The Bronx River Forest Trail offers beautiful scenery and up-close views of the Bronx River, only steps away from the New York Botanical Gardens

There are several points of interest on the Bronx River Forest Trail. This trail is fun because there are many overlooks and viewpoints of the Bronx River to enjoy. To make your hike more interactive, you can even make a game or scavenger hunt out of it to keep your little ones engaged. 

Burke Bridge has a great view of the Bronx River and at 45 feet long, the concrete and stone bridge allows you to have a lot of space to explore and spot wildlife, especially birds! The River Lookout is another great overlook to see the floodplain forest and the river. The boardwalk is the best way to see and identify certain species of trees in the forest including American sycamore, silver maple, sweetgum, pin oak, river birch, and tulip poplar. The Island Lookout is a viewing station where you can most clearly see the man-made island built in the mid-1900s, appropriately called the Bronx River Island. The last main point of interest is the Retaining Wall, where you can observe the infrastructure that allowed the restoration of the Bronx River back to clean, natural water. 

The Bronx River was once very polluted and is now natural and clean with many different birds and species of wildlife living in and around it. The easiest access for this trail is to enter at East Gun Hill Road for the Red Trail and Burke Avenue or East 204th St. for the Blue Trail. The red trail is a shorter loop that goes along one side of the Bronx River and the blue trail is about double the length of the red trail and follows the opposite bank of the river. 

While the trails are clearly marked and easy to follow, you can also download a map from their website online.