Mills Reservation: Urban Trails

Mills Reservation is another one of NJ's urban forests located in Essex County. It is my favorite local walking spot as it is very close to my home. It is located primarily in Cedar Grove with a section reaching into bordering Montclair. It became a part of the Essex County Park system in 1954 due to a donation from the Davella Mills foundation, which had previously owned the land.

Mills Reservation consists of deciduous woodland and wetlands, with the only development consisting of a small unpaved parking lot located off of Normal Avenue and the development of an extensive trail system for a small area. Though it is surrounded by roads and homes, like many urban parks, it offers a welcome escape close to home.

The Reservation grew from its original 119 acres to 157 acres through a land swap in the mid-1960s with the city of Newark, which owns adjoining property and also the nearby reservoir in Cedar Grove.

Mills Reservation is located on the First Watchung Mountain. The word “Watchung” is of Native American origin and means “high hill." Geologically, the rock which forms the Watchungs is known as volcanic basalt, which formed when molten lava extruded out of the earth’s surface and cooled rapidly.

Mills Reservation features seven trails totaling 6.1 miles. The trails overlap, which can be confusing, but the most used one is the 1.5-mile Mills Loop Trail. It is essentially a gravel road which is popular with joggers and dog walkers, while the other six trails go deeper into the wooded forest areas and are more interesting.

The Reservoir Trail has red blazes and runs for 1 Mile heading west from the Parking Lot and following the western border of Mills Reservation near Reservoir Drive. The Reservoir trail ends where the southern section of the Eastview Trail begins. 

A portion of the much longer Essex County Lenape Trail also runs through the reservation. The Lenape Trail is a trail connecting Newark and Roseland, New Jersey. It was established in 1982.
It is the fifth-longest trail in the state, and it traverses cities like Newark and its suburbs, but also the Watchung Mountains and the Passaic Meadows. The Lenape Trail is part of the larger 156-mile Liberty Water Gap Trail, created in 2000.

The Lenape Trail west is accessible from the parking lot via the short Lenape Link Trail (Yellow on White Blazes), which heads west from the Normal Avenue parking lot to connect with the Lenape Trail. From here, you can connect to the West Essex Trail, which is the Lenape Trail's only true "rail-to-trail" section.

The Lenape Trail also heads southwest, crossing through the Reservoir Trail, Mills Loop Trail, and the Woodland Trail. Once the Lenape Trail crosses the Woodland and Mills Loop Trail, it heads east to Quarry Point and then north, paralleling the Eastview Trail and into Montclair’s Mountainside Park on its way to Newark.


The Eastview Trail (Blue Blazes, 1.1 Miles) starts its southern portion near the Old Quarry Road entrance to Mills Reservation and, as the name implies, heads east to Quarry Point before turning north on the eastern portion of the reserve.

Quarry Point contains volcanic basalt outcrops in addition to a very old cement platform where anti-aircraft guns were installed during World War II. There are great views of NYC and to the south. This is the first ridge west of the lower Hudson River Valley, and runs from northeast to southwest. The view from the platform is south and east. Bring binoculars. To the south, on a clear day, there is a view of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and south and east, you can see the entire New York City skyline, including the Statue of Liberty, and all the way northeast to the Palisades. Looking far north and less easily to the west, peaks from the Ramapo Mountains can be discerned, and the beginning of the Second Watchung Mountain.

The NJ Audubon Society uses this and their Lookout across the road for observing migratory birds, such as warblers in the spring and hawks in the fall. The Montclair Hawk Lookout is opposite Quarry Point (across a road) atop a 500-foot basalt ledge.

The Mills Gate Trail  (Orange Blaze) is a very short side loop of the Mills Reservation Loop that goes through the original entrance of Mills Reservation.

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DIRECTIONS: Take the Garden State Parkway south to exit 151 (Watchung Avenue in Montclair). Turn west from the exit ramp onto Watchung Avenue.  Drive about two miles until the road ends at Upper Mountain Avenue.  Turn north and go 1.7 miles to the traffic light at Normal Avenue.  Turn west and drive 0.3 miles to the entrance on the left.  Limited parking is also available on Old Quarry Road near the southern entrance and that is just steps away from Quarry Point and the Hawkwatch.

