5. The abandoned Montauk Cutoff has its very own community garden
While the High Line may no longer be abandoned, one major disused railroad lying fallow in New York City is the Montauk Cutoff. Likely built in 1908 among the construction of a wave of overpasses in industrial Queens, it is called a “cutoff” as it bypassed the city below it. Measuring only a third of a mile long, the railroad was primarily used to get trains in and out of Sunnyside Yard.
The Montauk Cutoff remained popular until the 1970s, when freight train traffic in Long Island City began to decrease. Abandoned completely in the 1990s, the site was used by the now-defunct Sextantworks (Wanderlust Projects) for a speakeasy and urban exploration mixed event. In 2011, Smiling Hogshead Ranch, an urban farm collective created by a group of Long Island City neighbors, formed a guerrilla garden on the abandoned tracks of Montauk Cutoff — later securing a lease from the MTA to become an official nonprofit organization. By day, Smiling Hogshead Ranch is an agricultural farm and community garden and by night a social club and cultural venue.
