have worked to adapt to this change since the 1940s. Route description The Taconic's character changes with its surroundings. In the busy suburbs of its first few miles, it is an arterial surface road, paralleling a commuter rail line through a small downtown. Soon after that, it becomes a wide divided highway, with median strips and gentle turn radii similar to an Interstate Highway carrying much commuter traffic. In the Hudson Highlands, it narrows again as it curves back and forth and climbs up and down quickly to its highest point. When the terrain levels out again, it widens and begins to assume its scenic character in a growing, exurban area with at-grade intersections. Its northernmost section, located on the ridges between the Hudson Valley and the Taconic Mountains along the state borders to the east, offers mountain and hilltop vistas as the road itself continues to curve gently through bucolic surroundings. This winding route contributes to its length, which makes the Taconic New York State's longest parkway. Westchester County The Taconic begins at Kensico Circle, just south of Kensico Dam, in the town of North Castle, also the northern terminus of the Bronx River Parkway, at that point a surface road. The roadway here is narrow, with two lanes in either direction divided by a metal box beam median barrier. It curves northwest to a traffic light at Cleveland Street in the hamlet of Valhalla. The Valhalla station on Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line is on the west side, with the downtown area on the east. It is the only densely developed community the road goes through rather than near. After crossing under the stone arch bridge carrying Legion Drive over the parkway, the first of many such rustic overpasses, the Taconic begins a long section going past Gate of Heaven Cemetery and paralleling the railroad tracks past the small Mount Pleasant Metro-North train station, built to allow access to the surrounding cemetery of that name. The road then crosses over the train line into a wooded area where the two roadways split wide apart, becoming onramps to the Sprain Brook Parkway. At the merge, the Sprain Brook, a wider road with three lanes in each direction, a mostly cleared median strip and shoulders on either side, becomes the Taconic. For the remainder of Westchester County, the Taconic has been rebuilt, widened, and modernized to meet the needs of commuter