Enjoy the freedom of the great outdoors by visiting one of the many public access trails
across 21,000 acres of lands preserved by D&R Greenway Land Trust.
Your 2021 staycation can redefine Spectacular!
Our Open Space is Open!
Walk the Iron Mike Trail in any season. Learn more about Mike Snyder and how the Iron Mike Trail, in his honor and memory, came to be.
Read more about the Iron Mike Trail
Enjoy the Freedom of the Outdoors
2021 Is the Year of the Central Jersey Staycation!
The Coziest Thing You Can Do this Winter is Stay Home!
Iron Mike Trail
and
Greenway Meadows
IMPORTANT:
Remember social distancing – 6 feet for low-risk groups, and 10 feet
for high-risk groups (age 60 and/or with underlying health condition).
If the preserve is busy, be extra careful to maintain social distancing.
We all are in need of the outdoors for our health and well-being!
Hunting for deer population management is underway on D&R Greenway preserves. Wear bright colors, stay on trails, and keep pets on leash.
When you visit the Preserve, wear sturdy shoes, use sunscreen and bug spray. Pull up socks over long pants and consider lavender and rose geranium oils to repel ticks.
Pursue Your 2021 Wellness Goals
at Greenway Meadows, Princeton
This time of year, many of us are focusing on wellness goals for a new year, particularly after the challenges of 2020. Greenway Meadow park offers many wellness resources, come check it out!
Read more about Greenway Meadows
Enjoy the Freedom of the Outdoors
2021 Is the Year of the Central Jersey Staycation!
The Coziest Thing You Can Do this Winter is Stay Home!
Greenway Meadows
Your 2021 Wellness Destination
|
|
|
|
Greenway Meadows is a collection of almost five miles of trails and bike paths centered on Stony Brook, Greenway Meadows, and the J. Seward Johnson, Sr. Preserve.
The Stony Brook Trail currently runs from Route 206 in the southwest corner of Princeton Township to the pedestrian bridge across Stony Brook (1/2 mile), then along the east side of the brook to Rosedale Road (3/4 mile), continuing along the brook to the old trolley embankment (1/4 mile); then along the embankment to connect with the paved bike path to Elm Road in Princeton (1/2 mile). A spur runs from the bridge to the Hun School lower parking lot (0.3 mile). Note: this trail may be flooded occasionally after very heavy rains.
Greenway Meadows has almost 2 miles of paved and grassy trails in mostly open terrain, with lovely views from the eastern end, and connecting with the Stony Brook Trail at the western end.
Across Rosedale Road from the Johnson Education Center, the J. Seward Johnson, Sr. Woodlands Preserve provides another route connecting the Stony Brook Trail and the Trolley Line path and the Elm Road bike path.
You can view more info about Greenway Meadows and download a trail map HERE.
IMPORTANT:
Remember social distancing – 6 feet for low-risk groups, and 10 feet
for high-risk groups (age 60 and/or with underlying health condition).
If the preserve is busy, be extra careful to maintain social distancing.
We all are in need of the outdoors for our health and well-being!
Hunting for deer population management is underway on D&R Greenway preserves. Wear bright colors, stay on trails, and keep pets on leash.
When you visit the Preserve, wear sturdy shoes, use sunscreen and bug spray. Pull up socks over long pants and consider lavender and rose geranium oils to repel ticks.
Rockhopper and Dry Run Creek Trails
Lambertville
This winter hike takes you past an abandoned quarry and 18th-century oaks, bringing you shoulder-to-shoulder with Washington’s Army.
~~ River Towns Magazine, Winter 2020 Issue
Read more about Rockhopper and Dry Run Creek Trails in Lambertville
Enjoy the Freedom of the Outdoors
2020 Is the Year of the Central Jersey Staycation!
The Coziest Thing You Can Do this Winter is Stay Home!
Rockhopper and Dry Run Creek Trails
Read about the joy of winter hiking on D&R Greenway’s
Rockhopper and Dry Run Creek Trails in Lambertville
as featured in the Winter 2020 issue of
River Towns Magazine
Click the images to view
and download the story
Dry Run Creek Trail meanders through a preserved area of West Amwell Township, Hunterdon County. Hikers should stay on the marked trails and respect any private property signage along the way. Historic farms are located along Hunter Road and Woodens Lane that in some cases remain intact today. You can view more info about Dry Run Creek Trail and download a trail map HERE.
