Since 2009, WVLT and OSI worked tirelessly on what became a four-year, $1.5 Million Campaign to restore the trestle in Rosendale and open the Rosendale and Ulster sections of the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail to the public. In June 2013 over 500 people joined us for the grand opening of the Rosendale Trestle. This landmark remains a highlight of the now 22+mile Wallkill Valley Rail Trail. Exactly a year later, WVLT celebrated the opening of the “Connector Trail” – a stone 92-step trail at the south end of the Trestle, which allows users to travel to and from Rosendale’s Main Street. 

In October 2011, OSI acquired the 495-foot high Joppenbergh Mountain in Rosendale. The 118 acre property has numerous cliffs and expansive views of the Hudson River Valley. OSI conveyed Joppenbergh Mountain to WVLT in December 2011. WVLT continues to manage the land for public use and habitat protection. WVLT’s Joppenbergh Land Management Plan, completed in 2012, outlines future hiking, multi-use and single-track bicycle trails, many of which are under development now (2019-2020).

Farmland preservation, a key focus of WVLT’s mission, has continued throughout the past three decades. 

Among the major farms preserved in WVLT’s early years were Phillies Bridge Farm (noted as the first educational CSA in Ulster County), the Grace Elliot Farm, and the Bontecou Farm. Another notable moment was WVLT’s successful partnership with Open Space Institute to preserve two farms on Huguenot Street in the Town and Village of New Paltz. In 2006, we jointly raised funds to purchase the development rights of two adjacent farms – the Khosla Easement (Huguenot Street Farm CSA) and the Jewett Farm. This project successfully protected 180 acres, allowing them to remain in private hands as active farmlands, forever. 

In 2008, the Rossetter Easement, 51 acres in the Town of Gardiner, included creating a CSA complete with a young farming family. Old Ford Farm remains a successful CSA today. Most recently, WVLT partnered iwth Ulster County, the Town of New Paltz and Scenic Hudson to protect Taliaferro Farm CSA, 32 acres of active farmland bordering the Wallkill River. 

In 2016, WVLT announced that we had been granted accreditation by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission- a mark of honor and distinction in the field of land conservation. The achievement of accreditation validates the Commission’s confidence that WVLT meets national standards of professionalism in the area of land conservation, and that it has the long-term capacity to continue to preserve and manage land into the future.