who have traditionally taken their families to the area for the summer. Sullivan County Community College and the two nearby state prisons keep the economy going in the off-season.

52 carries NY 42 over the Neversink River, after which it leaves northward to the end of its southern segment. Just past Woodbourne Correctional Facility, it crosses into Ulster County. The highway from there to Ellenville is largely a straight, gradual descent off the Catskill Plateau through primarily wooded and undeveloped land (a few buildings on either side of the road mark the hamlets of Dairyland and Greenfield Park), with the Bush Kill coming in on the south side as the village approaches.

At Ellenville's western boundary, 52 appears to split (see below). Once across the village, just to the east, 52 encounters its most significant terrain feature, the Shawangunk Ridge, which looms over the village. The highway turns abruptly southward at the village's eastern boundary and begins a gradual three-mile (4.8 km) climb up the ridge. This is a very scenic stretch of 52, as several overlooks on the upper portions offer sweeping views of the Catskills, and closer to it there are the range's famous brilliant cliffs. The Long Path hiking trail also leaves its aqua blazes on a stretch of the road it shares.

At the crest, near the road to Cragsmoor, 52 reaches nearly 1,500 feet (457 m) in elevation, turns again eastward, and begins an equally gradual descent.

Shawangunks to Hudson

The wooded route down the east side of the Shawangunks offers its own vistas of the land ahead — at one point, on clear days, it is possible to see all the way to the Hudson Highlands. Walker Valley is the first town encountered, at the point where the highway begins to level out again. From here several more miles of road, through more open country, brings 52 to the Shawangunk Kill bridge and the Orange County line.

Downtown Pine Bush immediately presents itself, along with what was until recently the well-developed hamlet's only traffic light, at NY 302's northern terminus. A mile later, with a Dunkin' Donuts on one side and a McDonald's on the other, the hamlet ends and countryside resumes.

There are many panoramas of the Shawangunks along the next stretch of highway, as it passes mostly open fields with a few wooded interruptions. Six miles (9.6 km) east of Pine Bush, 52 enters Walden, the largest town on it thus far, first as North Montgomery Street. This changes to South Montgomery at the Oak Street intersection, where 52 temporarily turned on to cross the Wallkill River at the Low Bridge from 2003-2005 while a new High Bridge (officially the Walden Veterans' Memorial Bridge) was being built. The new bridge, where 52 becomes Main Street, crosses the river at least 50 feet (15 m) above water level and provides a view to the waterfalls and power station just upriver, the largest impoundment of the Wallkill.

In downtown Walden, 52 meets NY 208 and is multiplexed with it for two short blocks, before resuming its eastward course. The road ahead runs through more farmlands and woodlots, across the Catskill Aqueduct and past the swampy south end of Orange Lake. In the Town of Newburgh, after crossing under the New York State Thruway, residential and commercial development becomes continuous along the road. 52 intersects NY 300 in the built-up area known as Gardnertown for an early settler, whose house is visible from the junction, and then passes through the suburban area around Algonquin and Winona lakes, both fed by Orange Lake's outlet brook, before reaching I-84.

Hudson to Carmel

52 and 84 have been gradually converging for several miles at this point, and the two merge at the interstate's Exit 8, just outside the Newburgh city limits, to cross the Hudson together via the bridge. They will continue to run close to each other for the rest of 52's route. The multiplex lasts seven miles (11.2 km), well into Dutchess County before 52 resumes its pre-bridge course at Exit 12, becoming the main street of yet another village, Fishkill. Just east of the downtown area is the major junction with US 9, and 52 through Fishkill is often heavily congested at rush hour as drivers use it as a shortcut past similarly-congested sections of I-84 from southbound 9.

East of Route 9, there is still considerable development along the road although it opens up somewhat as it passes the southern termini of NY 376 and NY 82, in Hopewell Junction and Brinckerhoff to the Taconic State Parkway junction. Traffic lessens out past the Taconic as it is no longer a major connecting route in that direction, and after Stormville and NY 216 52 once again begins to feel like a country road, winding under a high bridge carrying 84 once again and crossing the Appalachian Trail as it leaves Dutchess to enter its last county, Putnam, at the hamlet of Ludingtonville.

Here, it reaches Lake Carmel, the most populous community along its entire route, where NY 311 provides a feeder route back to 84. Passing along the shore of the eponymous lake itself, it then reaches Carmel proper, and the eastern terminus of NY 301, before itself terminating at US 6 just south of town.

History

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This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "New York State Route 52" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Route 52 between Walden and Pine Bush became renowned among UFO enthusiasts in the 1990s for sightings of supposed alien craft reverse engineered by the government and tested from nearby Stewart Air National Guard Base. Some even claimed they had been abducted here, and that aliens even lived in secret underground residences in the area.
• The section between Walden and I-84 follows the colonial-era South Plank Road. That name was used on street signs and for mail delivery until Orange County's late-1990s 9-1-1-mandated renumbering of houses.
• Guardrails had to be erected on both sides of the road south of Orange Lake in response to past accidents where drivers who might otherwise have survived perished in flooded cars.
• Before the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge was opened in 1963, 52 followed South Street across Newburgh to the ferry landing on the waterfront (a route still signed as reference route 980P). Across the river, in Beacon, it followed Main Street, now signed as Business-52 between NY 9D and the current exit.
• Across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, NY 52 once became U.S. Route 106 (now Pennsylvania Route 652). US 106 ended at the border, never entering New York.

