Browns Point Park in West Milford features a playground, picnic tables, woods and beautiful Greenwood Lake shoreline in addition to almost three and a half acres of wetlands. The park, located on the southwestern side of Greenwood Lake, has the Lake to the north and east, Belcher’s Creek to the west and Greenwood Lake Turnpike to the south.
Flora includes: Red Maple, Red Oak, Black Cherry, Virginia Creeper, Jewelweed among others.
Greenwood Lake
Browns Point Park includes Frisbee golf or otherwise known as disc golf which is set up throughout the park.
Frisbee Golf
And this Mute Swan below apparently wanted to play some frisbee golf but, alas, no one was around to play.
Nobody wants to play with me
Apparently someone wanted to make peace after badly beating someone at a game of frisbee golf.
Peace Brother
Brown’s Point park is located off of Greenwood Lake Turnpike near A&P in the Hewitt section of West Milford.
Sometimes just finding a forest where you would not expect one is it’s own reward. Such is the case with Diamond Brook Park in Glen Rock.
Diamond Brook Park consists of an estimated 15 acres of remnant deciduous wooded wetlands. The park has Diamond Brook to its west, NJ Transit tracks to its east, Route 208 to its south and dense residential development to its north.
The park features three trails. Eagle Scouts help to maintain the trails. The red is .4 of a mile, yellow is .13 of a mile and blue is .21 of a mile. The yellow trail experiences seasonal flooding depending on the time of year you visit. The blue trail leads to an old railroad freight train turntable (used to rotate freight cars) which was once the largest turntable east of the Mississippi River. The freight turntable was used by the Erie Railroad company until a fire occurred in 1912. The land was not used again for 40 years except for displaced residents who inhabited the forest during the Great Depression. The land was sold to the town of Glen Rock in 1954 and was formally dedicated in 1959.
One of the cool things I found in this suburban forest was ground pine-something I have not yet seen outside the deep forest.
Ground Pine
Dense beds of skunk cabbage appear every spring. Black Bears, which love skunk cabbage, would have a feast. Speaking of bears, fauna that has been spotted in Diamond Brook Park include deer, red fox, woodchucks, chipmunks and raccoons.
Diamond Brook, a subsidiary of the Passaic River, flows on the western border of the park. The brook is spring fed with its headwaters located north of Glen Rock in Ridgewood. The brook follows a winding two mile course before its confluence with the Passaic River. Diamond Brook was once called Bass Brook due to the good fishing that was once found there. In the 1870′s, the Marinus Lumber Mill built a water wheel on the brook. When the mill was later torned down, the water wheel was buried beneath a street and is still there today.
Diamond Brook
Diamond Brook Park is located at the end of Doremus Avenue and West Main Street in Glen Rock. The park is part of Glen Rock’s Greenway. This cool little forest is a wonderful gem for the borough of Glen Rock.
The Oscar E. Olsen Park consists of the largest remaining open space in Bogota and should be considered it’s crown jewel.
Oscar E Olsen Park
It was built on former swampland adjacent to the Hackensack River. A lot of work has been done to this park since I last walked around it. The first thing that greeted me as soon as I got out of my car was this bald eagle flying over the Hackensack River.
Bald Eagle over Hackensack River
When I visited there was still a lot of snow. Even the infamous “bridge to nowhere” was covered. The bridge to nowhere is a raised boardwalk right next to the Hackensack River. A lot of people thought it was a waste of tax payer money when it was built.
It may lead to nowhere but you can see some cool views like the submarine USS Ling:
USS Ling with Bergen County Courthouse in background
Plus the Meadowlands Commission added some signs o’education on the bridge. And don’t worry-the signs themselves are not blurry, just this picture.
There is a pathway which extends from the bridge that encircles the park. It’s a pretty cool park to explore.
Directions:
From NYC: Go West over the George Washington Bridge; Route 4 west; get off at the exit for River Road just before the bridge over the Hackensack River. Head south on River Road. At the junction with West Main Street on the left, turn right. On the left is an entrance for the park.
Ridgewood’s Dunham trail is roughly .41 of a mile and cuts through an estimated combination of 9.61 acres of deciduous forest and wooded wetlands. The trail is named after Dr. Dunham who was a nature consultant for the Ridgewood school district. The Dunham trail is owned by the village and maintained by the Ridgewood Wildscape Association as one of six wildscape areas found in the village. The Ridgewood Wildscape Association helps to raise awareness for the remaining natural areas in the township.
Ho-Ho-Kus Brook
The trail is bordered by the Ho-Ho-Kus brook to the east, dense residential development to the west, Grove Street to the south and Spring Ave to the north.
The Dunham trail is flat and follows the artificial path of the Ho-Ho-Kus Brook (a tributary of the Saddle River) for its entire length and features uplands and an estimated 3.6 acres of remnant wetlands. The wetlands are found near the Grove Street entrance.
