The New York-New Jersey Trail Conference and the Highlands

In 1920, the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference (NYNJTC) was formed to encourage hiking and to organize the creation and maintenance of hiking trails in the metropolitan area. Today, the NYNJTC and its 100 affiliated hiking organizations have over 10,000 active members who walk the trails in New Jersey. The NYNJTC maintains more than 400 miles of Jersey Highlands trails in three maintenance districts, and publishes maps of northern Highlands trails from the New York-New Jersey border to NJ Route 23. It also has committed its resources to land acquisition, public advocacy of wilderness conservation, and education for hiking and other forms of passive recreation. The NYNJTC is a founding member of the Highlands Coalition, the advocacy group that helped promote New Jersey’s Highlands Water Protection and Planning Act of 2004. The publication of Hiking the Jersey Highlands supports the Conference’s education program by introducing the public to the outdoor recreation resources of the Highlands. 

The Highlands Trail

Trail, which was designated New Jersey’s Legacy Millennium Trail in 1999 under a nationwide program initiated by the administration of President Bill Clinton to encourage outdoor recreation. The Highlands Trail begins near Storm King Mountain in New York State. It enters New Jersey on Big Beech Mountain in Passaic County (Hike #21) and continues 110 miles toward the Delaware River near Phillipsburg.

Many of the hikes in this book have been selected because they follow parts of the Highlands Trail, and our description of the Highlands Trail will refer to those hikes. Our descriptions of sections of the trail not covered by our numbered hikes will be sufficiently detailed to direct the hiker through turns and intersections. We provide a small scale overall map of the trail, but for more detailed maps and continuous trail directions, the hiker should go to the website of the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, www.nynjtc.org, and click the “trails” button.