MORE INFORMATION
nynjtc.org/park/mills-reservation-county-park
NJurbanforest.com  
At NYNJCT Botany, you can see lists of Mills Reservation's array of native flora including trees, shrubs, vines and herbs.
Montclair Hawk Lookout, a sanctuary of the New Jersey Audubon Society.
Lenape Trail Information: NYNJtc.org/park/lenape-trail  and LibertyGap.org/lenape-trail.html

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Liberty Water Gap and other Trail Maps

A comment on my post about the Lenape and Liberty Water Gap Trails asked:

I've been looking for a detailed map of the Liberty Water Gap Trail and can't seem to find one anywhere. Their website, LibertyWaterGap.org, doesn't exist anymore, and Google searches only bring me to NJ.com articles from 2011. Hopefully you are able to help me or point me in the right direction for information.

Here are a few suggestions for that area. If any readers know of other sources, please share in a comment below.

I like holding a map in my hands on a trail and the NY NJ Trail Conference offers NYNJTC maps and the Water Gap is included in their Kittatinny Trails map.

You can also find a number of maps of that area from Amazon.

The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area (National Park Service New Jersey/Pennsylvania) offers a free pdf format set of trail maps in the area.

There are a number of maps at npmaps.com/delaware-water-gap/ 

Personally, I wouldn't rely on Google Maps for a hike, but their maps and the Google Earth view does give a pretty good sense of the area.

South Mountain Reservation and Hemlock Falls

South Mountain Reservation was one of my youthful playgrounds. I rode my bike there and walked the trails without the aid of trail maps or blazes 50 years ago.

Back then, there was a deer paddock that held the deer in check and where families came to feed the deer. Back in the day, deer were an oddity for most urban and suburban kids. The paddock is gone and the progeny of those deer have spread far and wide around that area.

I didn't know the details back then but South Mountain Reservation covers 2,110 acres (8 km2). It is part of the Essex County Park System and portions of it are in Maplewood, Millburn and West Orange. It borders South Orange, between the first and second ridges of the Watchung Mountains.

I liked thinking as I walked along the Washington Rock area that once there were Revolutionary soldiers there guarding a signal fire that would warn General Washington's Army at Morristown that the British were approaching from the east. It was the site of Beacon Signal Station 9 (of 23) built by General Washington to observe British troop movements quartered on Staten Island and New York City.

From this outlook, on June 23, 1780, the Essex County and Newark Militia were first warned that the British had launched an attack westward toward "the Gap," (Hobart Gap), a natural pathway to Washington's troops encamped at Morris Town. 

In what was termed a "pincer movement," Hessian troops fought along Vaux Hall Road, while the British advanced along Galloping Hill Road. The Hessians were stopped at the base of the First Watchung Mountain. The British were defeated in Springfield.

Campbell Pond

There are a number of trails rated easy to moderate. Some are quite rocky and there are a few easy stream crossings that in the heat of summer may be dry creek beds. There is one more significant crossing over the Rahway River. The Lenape and Oakdale trails are probably the most popular.

The Reservation is both north and south of South Orange Avenue with the northern half stretching to Northfield Avenue in West Orange near the Turtle Back Zoo and Orange Reservoir. The southern half extends to Glen Ave. in Millburn and includes Campbell's Pond - where we fished as kids. We referred to it as Diamond Mill and it is near the Papermill Playhouse.

There are several trail maps available and even a Google map that shows the Lenape Trail. This suburban wilderness has several parking areas, formal trails, and some woods roads that can be used.

You can find more information and maps in the New Jersey Walk Book and Hiking New Jersey: A Guide To 50 Of The Garden State's Greatest Hiking Adventures

    

Walking the Lenape Trail

Originally posted in a slightly different version on Weekends in Paradelle

I was recently on one of my many walks on the local Lenape Trail. It’s not hardcore hiking. Chunks of it don’t even run through woods as you might expect of a trail.

I was looking at a map of the trail and realized that many parts of my own childhood and the childhood days of my sons are on that trail.