Rockhopper Trail passes through a rich and somewhat unusual landscape for this area of New Jersey. There are wonderful canopy trees, including white oaks that must date to the 18th century, as well as red oaks and beeches, mostly growing on the well-drained slopes. You can view more info about Rockhopper Trail and download a trail map HERE.
IMPORTANT:
Remember social distancing – 6 feet for low-risk groups, and 10 feet
for high-risk groups (age 60 and/or with underlying health condition).
If the preserve is busy, be extra careful to maintain social distancing.
We all are in need of the outdoors for our health and well-being!
Hunting for deer population management is underway on D&R Greenway preserves. Wear bright colors, stay on trails, and keep pets on leash.
When you visit the Preserve, wear sturdy shoes, use sunscreen and bug spray. Pull up socks over long pants and consider lavender and rose geranium oils to repel ticks.
St. Michaels Farm Preserve, Hopewell
At D&R Greenway’s St. Michaels Farm Preserve in Hopewell, visitors enjoy stunning sunsets throughout the year. As dusk falls, you might even catch fireflies — Go outside and see the sunset, do some stargazing, enjoy nature’s fireworks!
Read more about St. Michaels Farm Preserve
Enjoy the Freedom of the Outdoors
2020 Is the Year of the Central Jersey Staycation!
The Coolest Thing You Can Do this Summer is Stay Home!
St. Michaels Farm Preserve, Hopewell
At D&R Greenway’s St. Michaels Farm Preserve in Hopewell, visitors enjoy stunning sunsets throughout the year. As dusk falls, if you’re there soon, you might even catch fireflies, –nature’s fireworks. In 2010, these 415 bucolic acres were saved through intense community support, stretching well beyond Hopewell Borough and Township. On the preserve’s tenth anniversary, D&R Greenway launched the St. Michaels Farm Sharing Gardens. Crops are burgeoning on a rise above the vintage barn. For an audio tour celebrating historic and natural features on the 6 miles of trails, download to your smartphone free TravelStorys app.
IMPORTANT:
If the preserve is busy, be extra careful to maintain social distancing.
2020 is the Year of the Central Jersey Staycation!
Box turtle at home on D&R Greenway’s Kate’s Trail, off Elm Ridge Road in Mercer County. This wooded trail, named in memory of Katharine Wright Gorrie, is a perfect place for inspiring future naturalists. The terrestrial box turtle, a New Jersey Species of Special Concern, is right at home on Kate’s Trail. If you are lucky enough to see this turtle, don’t touch and leave it in its chosen habitat. Photograph by Cindy Taylor, D&R Greenway assistant director of Stewardship.
Read more about Central Jersey Staycations
Enjoy the Freedom of the Outdoors
2020 Is the Year of the Central Jersey Staycation!
The Coolest Thing You Can Do this Summer is Stay Home!
 |
 |
| D&R Greenway is part of Discover Central New Jersey. Click above for interactive map. | |
D&R Greenway and Discover Central New Jersey are collaborating with farmers, beverage makers, and restaurateurs on a staycation agritourism initiative this summer prominently featuring D&R Greenway preserved lands.
The new guide highlights Goat Hill Preserve, Greenway Meadows,
Sourland Ecosystem Preserve and St. Michaels Farm Preserve.
You’ll also find lots of historic sites, farms, and wineries that can be visited while staying outside. Our staycation effort is earning press coverage. Plan your staycation itinerary today!
“At D&R Greenway, ‘putting the garden back in the Garden State’ has been a motto for years. A silver lining of the pandemic is that more people are realizing the wisdom of our efforts. Local, organic food is important on so many levels. Visiting and patronizing local farms and wineries is a key way to ensure their viability over the long term.” – Linda Mead, President & CEO, D&R Greenway Land Trust
 |
| Grape leaves beginning to open a few weeks ago at Old York Cellars, located on preserved land in the shadow of the Sourlands in Ringoes, NJ. |
IMPORTANT:
If the preserve is busy, be extra careful to maintain social distancing.
Greenway Meadows, Princeton
The pollinator meadows are in fully bloom! Take a walk among orange butterfly milkweed and lavender bergamot, savor the Poetry Trail and experience nature’s inspiration on poets through the ages. Enjoy the shade of the 300-year old D&R Greenway oak, whose shape evokes memories of the original Mercer Oak.
Read more about Greenway Meadows
Enjoy the Freedom of the Outdoors
2020 Is the Year of the Central Jersey Staycation!
The Coolest Thing You Can Do this Summer is Stay Home!