Some notes of interest on the trail include sandstone which was mined from Totowa which was placed alongside of the Dunham Trail for unknown reasons.
Sandstones mined from Totowa
The trail also features several massive American Sycamores that are at least two hundred years old.
Massive American Sycamore
Other flora includes:
Trout Lily
Common Blue Violet
American Beech
Grape vine
Yellow Wood Sorrel
Jack-in-the-Pulpit
Silver Maple
Animals that have been observed on the Dunham Trail include
Eastern Gray Squirrel
White Tail Deer
Red Fox
Raccoon
Mallards
Mallard on Ho-Ho-Kus Brook
Downy Woodpecker
The Dunham trail ends at Spring Avenue.
Ridgewood Dunham Trail
The Dunham trail is located between Grove Street and Spring Avenue along the Ho Ho Kus brook and the public service right-of-way. Parking is available on South Irving Street.
Feel free to e-mail NJUrbanForest at NJUrbanForest@gmail.com with any comments, memories or suggestion! Thank you and have fun exploring!
“As far as the Blowout of trees is concerned, the fallen trees should simply be left in place. Except of course those that fell from the County’s land onto homeowner’s property. The event was a natural event, an act of God / act of nature. This is a nature preserve. This is something that would have happened if no humans existed on the planet. Just leave it be. Don’t cut them up into small logs, that would be unnatural. We don’t want anything unnatural in the woods. The purpose of a nature preserve is to experience and to learn about nature. As upsetting as it is, a blowout of trees is part of nature. And it is part of what an old-growth forest is about. Therefore it is part of what visitors should see.”
Most of the trees that fell were mature 200 year American Beech Trees. It appears most of the damage occurred in the southeast corner of the preserve.
The Matthew Feldman Nature Preserve is located in Teaneck, New Jersey and consists of 14.9 acres of deciduous wooded wetlands and upland habitat. The preserve is bordered by Roemer Avenue to the north and dense residential development to the east, west and south.
Matthew Feldman Nature Preserve
The Matthew Feldman Nature Preserve was once called Roemer woods due to its proximity to Roemer Avenue. The preserve was targeted for single family homes construction to bring in tax ratables for Teaneck. The construction of the homes never materialized. Four acres of woods were sold to the North Teaneck Synagogue Association which constructed a Synagogue there in 1992.
In 2009 I decided to take a trip to the 14.9 Acre Matthew Feldman Nature Preserve in Teaneck. I had read that there was a trail called the Thomas Condit Instructive Nature Trail via this website:
It took two separate trips before I finally located what appears to be the Thomas Condit nature trail. On the first attempt, I parked my car on Winthrop Road and walked to River Road up to Roemer Avenue but could not find a trail leading into the forest.
After researching online I discovered that the entrance to the trails is located off of Winthrop Road where I had parked my car. Looking at the map on the internet at home I realized I had parked too close to River Road to have seen the trail entrance. I drove back to Winthrop Road and found a sidewalk with a Thomas Condit Trail sign leading into the woods.
The Thomas Condit trail consists of a cement/boardwalk path leading from Winthrop Road to the Congregation Keter Torah. There does not appear to be any description or instructive information present on this pathway.
For days, it seemed whenever I brought my camera with me to Central Park I could never capture this Wood Duck seen above with his feeding girlfriend. But as you can see, I got him after all. In fact, I caught a couple of other birds on film today including a little thug (aka European Starling) and an American Snobin (Sorry American Robin, couldn’t help it-bird always has his beak in the air and thinks he is something).
It was good times. Good times that is until I got home and logged into Northjersey.com and discovered that a swath of trees have been clear cut in the Glen Rock portion of Saddle River Park for a sports field. I mean come on, Bergen County needs every tree it has left. I am flabbergasted.
I got out of work early today and headed right to Morris County’s Silas Condict Park for a nice walk. Optimistically I put on sneakers given that the temperature was like in the sixties. But, alas, not warm enough to melt the barrage of snow that fell recently as evident below.
So my sneakers and socks got a little wet. No biggie especially when wet socks lead to a view like this:
May be a little blurry but well worth it. Took lots of pictures and had a pleasant peaceful walk in the woods.
Watching the sky changes colors was a nice change of pace. It really was good stuff.
The purpose of NJ Urban Forest is about raising awareness for the natural beauty that can be found right in your own backyard. Most people today are concerned with the Amazon and other far away wild lands being decimated but seem oddly unaware about the destruction of the forest in their own backyard. Tax Ratables are often king more than not it seems. Open space is the best ratable. NJ is the most populated state in the country and should preserve it’s remaining natural areas.
Feel free to e-mail NJUrbanForest at NJUrbanForest@gmail.com with any comments, memories or suggestion! Thank you and have fun exploring!
In fact, I caught a couple of other birds on film today including a little thug (aka 
