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Best Walking in New Jersey

This list represents the most popular walking in New Jersey (learn more about Top Trails). Use this list to plan your next New Jersey walking trip. Select a state and/or activity below to find even more top trails.

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#1. Mount Tammany

  
The Kittatinny Ridge (meaning “Endless Mountain” in the Lenape Native American language) comes to an abrupt, spectacular end at Mount Tammany. The 1,527-foot ridge plunges 1,200 feet into the Delaware…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Jacksonburg , NJ - Hiking - 3.5 miles    Best Trail in NJ - Click to view all (About Top Trails)
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#2. Apple Pie Hill Fire Tower

  
There are no natural vistas from which to overlook the vast pine and oak wildlands overlaying the Cohansey formation aquifer. But 205-foot-high Apple Pie Hill with its firetower offers a stunning man-…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Tabernacle , NJ - Hiking - 8 miles    Best Trail in NJ - Click to view all (About Top Trails)
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#3. Beaver Brook Trail

  
This rugged, 6.2-mile-out-and-back hike ascends to a beaver colony. While the animals are nocturnal, daytime visitors will be rewarded with proof of the beavers’ engineering feats. The hike also climb…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Marcella , NJ - Hiking - 6.2 miles    Best Trail in NJ - Click to view all (About Top Trails)
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#4. Terrace Pond

  
Twelve thousand years ago, a tundra environment of lichen, moss, dwarf birch, and Arctic willow existed around the pond. Browsing mastodon and caribou may have drunk from its waters, while saber-tooth…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Butler , NJ - Hiking - 4 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#5. Great Falls of the Passaic River

  
Two hundred million years ago lava surged out onto the surface of the earth in eastern New Jersey, burying Piedmont sandstone and tropical jungles. That forty-story-high magma wall cooled into erosion…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Paterson , NJ - Walking - 1.5 miles    BestWalking Trail - Click to view all (About Top Trails)
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#6. Bearfort Ridge Fire Tower

  
This rugged, 3.6-mile-out-and-back hike follows a short section of the Highlands Trail to a state firetower with sweeping views. The Highlands Trail is a joint project of the New Jersey Conservation F…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Butler , NJ - Hiking - 3.6 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#7. Parvin State Park

  
Where habitats collide, botanical and biological diversity rules. In Parvin State Park, northern and southern ecosystems meet in a preserve that lies just below the Mason-Dixon Line. Here oak-pine upl…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Centerton , NJ - Hiking - 4.6 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#8. Tripod Rock and Bear Rock

  
Just north of Morristown’s suburban sprawl, a series of low ridges rises to nine hundred feet above sea level. These Highlands summits, separated by narrow valleys, have remained sparsely settled for…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Boonton , NJ - Hiking - 3 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#9. Wyanoke High Point

  
Tramping clubs organized and blazed formal trails to favorite spots. In 1912, the New York chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club laid claim to the Wyanokie Highlands, a jumble of small peaks twenty…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Ringwood , NJ - Hiking - 3.1 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#10. Delaware & Raritan Canal State Park: Kingston to Rocky Hill

  
The red shale, sandstone, and argillite formations of the Piedmont, stretching between Trenton and New Brunswick, rise to a mere 57 feet above sea level. This so-called “narrow waist” of New Jersey— j…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Kingston , NJ - Hiking - 4 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#11. The Palisades, Bombay Hook

  
Visitors to Palisade picnic groves in 1910 could shut their eyes and enjoy a symphony of immigrant voices. Scents of boiled cabbage, sauerbraten, and falafel floated on summer air beside the Hudson. T…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Alpine , NJ - Hiking - 5.5 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#12. Four Birds Trail

  
The Farny Highlands is a rugged and wild 35,000-acre watershed that lies only a few miles north of where Interstate 80 pierces the New Jersey Highlands. This jumble of Precambrian gneiss cliffs, scour…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Marcella , NJ - Hiking - 5.6 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#13. Rancocas Nature Center of the New Jersey Audubon Society

  
State parks are spread thin along the overdeveloped Inner Coastal Plain. But one struggling park, Rancocas, has allied itself with the nonprofit New Jersey Audubon Society. When budget cuts in the 197…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Mount Holly , NJ - Hiking - 1.5 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#14. Long Pond Ironworks State Park

  
Today, casual visitors to the Long Pond Ironworks find an idyllic setting, where nineteenth-century homes and furnace ruins are framed by sycamores and sugar maples. In truth, this was the town of Hew…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Ringwood , NJ - Hiking - 3 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#15. Cape May Point State Park

  
A late-summer cold front blasts out of the northwest, and in the dark of night all across the northern U.S. and Canada, birds take flight. By September up to 12 million per evening appear on airport r…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Cape May , NJ - Hiking - 2 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#16. Island Beach State Park

  
Island Beach State Park (ten miles long but just a few hundred yards wide) protects one of the best unspoiled barrier island ecosystems on the North Atlantic. Unburdened by boardwalks and beach houses…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Seaside Park , NJ - Hiking - 4.1 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#17. Holmdel Park and Longstreet Farm

  
Sitting astride a cuesta in Monmouth County is Holmdel Park, the site of Longstreet Farm. Established in 1775 as a subsistence farm growing all its own produce, it had by 1890 shifted to the harvestin…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Holmdel , NJ - Hiking - 5.1 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#18. Merrill Creek Reservoir

  
A contemporary visitor to Merrill Creek views the placid, sun-dappled surface of a 16-billion-gallon lake encircled by forest and field atop Scotts Mountain. But this is my home ground, where I wander…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Hope , NJ - Hiking - 4.1 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#19. Monument Trail

  
The tough Shawangunk conglomerate that forms the backbone of the Kittatinny Ridge was born in the deposition of sand and gravel by streams 440 million years ago. These formations compressed, folded, f…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Sussex , NJ - Hiking - 3.5 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

#20. Millbrook Village and Van Campens Glen

  
The fertile bottomlands of the Upper Delaware River Valley have been shaped by farm life for untold generations. Native Americans cultivated pumpkins, squash, beans, and maize in the soft soils of riv…
From the guidebook "Nature Walks in New Jersey"
Millbrook Village , NJ - Hiking - 5.1 miles   
Published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books

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