Commuter rail service to North Jersey and New York City is available via the Salisbury Mills–Cornwall train station, operated by NJ Transit on behalf of Metro-North Railroad.

The town is located less than an hour from the George Washington Bridge with access to major commuter routes such as the New York State Thruway and the Palisades Parkway.

Government offices, churches, parks, the riverfront, and St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital, a part of the Montefiore Health System, are situated within walking distance of downtown.

Cornwall was the top selection to represent New York State in "The Best Places to Raise Kids 2013" by Bloomberg Business Week magazine.

Storm King School was founded in 1867 and has produced notable alumni such as Whiting Willauer, Robert Torricelli, Walter Reade, Jack Hemingway, Cara Castronuova, Wally Pfister, and Balazs Szabo.

[13] Cornwall has a rich cultural heritage that includes: When the explorer Henry Hudson visited the region in 1609 the land was occupied by the Waoraneck Indians.

In 1685 a colony of twenty-five Scottish families settled around the mouth of the Moodna Creek, led by the soldier Major Patrick McGregor and his brother-in-law, David Toiseach, the laird of Monzievaird.

It became a summer resort because of the natural beauty of the river, its mountain vistas, scenic trails, fresh country air and convenience to New York City via riverboat or railroad.

The mountains, fresh air and evergreen forests were thought to offer the perfect conditions for good health and they were not far from the city.

Cornwall, on the west side of the Hudson, became especially popular as a health retreat, offering numerous boarding houses and many conveniences of the day, including accessibility to the railroad and steamboats, as well as a telegraph office and large library.

Nathaniel Parker Willis, one of the Knickerbocker writers, enjoyed the time he spent here so much he bought property in Cornwall, establishing a country home he called Idlewild.

In 1996 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places as an intact commercial building dating from Cornwall's days as a summer resort town in the late 19th century.

The land was originally the property of Isaac Bobbin, an early settler, until subdivided into the present parcel and sold to Mathias Carvey in 1805, around the time the house was built.

After the Civil War, summer boarders from New York City began coming to Cornwall, and Brooks quickly adapted it for use as a boardinghouse.

Consolidated Edison proposed building a giant hydroelectric plant on the river at Storm King Mountain near Cornwall.

Despite pressure from local residents, Con Ed went forward with its plan, applying to the Federal Power Commission for a license to operate such a facility.

It is shaped by the valleys of Moodna and Woodbury creeks, and includes estuarine salt marshes, heavily developed residential and commercial areas, rolling farms, and rocky, scrub-covered ridges and mountaintops.

There are two major protected areas mostly within the town: Storm King State Park and the privately managed Black Rock Forest.

The Town has equal frontage on the river south of the Village but is primarily State Park land and inaccessible due to a railroad throughway.

In its southern section, Cornwall on Hudson rises to the high area known as Deer Hill, a foothill to Storm King Mountain to its immediate south.

It turns more southerly, taking in the northwestern sliver of the United States Military Academy Reservation before reaching Cornwall's southernmost point, its tripoint with Highlands and the town and village of Woodbury.

From there the New Windsor boundary runs east, trending slightly to the north, just south of the hamlet of Vails Gate back to the salt marshes where the Moodna drains into the Hudson.