The Whole of the Highlands Donut

The Whole of the Highlands Donut

by Mary Jasch

From the parking lot on Split Rock Road in Rockaway Township, New Jersey, a group of people interested in this land's preservation climbs into the woods without trail over rock, moss and ferns. They pick up the blue trail with sharp rises over rocky hillsides and views to fight for.

Standing on a boulder overlooking the Highlands' valleys and hills, they think of more than one man's gift to the souls of every generation who may pass here. It took a tribe to make this happen - of like minded people and organizations: The Trust for Public Land, The Morris Land Conservancy, the state Department of Environmental Protection, Morris County, Rockaway Township and the Forest Legacy Program.

At $6.12 million this 525 acres is “the hole of the donut," as Trust for Public Land NJ field office director Terrence Nolan states. The wilds of Farny State Park, Wildcat Ridge Wildlife Management Area, and the reservoir surround it. Now the state will manage it.

The nearby ridges are not named - a surprise in this crowded state - except for Lone Pine Ridge, named after its sole pine tree.

Alongside the trail, a swift-moving stream is nothing but the finest and named both Category 1 and FW1 Trout Production. The Beaver Brook, a primary feeder to the reservoir, joins the Rockaway River on its way to the Boonton Reservoir. For over 100 years Split Rock Reservoir has been Boonton's never-used back-up.

In May, blueberries and mountain laurel bloom and in spring and fall, raptors heavily migrate. Stream-side iron smelting furnaces over 300 years old still stand tucked in the hills. That must say something about the local rock and the men who built them.

Back in the 1970s Herman “Kip" Koehler bought the land from a corporation on a whim, says David Epstein, executive director of Morris Land Conservancy, and lived there with his family.

“He bought it to hunt and fish and enjoy it," he says. “In 1994, his brother Ben joined the Board of Trustees. He introduced me and Kip in '95 and I worked with him for a year and a half to try to preserve it. In '96 he allowed us to put in a trail. It was a big concession to allow us to do that. He was dying of cancer, and it was a show of good faith. He passed away a month later. It was a big loss. The family never wavered from his commitment to see this land preserved."

The state bought the 2,500-acre Wildcat Ridge in 1994 from a golf course developer. Two years later the Morris Land Conservancy and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference built the blue trail around the reservoir together to connect the publicly-owned properties that comprise the Farny Highlands Trail Network.

The Koehler land is the 12th piece of this land's puzzle now totaling over 3,700 acres - quite a legacy.

Trust for Public Land
Morris Land Conservancy
Forest Legacy Program
NJ Department of Environmental Protection

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