Twenty-seven thousand acres of national park inside New York City

**Spanning 27,000 acres from Sandy Hook in New Jersey to Breezy Point in New
York City**, Gateway is two gateways at once: the entrance from the ocean into
New York Harbour, and the entrance to the National Park Service for millions of
visitors a year.

That second sense is the one that matters. For a great many people in the most
densely populated part of the United States, this is the first national park
unit they ever stand in — which is a different job from preserving a wilderness
nobody lives near.

The park offers green spaces and beaches alongside historic structures and
cultural landscapes, and it is open every day.

Three units, two states

Most of the park is reachable by car and by public transport — which,
again, is the point of it. Directions to each unit are on the park's website,
because the three are genuinely separate places rather than parts of one
drive.

The weather

Gateway's separate land areas are spread across the New York metropolitan
area, which has four distinct seasons. Temperatures are moderate in spring and
autumn, and range from the high 90s in summer to snow and sleet in winter.

*Location: National Recreation Area, New York and New Jersey. Source: U.S.
National Park Service.*