The trail crosses Essex County, N.J., one of the most congested counties in the United States. It connects Newark, New Jersey with Roseland, New Jersey.

This trail forms a segment of the Liberty-Water Gap Trail and incorporates the West Essex Trail (the Lenape Trail’s only rail-to-trail section) and it connects with Morris County’s Patriots Path trail. It was only established in 1982, though some of the trails it followed have been used for a long time. It is the fifth-longest trail in the state behind the Delaware and Raritan Canal Trail, the Appalachian Trail, the completed section of the Highlands Trail in NJ, and the Batona Trail.

It’s a suburban-urban trail and it traverses Newark (Jersey doesn’t get more urban than that) and its suburbs, through parks as well as the Watchung Mountains and Passaic Meadows.
I walked the mostly urban street parts of the trail when I worked at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. I have walked all of its 34 miles piece-by-piece. The eastern terminus is in Newark’s Ironbound district. A nice urban start with plenty of places to eat.

It’s street walking through downtown Newark and through the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Branch Brook Park (home to the city’s Cherry Blossom Festival with 3,500 cherry trees and the most diverse cherry blossom display in the country).

Do you want old trails? The Passaic Meadows was the former basin of Glacial Lake Passaic. We are talking about dinosaurs and the earliest natives. Glacial Lake Passaic was a prehistoric proglacial lake at the end of the last ice age approximately 13,000 years ago.

I read about it when I was a kid. I had found some fossils and wanted to be a paleontologist. The lake was formed from waters released by the melting of the retreating Wisconsin Glacier that had pushed large quantities of earth and rock ahead of its advance, blocking previous natural drainage.
The drainage basin is what we call today the Passaic Meadows and the part near our walking trail is the Hatfield Swamp. The lake was formed on the western side of the Watchung Mountains by a blockage of the Passaic River.

Eventually, the river formed its present course, a circuitous detour around the north end of the Watchung range through present-day Paterson. And the lake found a new outflow to the ocean via the Great Notch in Little Falls, near Totowa and Montclair. And when the glacier retreated farther to the north, the outflow of the lake drained toward the north and formed the gorge of the Great Falls of the Passaic River in Paterson, which is just a short walk from my office at Passaic County Community College.

What is left of Glacial Lake Passaic is several swamps in northern New Jersey, particularly, the Great Swamp.

Back on the trail.

Leaving Newark, it goes west through Belleville, Nutley, Bloomfield, Montclair, and into my town, Cedar Grove. That part of the trail I have covered many times. It’s my favorite section.

Mills Reservation is a county park, 157.15 acres that bridges Cedar Grove and Montclair. I walked these woods many times with my sons when they were young Indians, soldiers, hunters, wolves, and Cub Scouts.

The reservation has no development other than a small parking area and the trails. It is a minimalist design by the Olmsteds in their last association with Essex County. The three of us made maps of the area, brought our lunch packs, hiking staffs, compasses, cowboy hats, Indian weapons, and lots of energy and imagination into those woods.

The Eastview Trails runs the edge of a cliff that overlooks the New York City skyline to the east. It was a part that my sons loved to walk. It was a part that terrified me when they were young - the cliff, the edge - stay close.

On a clear day, you can see to the south and east the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the New York City skyline including the Statue of Liberty. To the northeast is the Palisades and to the north and west, peaks from the Ramapo Mountains can be glimpsed and the beginning of the Second Watchung Mountain.

The outcrop at Quarry Point was the site of a World War Two anti-aircraft gun emplacement and the remaining cement circle was our resting place. My son, Drew, at age 5, planted a circle of trees near there, and again at the north end so that the forest people would have a place for their ceremonies.

Right across from that point you can see the Montclair Hawk Lookout. Atop a 500-foot basalt ledge, it’s a stone-filled platform that is the site of a sanctuary of the New Jersey Audubon Society where birders gather to watch the migration mixture of both coastal and ridge flights in autumn.

After Mills Reservation, the yellow blazes lead you to a place where it combines with the West Essex Trail on the former Caldwell Branch of the Erie Railroad. You enter Verona on the old Erie Railroad line, hit some pavement, and go into Verona Park.

