Circle Line Boat: Dayliner

Dayliner has real roots. Circle Line acquired the historic Hudson River Day Line fleet in 1962, including the steamer Alexander Hamilton, built in 1924 and the last of the old sidewheelers still running this route. When Alexander Hamilton retired in September 1971, Circle Line introduced a new vessel to pick up where she left off: Dayliner.

Billed in its own era as the largest and finest riverboat built in America, Dayliner sailed a 150-mile round trip up the Hudson from Pier 81, with two ways to take it in: get off partway for a few hours at Bear Mountain State Park or the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, or stay aboard all the way to the Poughkeepsie Bridge and back.

Either way, it was a nine-hour day on the water, so the boat was built to match: an onboard restaurant, bar, cafeteria, and snack bar kept passengers comfortable for the full ride up the river and back.

Along the way, passengers passed some of the most storied scenery on the East Coast:

• The George Washington Bridge and the Little Red Lighthouse beneath it

• The Palisades, rising more than 500 feet above the river

• The Cloisters, high above the Hudson in Fort Tryon Park

• The Tappan Zee Bridge

• Sunnyside, Washington Irving's home in Tarrytown, and Lyndhurst, the Gothic Revival estate nearby

• Storm King Mountain and Bear Mountain Bridge

• The U.S. Military Academy at West Point

It's the same river, and largely the same mountain, that Circle Line's Bear Mountain Cruise still sails today, just a different boat, decades apart.

From the Archives: Dayliner