A Saturday run that starts at Paulus Hook and heads south toward Liberty State Park used to be a straight shot. Lately it isn't. Get to the Jersey Ave gate at Liberty Harbor on a weekend morning and there's a real chance it's locked, which means backtracking through the inside streets to pick up the path further down. General route descriptions do not capture this weekend access detail.
The Hudson River Waterfront Walkway is often described as 18.5 miles, crossing nine municipalities, with free access from Bayonne to the George Washington Bridge. In Downtown Jersey City, two practical details can affect how you plan a walk, a run, or a Saturday errand run to the farmers market.
The 18.5-Mile Number
The walkway isn't one piece of infrastructure built by one agency. It's a chain of segments maintained by whichever property owner sits along that stretch of river, all operating under standards set by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. A nonprofit called the Hudson River Waterfront Conservancy tracks the permits that touch it, comments on new construction, and flags problems back to the state.
One of those access details is at Liberty Harbor. As of November 2024, the west gate to Jersey Ave stopped being open around the clock. The Conservancy's own notice on the change is blunt about the new hours, describing the gate as closed on weekends and during the non-summertime periods. That's the exact stretch that connects Paulus Hook to Liberty State Park, which makes this something closer to a routing problem for anyone doing that loop on a Saturday than a footnote for hikers passing through once a year.
How the Jersey Ave Gate Affects Walkway Access
The reason a single gate can affect access on a state-mandated public path comes down to who owns the ground under it. Liberty State Park is public land, so its section of the walkway runs on public hours. Liberty Harbor is privately managed, and the Conservancy has said openly that it's working through the reversal with the property's management. Board members have also been coordinating directly with Jersey City Councilman James Solomon to keep public access intact on the Jersey City stretch specifically, which tells you this isn't a settled situation. It's an active negotiation between a nonprofit watchdog, a private landowner, and City Hall, and the outcome of that negotiation is the thing that decides whether your Saturday route needs a detour.
The Planned Newport Pier Kayak Launch
A second practical detail concerns access to the water. On December 18, 2025, the DEP approved a permit for a new kayak launch ramp at Newport Pier, a project the Conservancy had pushed for after getting repeated requests for more launch points along the walkway. That's real progress. It's also not the same as a launch you can use this fall. The Conservancy's own permit tracker, updated as recently as this past July, still says it isn't clear when construction will actually happen.
If you want to get on the water now rather than wait for a permit to turn into concrete, the option that already exists is Urban Paddle, which operates a Jersey City launch site distinct from the Hoboken Cove Community Boathouse across the line in Hoboken. The Newport ramp will be a welcome addition whenever it's built. Until then, treat it as a plan, not an amenity.
What's Actually Running This Fall
Not everything on this stretch is stalled. Some of the walkway's best features are running exactly as they have been, and they're worth building a weekend around.
- Van Vorst Park Farmers Market, three blocks from Grove Street PATH, runs Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. through the fall, shifting to a shorter 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. window once winter hours start. It's organized by the nonprofit Friends of Van Vorst Park, the same group that runs Shakespeare in the Park and Films in the Park in warmer months.
- J. Owen Grundy Park, the pier that juts into the Hudson before the walkway crosses into Newport, is a reliable rest stop with benches, a shaded pavilion, and food trucks that show up on any given afternoon.
- Van Vorst Park's dog run is smaller and shaded, a better fit for smaller dogs, while Hamilton Park's dog run draws a bigger, more constant crowd. Both sit close enough to the walkway that a lot of daily foot traffic is really dog traffic.
- The Colgate Clock and Morris Canal Park are unaffected by any of the access questions above. They're fixed points, good for orienting a walk regardless of what's open or closed that particular weekend.
Reading the Walkway Like Someone Who Actually Uses It
Put it together and the practical version of a Saturday looks like this: start at Paulus Hook, swing through Van Vorst for market produce before the crowd thickens, and if you're planning to continue south toward Liberty State Park, check the day of the week before you assume the Jersey Ave gate will be open. If you're headed the other direction toward Newport, know that the kayak launch you might have read about isn't there yet, and Urban Paddle is still the actual way onto the water this month.
None of this makes the walkway less worth using. It makes it worth using with the current access details in mind. The 18.5-mile number is accurate as a measurement. It's not a description of what's guaranteed to be open on any given Saturday, and the difference between those two things is exactly the kind of detail that only shows up if you're paying attention to this particular stretch of river, not the whole county's worth of it.
That kind of attention to what's actually happening on the ground, block by block, is the same thing that matters once someone in Downtown Jersey City starts thinking about buying or selling here rather than just walking through it. If you're weighing either move and want someone who tracks this neighborhood as closely as its waterfront gates, Robert Sanchez is a good place to start. Let's connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