Verona Park was the fishing hole for my sons. Sunfish, stocked trout, catfish and even once a big carp that someone must have released. I spent many happy hours in that park with my boys.
Then, the trail moves into Eagle Rock Reservation passing the Eagle Rock lookout on the ridge of the First Watchung Mountain (AKA Orange Mountain). From that view of the New York Skyline, many people watched the Twin Towers fall on September 11, 2001. There is a memorial there now.

The trail goes under Interstate Highway 280 and follows power lines over the Second Watchung Mountain (AKA Preakness Mountain).

I read that a side trail is planned that would lead to South Mountain Reservation. That sanctuary between Orange Mountain and Preakness Mountain was where this urban kid tried out his Huck Finn fantasies.

South Mountain Reservation was my childhood forest. It is much bigger than Mills Reservation. I took my sons there too, but it wasn’t around the corner, so it wasn’t a big part of their childhood. It covers 2,047.14 acres between the first and second ridges of the Watchung Mountains.
In 1896, John Durand described the mountain that includes South Mountain Reservation as:

“a wilderness, as it probably existed at the time of Hendrick Hudson, a primitive forest abounding with deer and other wild animals, and traversed by streams alive with trout. Game was plentiful – partridges, quail, woodcock, rabbits, squirrels of every species, raccoons and foxes; while occasionally a hungry bear that had trespassed on the farmyards in the vicinity would be tracked to its den and shot.”

In 1680, wolves, bears, and cougars were observed in the area, and there was a bounty on them. As a kid, I saw them all. Well, I imagined I saw them all. I did see deer, and foxes and once I saw a porcupine. Sometimes these days a black bear is spotted.

I had my favorite places. Hemlock Falls and the smaller cascade Blackrock Falls were always rest stops when we were hiking or biking. At the far south end of the reservation, we used to go fishing at Diamond Mill Pond. There was bass there and the state would put trout in, but usually we were catching and releasing sunfish.

Another view of New York City there is a ridge called Washington Rock. A plaque there sent me to a history book as a kid. I had to check the facts again now.

It was from this outlook that, on June 23, 1780, Essex County and Newark Militia were first warned that the British had launched an attack westward toward “the Gap,” (now Hobart Gap), a natural pathway to Washington’s troops encamped at Morris Town. In a pincer movement designed to gain access to the Gap, Hessian troops fought bitterly along Vaux Hall Road, with the British advanced along Galloping Hill Road, until they were repelled, the Hessians at the base of the mountain and the British in Millburn—called Millville in those days. Washington Rock served again as a lookout for the Army when reactivated during the War of 1812.

The Lenape Trail also goes through Becker Park and a blue side trail goes to the Walter Kidde Dinosaur Park. This park has thousands of dinosaur tracks, including the smallest ones ever found.

Then the Lenape Trail continues west across the Morristown and Erie Railway tracks and passes under I-280 and continues along Hatfield Swamp and the Essex County Environmental Center before ending at the Patriots’ Path.

Continuing Along The Watchung Mountains

This post continues our virtual walk along the Watchung Mountains that we began in an earlier post with three more stops in Essex in Union Counties.

Eagle Rock as seen on a 1907 postcard

Continuing south through New Jersey, we come to Eagle Rock Reservation, on First Watchung Mountain. The Reservation is a 408.33-acre (165.25 ha) forest reserve and recreational park primarily in the communities of West Orange, Montclair, and Verona. The land is owned and administered by the Essex County Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs.

The reservation is named after the Eagle Rock, a bare rock looking down from the mountain, which marks the boundary between the towns of Montclair and West Orange, New Jersey. The Lenape Trail passes through the reservation.

Overlooking the Manhattan skyline is a memorial built in honor of those killed during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with the names of all who perished at the World Trade Center or on the two planes that crashed into the twin towers permanently inscribed in a marble memorial.

That particular day, I left my job when the planes hit and drove home past this reservation where cars were lined along the road and at the overlook as people could clearly see the burning and then collapsing towers to the east.

Check out the Eagle Rock Reservation Conservancy for more information including a map.

