Northport became the terminus of an extension of the Hicksville and Syosset Railroad line (later the Hicksville and Cold Spring Branch Railroad), after some arguments with Oliver Charlick over the locations of stations in Cold Spring Harbor, and Huntington led to the line bypassing both towns, the latter of them two miles to the south, though a station was built for both of them.
The spur was refurbished in the mid-1970s to prevent the loss of a local lumber firm, which had planned to move to New Jersey when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority previously announced it would abandon the line.
[5] Between the 1950s and early-1980s, the New York State Department of Transportation wanted to use part of the branch for construction of the Babylon-Northport Expressway.
In reality, the industries that previously used the line no longer found it useful, and it was abandoned in 1978, and dismantled in 1985.
[10][11][12] The size of the 4.4-acre (18,000 m2) greenway was nearly doubled two years later with the addition of 4 acres (16,000 m2) of parkland from an adjacent undeveloped parcel that had been acquired by New York State through eminent domain for the proposed Babylon-Northport Expressway, which had been canceled in 1982.