Monument Trail

by Mary Jasch

View autumn's colorful foliage from the highest point in New Jersey at 1,803 feet at High Point State Park. Take a restful, back-to-nature walk with the rustling wind on this 3.7 mile Monument Trail loop.

The ridge-top walk on Kittatinny Mountain passes through the Dryden Kuser Natural Area, pretty woods and sunny outcrops, and offers fabulous views of three states with the mighty Delaware River weaving among them.

The first set of great views of the tri-state area is in the Monument's parking lot. To the Northwest across the Delaware Valley of Sussex County, New Jersey, Pike County, Pennsylvania and Port Jervis, New York, the Delaware River tumbles south between the three states on its way to the Atlantic. To the Southeast, farms and small towns spread across the New Jersey's Wallkill River Valley all the way to Orange County, New York.

The Monument building is closed until spring, 2006. Its facade and steps have recently been refurbished. This memorial to New Jersey veterans was built in 1930.

Walk to the far end of the parking lot and enter the woods on the red-green blazed Monument Trail. Windswept maples, oaks and pitch pine cover the ridgeline and form an arbor-like canopy over the gently descending path. There are black, red, chestnut, scrub, and white oaks.

You can see over the edges on both sides as you walk down the path on the crest. It feels like standing on the bow of a ship.

Places to view the countryside occur frequently on this narrow ridge. The maples are still green this year at the end of October, black cherry have dropped most of their yellow leaves, young hickory is turning yellow and green tufts of ferns and oak seedlings with wide leaves dot the forest floor.

Down into the yellow woods where, today, the only bear is a wooly bear, the wind's chatter softens. Skinny green-striped mountain maple and red maple rise beyond the moss-lined trail.

Go straight across a green-blazed trail, the Shawangunk Ridge Trail, that heads to New York. Cross a stream that feeds the nearby Cedar Swamp. Come to a fork in the path and a sign that says Monument Trail straight ahead. Go straight and stay on the red-green uphill.

At one viewpoint, a short path leads down to a strange sight - a planted Alberta spruce decorated with florist flowers and a small "tripod" rock, obviously assembled by a human. Back on the trail, which now ambles along the Delaware side of the mountain, the autumn wind blows eagerly.

The dirt path becomes rocky as it turns downhill. The forest is covered with boulders that had tumbled here with the glacier, their rounded surfaces encrusted with lichens. Cross an energetic stream that just one month ago was dry. Up past the blue dot trail, the Monument Trail goes straight over moss-lined rubble and stone stairs made by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, curving upward to the mountain top.

Come out of the woods by the nature center and turn left on the road. At the stop sign, with glacial Lake Marcia on the right, look to the Monument and follow it as if it were a beacon. Walk up Monument Drive edged in a boulder wall, created in the late 1920s when the land became state park. Before that, all that is High Point was the mountaintop estate of Colonel Anthony R. and Susie Dryden Kuser. A grove of native witchhazel blooms on the uphill side.

High Point State Park: 973-875-4800, www.njparksandforests.org

Getting There: Drive north on Route 23 above the town of Colesville. Turn left into the parking lot of the stone Park Office and pick up a map. Turn left out of the lot, then right onto Kuser Road. Follow the signs to the Monument and Monument Drive.

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