Campbell's Pond - South Mountain Reservation

Our next natural area is South Mountain Reservation which covers 2,047.14 acres (8 km²) in central Essex County, New Jersey, in portions of Maplewood, Millburn and West Orange, bordering South Orange, between the first and second ridges of the Watchung Mountains.

Wikipedia gives us some history of the area. In 1896, John Durand described the mountain that includes South Mountain Reservation as:

“a wilderness, as it probably existed at the time of Hendrick Hudson, a primitive forest abounding with deer and other wild animals, and traversed by streams alive with trout. Game was plentiful – partridges, quail, woodcock, rabbits, squirrels of every species, raccoons and foxes; while occasionally a hungry bear that had trespassed on the farmyards in the vicinity would be tracked to its den and shot.”

In 1680, wolves, bears and cougars were observed in the area, and there was a bounty on them.

The park has a Revolutionary War historic site at what is called Washington Rock. It dates back to the late 18th century when Beacon Signal Station 9 was located here. It was one of 23 beacons built by General George Washington to observe British troop movements quartered on Staten Island and New York City.

From this outlook on June 23, 1780, Essex County and Newark Militia were first warned that the British had launched an attack westward toward "the Gap," (Hobart Gap), a natural pathway to Washington's troops encamped at Morris Town. In a pincer movement designed to gain access to the Gap, Hessian troops fought bitterly along Vaux Hall Road, while the British advanced along Galloping Hill Road, until they were repelled, the Hessians at the base of the mountain and the British in Millville (now Millburn).

Washington Rock served again as a lookout for the Army when reactivated during the War of 1812.

The reservation has been well preserved and is primarily in a wild state today. Woodlands abound in a variety of hardwood trees, and tall hemlocks tower above streams, creeks and ponds. The west branch of the Rahway River flows through the valley. A reservoir and watershed owned by the City of Orange lies in the northern tract.

As a youngster, I spent many days wandering this reservation. Our family often took weekend drives that included a stop along Crest Drive which leads to Washington Rock and once led to the "deer paddock" where we would feed the deer.

The paddock is gone (but the deer have certainly thrived) and Crest Drive has been closed to vehicular traffic at the point of the old paddock, but visitors can take an easy walk down to Washington Rock.

Though many people know the area from South Orange Avenue south to Millburn as the Reservation, it extends farther north and includes the Turtle Back Zoo and the South Mountain Arena. The zoo's train rides through the woods along the Orange reservoir.

From different locations, there are vistas allowing views of New York City, Elizabeth, Union Township, and even Staten Island.

Hemlock Falls is one dramatic feature, and neighboring Blackrock Falls is another picturesque smaller cascade. A hike to Hemlock Falls is a moderate one and uses the Lenape Trail.

The reservation was built from land purchases that started in 1895. Frederick Law Olmsted visited the newly acquired reservation and said it was some of the most beautiful and promising terrain he had ever seen. The Olmsted Brothers designed the park in stages with much of the construction work of trails, footbridges, and shelters being done by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.

More at the South Mountain Conservancy 

Watchung Reservation is the largest park in Union County and it is bounded by the city of Summit, the borough of Mountainside, the townships of Berkeley Heights, Scotch Plains, and Springfield. The reservation consists mainly of the upper valley of Blue Brook, between the ridges of First Watchung Mountain and Second Watchung Mountain. A dam near the headwaters of the creek creates Lake Surprise.

The 1,945 acre (7.8 km²) parcel is forested, and the reservation is managed for the preservation of its natural resources, but it does contain playgrounds, golf courses, stables, and a museum within the reservation.

The most popular recreational activities in the reservation are hiking and horseback riding on its many trails. The county-owned Watchung Stables are located on a large cleared area in the eastern end of the park, and at the center is the Trailside area, a large park with picnic tables and playground equipment with the Trailside Nature and Science Center at the southern edge in Mountainside.

The land in the reservation is not as pristine and undeveloped as our earlier stops. In fact, an entire village, Feltville, once existed in the woods in the northwestern quadrant and recently became inhabited again.

One popular hike through the western reservation goes through a pine plantation planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the 1930s.