Miscellanea

The Ellenville split

Across Ellenville, both Center and Canal streets carry 52 signage as they run parallel across the village. This results in each street being the optimum route across the village depending on the direction of travel.

When coming from the west, taking the fork onto Canal at the western boundary allows a driver to build up speed before beginning the climb up the Shawangunks. Conversely, quickly bearing onto Center at the end of that climb means not having to stop at the fork on the other side of the village.

The Walden parkway

From just west of Tin Brook to the western village line, 52 is paralleled by an older route of East Main Street that remains in use, separated by a thin median with some trees on it. The combination of that and the village parkland taking up much of the property south of the highway gives it a parkway feel as it leaves the village.

Major intersections

County	Location	Mile	Intersection	Notes
Sullivan (40.56 mi)	NY-PA border	0.00	PA 652 west	PA 652 becomes NY 52/CR 24 at the Narrowsburg Bridge over the Delaware River.
	Narrowsburg, Town of Tusten	0.69	NY 97 north	NY 97 overlap begins; CR 24 ends
	Hunts Corner, Town of Tusten	1.45	NY 97 south	NY 97 overlap ends; CR 111 begins
	Cochecton Center, Town of Cochecton	6.56	CR 115 east	CR 111 ends; CR 112 begins
	Lake Huntington, Town of Cochecton	8.80	CR 116 west	CR 112 ends; CR 113 begins
	Fosterdale, Town of Cohecton	11.09	NY 17B east; CR 114 west	NY 17B overlap begins; CR 113 ends
	Town of Cochecton	11.55	NY 17B/CR 117 west	NY 17B overlap ends
	Town of Delaware	14.85	NY 52A west
	Village of Liberty, Town of Liberty	29.82	NY 55 west	NY 55 overlap begins
		30.04	NY 55 east	NY 55 overlap ends
	Town of Liberty	31.45	NY 17	Exit 100 of NY 17
	Woodbourne, Town of Fallsburg	38.52	NY 42 south	NY 42 overlap begins
		38.79	NY 42 north	NY 42 overlap ends
Ulster (21.74 mi)	Ellenville, Town of Wawarsing	50.29	US 209
Orange (19.32 mi)	Pine Bush, Town of Crawford	62.47	NY 302 south
	Walden, Town of Montgomery	69.88	NY 208 north (Ulster Avenue)	NY 208 overlap begins
		69.94	NY 208 south (Orange Street)	NY 208 overlap ends
	Gardnertown, Town of Newburgh	77.18	NY 300 (Union Avenue)
	Winona Lake, Town of Newburgh	78.84	I-84 west	Exit 8 of I-84; I-84 overlap begins
	City of Newburgh	80.43	US 9W/NY 32	Exit 9 of I-84
		81.62	Newburgh-Beacon Bridge over the Hudson River
Dutchess (20.25 mi)
	Brockway, Town of Fishkill	83.03	NY 9D; NY 52 Bus. east	Exit 10 of I-84
	Town of Fishkill	86.18	I-84 east; NY 52 Bus. west	Exit 11 of I-84; I-84 overlap ends
	Village of Fishkill, Town of Fishkill	87.28	US 9
	Brinckerhoff, Town of Fishkill	88.94	NY 82 north
	East Fishkill, Town of East Fishkill	93.33	NY 376 north
	Town of East Fishkill	94.27	Taconic State Parkway
		95.44	NY 216 east
Putnam (6.85 mi)	Lake Carmel, Town of Kent	105.35	NY 311 north
	Carmel, Town of Carmel	108.44	NY 301 west
	Town of Carmel	108.72	US 6

See also

• New York State Route 52 Business, the former routing of NY 52 through Beacon

References

1. ^ "Traffic Data Report - Routes 32 to 55" (PDF). NYSDOT. 2006-08-16. Retrieved 2007-02-17.
2. Automobile Legal Association (ALA), Automobile Green Book, (Scarborough Motor Guide Co., Boston), regional maps in various editions from 1929 to 1932.
3. Motor Carriers' Road Atlas (Map) (Deluxe ed.). Rand McNally. 2007. p. 69. § SB2, SA3, SA4, SA5, SB5, SB6, SB7, SC8. {{cite map}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
4. Motor Carriers' Road Atlas (Map) (Deluxe ed.). Rand McNally. 2007. p. 69. § SB 3, SG 6. {{cite map}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
5. Pennsylvania Department of Highways, General Highway Map, Wayne County, 1941

External links

• State Ends (Gribblenation) - New York State Route 52
• Gribblenation - New York State Route 52

• Articles lacking sources from February 2007
• New York state highways