Where to Actually Swim in the Lower Hudson Valley This Summer

Every summer, without fail, someone asks me about swimming holes in the rivertowns, meaning the real thing, a rock pool under a waterfall, the kind of spot you have to know somebody to find. I'll give it to you straight. That's mostly not a Westchester thing, at least not in the immediate coverage area. What we actually have is a real sanctioned river beach, a handful of county pools, and two lake-style beaches. Honestly, all of it is legitimately good, open right now, and mostly free.

Let's start with the one actual spot to swim in the Hudson River itself. Croton Point Park, right on the water in Croton-on-Hudson, is a 508-acre county park with a genuine sandy beach and lifeguards on duty, plus a boat launch if you're bringing your own. Beach hours run weekends and holidays, 11am to 6:30pm, through early September, and there's no extra charge to swim once you're in, just a parking fee of $5 with a county park pass or $10 without one. If you want to make a weekend of it, the park also has a campground, running somewhere between $30 and $60 a night depending on whether you have that pass. If I had to send you to exactly one spot, this is it. Real river, real lifeguards, real sand, and you don't have to drive an hour to get there.

If you'd rather skip the river current and the tides entirely, the county pools are the move. Saxon Woods, Sprain Ridge, Tibbetts, and Willson's Woods all run daily, 11am to 6:30pm, through Labor Day. No weather-dependent water quality, no current, just a pool, and sometimes that's exactly what you want, especially with a kid in tow.

Glen Island and Playland round out the county's beach options, both running weekend hours on the same 11am to 6:30pm window as Croton Point. Playland is really the day-trip version of a beach day, with rides and a boardwalk built right onto it, so if you want to turn it into a whole afternoon, that's the one.

I do want to say something honest about actually swimming in the river itself, because it matters. The Hudson is a real tidal estuary with real current, and after a heavy rain, the combined sewer systems in a lot of towns along the river can push untreated runoff into the water for a day or so afterward. Riverkeeper tracks water quality by testing site if you want to check before you go in, especially the day right after a storm. This isn't a reason to skip Croton Point. People have been swimming there for generations. It's just something worth knowing rather than finding out the hard way.

Now, if what you actually want is the rock pool, the real swimming hole experience, you do have to leave the immediate rivertowns for it, but it's closer than you'd think. The River Pool up in Beacon, at Pete and Toshi Seeger Riverfront Park, is a floating pool with a netted bottom set right into the Hudson itself. It's free, there's always a lifeguard when it's open, and it runs Tuesday through Sunday, noon to 6pm, about 45 minutes north of here. If you want to go even further, Canopus Lake at Clarence Fahnestock State Park has real, honest-to-goodness lake swimming, about an hour from Peekskill, open daily 10am to 5:45pm with a $7 per vehicle entrance fee. Neither one is a quick trip, but if a pool just isn't scratching the itch this summer, both of them are the real thing.