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Peepapalooza: NYC is heading to the Hudson Valley to watch the leaves
By
Elizabeth Shwe
and
Sean Carlson
Published Oct 24, 2026 at 10:46 a.m. ET
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Scott Heaney/Getty Images
By
Elizabeth Shwe
and
Sean Carlson
Published Oct 24, 2026 at 10:46 a.m. ET
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Metro North has added more trains to and from the Hudson Valley to accommodate flocks of people hoping to spend a bucolic autumn weekend peeping leaves outside the city.
Officials say, this year’s super El Nino is making fall leaves brighter and last longer. Now, mid-to-late-October is typically peak peepage time but the season could last through November.
“This year we're expecting to have a potentially longer and more intense fall foliage season as a result of the extra rainfall that we've seen this year coming from the El Niño weather pattern,” said Benjamin Osbourne, assistant commissioner of forestry and horticulture at the New York City Deptartment of Parks and Recreation.
If park foliage isn't scratching your Autumn itch, you can always get on Metro North, but just know everyone else had the same idea this year: Towns up and down the river feel absolutely packed with out of towners on Saturdays and Sundays.
We talked to two mayors who are dealing with a the crush of hopeful peepers in their towns this fall, Mayor Marjorie Hsu of Sleepy Hollow and Mayor Lee Kyriacou of Beacon.
The following interview has been edited for clarity.
People walking down a leafy autumn sidewalk in Sleepy Hollow.
Elizabeth Shwe/Gothamist
Sean Carlson: Is it fair to say you've been seeing bigger crowds in your towns this year?
Mayor Hsu: We are [seeing] a crush of tourists.The weekends are particularly busy because we have a lot of events Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And even during the week we're seeing a lot of social media influencers doing cute poses on our streets wearing their pumpkin motif sweaters.
Mayor Kyriacou: It has picked up. I’m a volunteer at our visitor center on weekends, so I actually get to see it in person and it’s clearly picked up over past years. I will say during COVID, hiking was what everybody was doing. But now, particularly with great fall weather, everyone wants to be not only hiking, but walking on Main Streets. We're getting a lot of people moving up here, particularly from Brooklyn, and I think a lot of it's word of mouth and of course social media.
Sleepy Hollow is the home to one of Halloween's spookiest tales, and a great place to peep some leaves.
Elizabeth Shwe/Gothamist
What are the benefits, economic or otherwise, of seeing so many people in your town?
Hsu: Well, Westchester County, year over year, is seeing steady growth of tourism. Just historically in 2025 over 2024 we saw a 6.3% increase. And the Hudson Valley overall is seeing that increase, but Westchester County is a good 45% of the growth, so it's exciting to see. And that translates to, obviously, revenues for all the new businesses along our Sleepy Hollow streets. And it also contributes to savings in state and local taxes for our residents. So they're seeing a savings of about $800 per household, which hopefully gives a little bit of a compensation for the inconvenience of our crowded streets and things being a little slower getting to your destinations.
Kyriacou: So people coming to visit come and obviously spend their money. Beacon is a small city, so a little different from a village or a town. We were a manufacturing community until after World War II, then all our factories shut down. In the '60s, '70s, '80s it was a pretty, sort of worn-out community. So our renaissance has come partly from the arts, because we have the Contemporary Art Museum here, which is in our largest, closed-down old factory. And then we also have tourism and that's what's helped to rebuild. I mentioned we have a very long Main Street because we were two villages, and without that tourism or the arts our Main Street would not have come back.
So it makes a big difference for our businesses. And the other thing that it does is it, it brings people to live in Beacon. We've had a large migration coming up from the city; young families coming in, and that sort of generational, you know, turnover is what you need to keep communities vibrant. So we benefit from that as well.
Do the crowds pose challenges, whether it be a strain on social services or just overcrowding in general?
Hsu: Well, people definitely need to budget a little bit of extra time to get to their weekend errands done. And parking is, you know, always a challenge, especially during the fall season. We are scaling, the best we can. We've actually added some event parking for those people that absolutely can't take Metro North or the B Line bus to get to [SleepyHollow]. So we're encouraging as much use of public transit as possible.
Kyriacou: Some of our long-timers say that they're not able to park directly in front of the store that they used to be able to park in front of on a weekend and go in and do their shopping. And it's like, that's a great problem to have. You know, and I get it: you're used to a fairly quiet community. Most of Main Street was empty as a result [of the loss of manufacturing jobs], meaning most of the buildings were empty. Uh, now that they're all full again, there's a huge amount of choice. It comes with more crowds. Parking we've sorted, a lot of our parking issues, subsided when we put really good signs up for where you could find parking. The other one is, you know, we make way-finding from the train station a lot easier. I mentioned there's a visitor center when you get to the top of the hill at the start of Main Street. Got a public bathroom there. Mm-hmm. We need more public bathrooms on our Main Street, and it's sort of on us to kind of figure out how to do that. We put, you know, impose upon our businesses to help us out. Obviously, people, you know, who live in town have to adjust a little bit, um, do your shopping on weekdays, not weekends. But those are the kinds of good problems to have compared to havingan empty Main Street.
Some folks who have been to the Hudson Valley recently say navigating those crowds, whether it be at, say, a restaurant or a gallery can take people out of the very experience that they're looking for: a quiet, less hectic vibe than what they might be used to in the city. So how do you balance that?
Kyriacou: Yeah, I hear you. In Beacon you're not gonna find a bucolic experience, and that was the word you used, Sean, coming up from the city if what you're doing is walking Main Street. But if you do wanna do hiking, we've got sea level hikes with no rise right along the Hudson River in parks because every linear foot of our waterfront along the Hudson is parks or trails. Or if you want something more strenuous, Mount Beacon, which the city is named for, is 1,500 feet, and you can walk along Main Street and then take a hike up the hill.
Before we let you both go, for people who want to enjoy the beautiful fall weather we've been seeing, can you recommend something off the beaten path in your town to do or see?
Hsu: Yeah, this was my delight during the shutdown in the pandemic. I could go out my front door and take a right and walk along the Hudson River. If I took a left, I could walk along the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where there's so much history and culture and architecture, as well as the old Croton Aqueduct. Then hundreds of acres of the Rockefeller preserves. And it is absolutely spectacular right now with the leaves changing and the beautiful foliage.
Kyriacou: There are two falls along Fishkill Creek, which empties into the Hudson in the city of Beacon. If you walk down Main Street around the bend, there's one set of falls right there along Main Street. There's restaurants right there. You can have a lovely sit outside, watch the falls from either the bridge or one of the restaurants. That would be one. The other one is, the other falls is on the bucolic path, right? So take the hike south along the Hudson, follow the trail around the bend, and there's a second falls that is quiet, empty, pristine. You kinda take your pick.
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Elizabeth Shwe
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Sean Carlson
Before coming to New York Public Radio, Sean worked in print, online and radio news around the mid-Atlantic region and Alaska. A New Jersey native, he holds a B.A. from the New School University in Greenwich Village and an M.A. from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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