The Teatown-Kitchawan Trail, known as the TKT, is a new 6.5-mile hiking trail that links several parks and trails: Westchester County’s North County Trailway, Kitchawan Preserve, John E. Hand Park at Bald Mountain in Yorktown and Croton Gorge in the Town of Cortlandt. The trail also connects with the New York State-owned Old Croton Aqueduct Trailway, and with Teatown Lake Reservation and its system of 15 miles of trails, and traverses lands controlled by the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. View map.
The TKT is blazed with distinctive purple signs that make it easy to follow. It begins at the North County Trailway near Route 134 and makes its way west across the Kitchawan Preserve near Route 134 in the southeast corner of Yorktown. When it reaches Arcady Road it crosses onto DEP land and makes its way through the woods and meadows of Stayback Hill. The trail then follows Croton Lake Road, a lightly traveled and largely dirt-surface road to pass under the Taconic State Parkway. The trail returns to DEP lands and climbs Bald Mountain, passing through beautiful forest and isolated old meadows affording stunning views of the Croton Reservoir, a wide area of northern Westchester and the distant Hudson Highlands.
On the southwest side of the county’s John Hand/Bald Mountain Park, the TKT intersects with the Briarcliff-Peekskill Trailway. This can be followed south to Teatown or west to Croton Gorge Park and the New York State-owned Old Croton Aqueduct Trailway.
The trail, a project of Teatown Lake Reservation, was created by volunteers from the New York-New Jersey Trails Conference, an organization that partners with parks to create, protect, and promote a network of over 1,700 miles of public trails in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan region.