In the late 1950s, the U.S. Army built a Nike missile base here and operated it between 1957 and 1963 to defend the airways over New York City. It is now the site of the stables.

During the 1980s, NJDOT completed a section of Interstate 78 through the northern fringe of the reservation. An attempt was made to build "land bridges" to allow wildlife to travel safely between the split parts of the Reservation, but they failed to be successful.

A Reservation Map (pdf) is available along with more information at the Trailside Nature and Science Center.

On the Lenape Trail

Today is the Lenape34 trail hike. An organization called the FreeWalkers organized the "walk" of 34 miles on the Lenape Trail. It will go from 7 a.m. to about 7 p.m. The group hopes to call attention to the trail's revitalization effort.

I really wanted to participate, but it's a working day. I hoped to sneak away early and catch them along the trail but that wasn't possible. (read more about the hike and the trail)

The Lenape Trail has a 30 year history. Back in 1980, Al Kent, who had been a trail coordinator in Morris County but lived in West Orange, decided to try to establish the trail using existing paths.

The trail would use parkland, sidewalks along streets and some new pathways that were on lands used for power lines.

The name for the trail comes from the Native Americans who once lived and passed through part of Essex County and had actually had trails in the area some of which became roadways in colonial times. The Lenape's own trails ran through modern day Yanticaw, Branch Brook, South Mountain and other county parks.

The Lenape's own name for themselves (an autonym) is sometimes spelled Lennape or Lenapi, means "the people." They are also known as the Lenni Lenape (the "true people") or as the Delaware Indians. The latter is an English settler name for them. (The Delaware River was named after Lord De La Warr, the governor of the Jamestown settlement.) They used the same name above for almost all the natives living along the Delaware River and its tributaries.

I had connected with Kent and other volunteers back in the early 1980s when I was involved with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC). The group is an American nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that works with communities to preserve unused rail corridors by transforming them into rail trails within the United States of America.

The part of Essex County that I live in had just gotten some of that railbed property and was trying to decide how to use it best.

Unfortunately, because of a combination of community bureaucracy and homeowners along the proposed trails who feared the traffic, some of those sections are now forever lost as passive recreation space.

The mission of RTC is to create a nationwide network of trails from former rail lines and connecting corridors.

Today RTC is on a multi-year mission to map all rail trails with GPS devices. The 13,500 miles (21,700 km) of open and operating trails are the first priorities of this project with trails under construction or in the development phase coming next.

Recently, Nutley resident Steve Marano has been working to revitalize the trail. He has recruited volunteers who attended a trail maintenance workshop in late August. They walked along the path and have freshened the trail markers (blazes) that occur about every 50 to 100 feet. The trail blazes are on trees and on erected posts (bollards) on streets.

The amazing Al Kent, now 84, had been continuing to maintain the trail on his own all these years.

The volunteers hope to add hundreds of more durable and visible miniature aluminum signs to label the Lenape Trail. They have a $3,500 grant from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

Essex County has offered to help by placing maps of the trail in kiosks in county parks and installing poles where the Lenape signs can be placed. It's a wise decision to do so as it showcases a part of New Jersey that is often seen more as urban sprawl than a trailwalking opportunity.

The Lenape Trail is a trail connecting Newark, New Jersey with Roseland, New Jersey. It was established in 1982.

It is the fifth longest trail in the state behind the Delaware and Raritan Canal Trail, the Appalachian Trail, the completed section of the Highlands Trail in the state and the Batona Trail.

The Lenape trail traverses cities like Newark and its suburbs, but also the Watchung Mountains and the Passaic Meadows.

The rocky, steep slopes of the Watchung Mountains and the flood-prone nature of the Passaic Meadows has kept those two areas less developed than the rest of this part of the state.

Trails often intersect and overlap and the Lenape Trail is no exception. The Lenape Trail is part of the larger 156-mile Liberty Water Gap Trail, created by Kent in 2000.

It incorporates the West Essex Trail which is the Lenape Trail's only true "rail-to-trail" section that survived from those efforts we made in the 30 years ago.

The Lenape Trail also connects with the 14 mile Morris County Patriots Path trail system which runs from Bernardsville to Morristown.

