Decode High Line.

The High Line: Walking on Ghost Tracks

The High Line is a 1.45-mile elevated park built on a former New York Central Railroad freight line on Manhattan's West Side. The rail line was constructed in the 1930s to lift dangerous freight trains off street level — before the elevated tracks, so many pedestrians were killed by ground-level trains on Tenth Avenue that the street was nicknamed "Death Avenue" and the railroad hired men on horseback to ride ahead of the trains waving red flags. The original rail tracks are still embedded in the High Line's walkway, curving through plantings designed by Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf to mimic the wild vegetation that colonized the tracks during the decades the line sat abandoned.

The Spur, a wide overlook at the High Line's midpoint near 30th Street, offers one of the best viewpoints in Manhattan — a panoramic sweep from the Hudson River to the Empire State Building. Below the Spur, at street level, sits the former Nabisco factory (now Chelsea Market), where the High Line once carried raw materials directly into the building's upper floors. The rail line's last train ran in 1980, carrying three carloads of frozen turkeys. For twenty years the structure was slated for demolition, until a group of neighborhood residents formed Friends of the High Line and convinced the city to transform it into a park instead.

StoryHunt's High Line experience adds a layer of mystery to your walk above the city. Your phone delivers clues tied to the railroad's industrial history, challenges you to find the original rail hardware hidden among the plantings, and sends you to viewpoints where the old and new city collide. Each step is part of a narrative that connects Death Avenue to frozen turkeys to one of the most celebrated urban parks in the world. Walk at your own pace — the tracks will guide you.