Greenway Meadows
Come, take a walk among wildflower meadows, now in bloom with orange ‘butterfly milkweed’, as native bergamot creates a sea of lavender on the sloping hillside. Watch for nectaring butterflies among the wildflowers. Stroll alongside the towering evergreens, experiencing Forest Bathing. On the hill’s gentle crest, take in for sweeping views of Princeton Ridge and Hopewell’s Sourland Mountain to the west.
Listen along the way to tales of neighbors who have found healing in nature here, by downloading the free TravelStorys app to your smartphone. Savor the McVay Poetry Trail, experiencing the impact of nature upon poets through the ages. View D&R Greenway’s Native Plant Nursery, and visualize planting native trees, shrubs and perennial flowers to turn your home garden into nourishing habitat, come autumn. Walk around the Johnson Education Center, once Robert Wood Johnson’s working barn, now home to D&R Greenway Land Trust and its nature art galleries.
End your tour in Meredith Petersen’s Garden of Inspiration, where you’ll find outdoor sculpture and stone walls at the perfect height for a rest. Enjoy your socially-distanced picnic, shaded by the 300-year-old D&R Greenway Oak, whose noble shape evokes the original Mercer Oak.
Listen to the silence of yesteryear as you stroll—in season—serenaded by birds and even hearing bees, thriving, as you will, in this ideal habitat.
IMPORTANT:
If the preserve is busy, be extra careful to maintain social distancing.
Sourlands Ecosystem Preserve, East Amwell & Hopewell Township
Many people credit the rocky terrain of the Sourlands for preventing development over the last two centuries. Did you know it’s a favorite place for “bouldering”? The rocks in the area are diabase and igneous argillite. Both are very hard and non-porous. Called “basaltic intrusion”, they are the result of an intrusion of the earth’s magma into the soil formation. Come take a walk, or bring your climbing shoes!
Read more about Sourlands Ecosystem Preserve
Enjoy the Freedom of the Outdoors
2020 Is the Year of the Central Jersey Staycation!
The Coolest Thing You Can Do this Summer is Stay Home!
Sourlands Ecosystem Preserve
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.” Robert Frost in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
More than 3,000 acres welcome you at D&R Greenway’s Sourlands Ecosystem Preserve. Experience this cool, deep forest here in your backyard. The largest contiguous woodlands in the center of the State, the Sourlands have been called New Jersey’s “Central Park.” Discover weathered basalt rocks that once hid Revolutionaries. Find “Knitting Betty Rock.” Listen to the soothing babbling of Stony Brook’s headwaters. Stroll over mossy rocks along the stream.
D&R Greenway has already facilitated the preservation of more than 3,400 acres in the Sourlands and is a leading partner with state, county and municipal officials, and private landowners, to continue preservation of this region.
Click for more information and download a larger map
The forested tract is dominated by such species as American beech, shagbark hickory, black birch, red maple and tuliptree. Beneath the upper canopy, look for spicebush, viburnum, sassafras and dogwood. A wide variety of ferns such as Christmas fern and plants like jack-in-the-pulpit can be found along the forest floor.
The unbroken stretch of forest is prime habitat for forest interior birds. Ovenbirds, wood thrushes, Eastern wood pee-wee, veery and Eastern towhee are just a few birds that can be seen and heard in the forest. Other common birds include downy and red-bellied woodpeckers as well as wild turkey and great horned owls. Wet days are ideal for amphibians like green, pickerel and wood frogs as well as reptiles like box turtles. Mammals are also abundant including white-tailed deer, woodchuck, raccoon and opossum.
If children are with you, remind them of Mole’s decision in Kenneth Graham’s Wind in the Willows, “One afternoon, … he formed the resolution to go out by himself and explore the Wild Wood.” Salamanders, fox and even bear are found in this “reservoir of Central New Jersey biodiversity.” More than 150 species of birds arrive here from Mexico and Guatemala during spring migration, many nesting here now. In August, you will be treated to the notorious cacophony of “Teacher, teacher, TEACHER!”, from the male ovenbird high overhead.
Click Here to learn more about the deep forest species of the Sourlands.
IMPORTANT:
If the preserve is busy, be extra careful to maintain social distancing.
The Omick Woods at Rocktown Preserve in East Amwell at the western end of the Sourlands in Hunterdon County
Omick Woods itself is an absolute gem: picturesque stream crossings, like being in a fairy dell, a lovely view at the lookout point and a well marked and maintained trail. Thank you for all you do to preserve open space in New Jersey. Hats off!!
