1897 view looking north at Bicycle Path crossing shows a westbound Atlantic-type (4-4-0) locomotive number 92 |
Bicycle Path is a historic road in Central Suffolk County on Long Island, New York, built in the late 19th Century in order to capitalize on the bicycle craze of that period. It ran north and south from Patchogue to just east of Port Jefferson, lying mostly west of New York State Route 112, crossing it at Port Jefferson Road in Port Jefferson Station.
Beginning in Patchogue at what is today the intersection of East Main Street and NY 112, the road survives as Medford Avenue which was widened to four lanes from East Main Street to Clark Street in 1964, then to five lanes north of the vicinity of the interchange with Sunrise Highway.
In North Patchogue, near Shaber Road, Route 112 moves to the northeast onto Port Jefferson-Patchogue Highway, while the original Bicycle Path goes straight north from Medford Avenue to Old Medford Avenue.
Near the Main Line of the Long Island Rail Road in Medford, Bicycle Path used to climb over a narrow wooden grade crossing. The crossing was replaced by a bridge in 1907. As Old Medford Avenue crosses under the Long Island Expressway, it leaves Medford and enters Farmingville, where it enters a residential area north of Suffolk CR 16(Horse Block Road).
North of Granny Road, Old Medford Avenue ends, and the remnants of the original name of the road is exposed, as South Bicycle Path. This road winds through the legendary steep hills of Farmingville and Selden, past an area which later in the 20th Century included the Bald Hill Ski Bowl until 1980. An interchange was built over the road for an extension of Suffolk CR 83 known as Patchogue-Mount Sinai Road in the early 1960s, but the road itself wasn't built until 1972.