The trail is one of 7 Northern NJ pathways that make up the Liberty Water Gap Trail. When the LWGT is completed, it will cover 130 miles from the Hudson River to the Delaware River. Hopefully, events like the Lenape34 walk will motivate groups to fill in the gaps in the trail system in their own neighborhoods.

Nutley's Yanticaw Park is a new section of the trail. The route connects 19 parks which makes up the majority (70%)of the trail. The remaining sections pass through more suburban settings.

Though this makes the trail less of a "wilderness" hike, it also offers walkers many historical and cultural sites to visit. Those include Ferry Street in the Ironbound section of Newark, Penn Station (access to buses and trains also allows walkers to pick up and leave the trail if a 34 mile "through hike" is too much for them), Military Park, The New Jersey Historical Society, NJPAC, the Newark Museum, Sydenham House (Newark's oldest house) and the beautiful Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Moving out of Newark, there is Kingsland Manor in Nutley, Kips Castle in Montclair, parts of the Morris Canal and the Riker Hill fossil site.

The Lenape Trail is scheduled to expand to the new Riverfront Park and branches off to alternative routes to Turtle Back Zoo and South Mountain Reservation.

Another group working to help the trail is the NY NJ Trail Conference. NYNJTC is a volunteer organization which works with parks to maintain the trails, and publish maps and guides to the metropolitan area's public footpaths.

MORE INFORMATION

www.lenapetrail.org

www.nynjtc.organd and their Lenape Trail information

www.railstotrails.org and their www.traillink.com

Lenape34 Trail Walk October 11th

The Lenape34 is a one-day 34-mile walk scheduled for Columbus Day, Monday, October 11, along the Lenape Trail in Essex County, NJ.

The FreeWalkers are organizing this walk to help support the 130-mile Liberty Water Gap Trail (LWGT) across the state, of which the Lenape Trail is a major segment.

I have written here before about the Lenape Trail which was part of the original home of the Lenni-Lenape Indians. They developed extensive trails in parts of today's Essex
in what are now Brookdale, Yantecaw and Branch Brook Parks.

Luckily, as urban as the county as become, it is also home to America's first park system which was established in 1895. There are still 17 parks and 5 reservations that cover more than 6,000 acres.

The Lenape Trail is 40 miles of walking and bike trails that links nineteen of Essex County's parklands. Those areas include a surprising diversity of terrains and includes mountain vistas, rivers and waterfalls, as well as manmade points of interest like museums, gardens, a cathedral, an environmental center, a zoo, a dog run, an archery course and a dinosaur fossil site.

The walk on October 11th is a total of 34 miles starting at the train station in Millburn, NJ and going across the marked trail into the South Mountain, Eagle Rock and Mills Reservations. It includes suburban towns such as Montclair, West Orange, Nutley, and Belleville, and ends in urban Newark.

There are alternatives for shorter segments, so you don't have to do the entire trail. A 34 mile "walk" is not something to take on lightly. The group has been taking practice walks along sections of the trail to prepare participants. There are also two train lines and several bus routes for mass transportation both to and from several points along the way.

As with all the walks by the group, this walk is free and everyone is invited.

Most of this trail is a major segment of the 130 mile Liberty Water Gap Trail, the 130-mile east-to-west trail across the entire state of New Jersey. The LWGT is sometimes called "the nation's most unique greenway."



LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION

• http://lenape34.org/
• http://www.libertygap.org
• http://freewalkers.org

Read About The Lenni-Lenape Indians

The Down River People of the Lenni-Lenape Indians
William Penn's Own Account of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians

NJ's Lenape and Liberty Water Gap Trails Presentation

Steve Marano, director of the Liberty Water Gap Trail Committee, and Ed Goodell, executive director of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, will talk about the importance of Essex County’s Lenape Trail to the completion of the Liberty Water Gap Trail.

The Lenape trail links together nearly all of Essex County’s parks from Newark to Roseland.

The Water Gap Trail is a 130-mile path from Liberty State Park to the Delaware Water Gap.

The free program is a special presentation on Tuesday night, May 18, 2010 at the Essex County Environmental Center at 7 p.m.   For information, call 973-228-8776.