~~ Fay Lachmann, Hip Hikers group
Read more about Omick Woods at Rocktown Preserve
Enjoy the Freedom of the Outdoors
2020 Is the Year of the Central Jersey Staycation!
The Coziest Thing You Can Do this Fall is Stay Home!
The Omick Woods at Rocktown Preserve in East Amwell
at the western end of the Sourlands in Hunterdon County
Omick Woods at Rocktown Preserve in East Amwell is a lovely place to visit as summer turns to fall in the Sourlands. Park off Rocktown Road, east of Route 31.
The trail makes a loop, with a stem from the parking lot on Rocktown Road, just west of the T intersection with Mountain Road, north to a small wooden bridge over a tributary of Back Brook. Just after the bridge, the trail goes east and west. The eastern path crosses the brook twice, then heads north and climbs a ridge to a broad view of the Amwell Valley with the edge of the Hunterdon plateau on the horizon. Now heading downhill and southwest, the trail connects to a stub over an historic earthern dam, ending with a view down to a brook which has cut a breach in the dam, leaving a marsh where there was an historic mill pond. The main trail heads generally south back to the bridge at the end of the stem.
Since its early settlement, much of the Sourland Region was farmed in some way. Farmers raised crops, pastured herds, and tended orchards in the fertile Amwell Valley, and woodlots on the ridge supplied those farmers. The Preserve is crisscrossed with old stone walls marking field and property boundaries. The oldest trees in the Preserve are found along those walls and in forested wetlands.
The trail makes a 1.5 mile loop. The eastern side of the loop has two stone crossings of the brook, reaching a high overlook with a broad view to the north over the Valley. Heading southwest, the trail descends to an old dam.
D&R Greenway spearheaded preservation of this land, securing all funds and negotiating its purchase from Gladys Omick, and worked in partnership with East Amwell to create this trail.
Recently, Peggy Lester Pitcher commented, “My grandparent’s farm! I had the privilege of walking all over that farm; remembering “ice house hill” and seeing the pond; the open fields were overgrown at that time (1965) but rock walls were still in place. Jim Omick’s aunt Alvah lived in the farm house at the time. It’s too bad the farm house did not survive. Just past the farmhouse, headed towards Ringoes is a lane on the right and that is where Dawlis Mill was located, interestingly enough, at one time, owned by Jim’s (and my) 2x great grandfather. We’re not even sure if the family knew this as another cousin found this out doing research just this past year. So glad Jim’s wife, Gladys decided to do this! Keep it green and open to the public, always!
Some Reflections on Autumn
Only lovers
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed
that we begin to stop
in order simply
to begin
again.
– Maya Angelou
As long as autumn lasts,
I shall not have hands,
canvas and colors enough
to paint the beautiful things I see.
– Vincent Van Gogh
I am struck by the simplicity of light
in the atmosphere in the autumn,
as if the earth absorbed none,
and out of this profusion
of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.
– Henry David Thoreau
IMPORTANT:
Remember social distancing – 6 feet for low-risk groups, and 10 feet
for high-risk groups (age 60 and/or with underlying health condition).
If the preserve is busy, be extra careful to maintain social distancing.
We all are in need of the outdoors for our health and well-being!
Hunting for deer population management is underway on D&R Greenway preserves. Wear bright colors, stay on trails, and keep pets on leash.
When you visit the Preserve, wear sturdy shoes, use sunscreen and bug spray. Pull up socks over long pants and consider lavender and rose geranium oils to repel ticks.
Dry Run Creek Trail
This trail near Lambertville meanders along the top of a steep-sided vall
ey with views of an old stone wall, ancient oaks and ferns. It crosses three rustic bridges including the Arthur and Marilyn Sales Bridge named by a daughter for her parents.
Read More about Dry Creek Run
Enjoy the Freedom of the Outdoors
2020 Is the Year of the Central Jersey Staycation!
The Coolest Thing You Can Do this Summer is Stay Home!
Dry Run Creek Trail
 |
|
This rustic Arthur and Marilyn Sales Bridge at Dry Creek Run was named by a daughter for her parents.
|
 |
| Dedication of newly designed D&R Greenway kiosks at Dry Run Creek. Shown above (l-r) are Cindy Taylor, assistant director of stewardship, former board member Alan Hershey, and Deb Brockway, honored as a volunteer trail builder. |
IMPORTANT:
If the preserve is busy, be extra careful to maintain social distancing.
