High Point State Park

This corner of New Jersey has long been high, wild country. It lies within the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people, whose descendants today include the Ramapough Lenape Nation, the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape, and the Powhatan Renape communities. For generations the Kittatinny Ridge, whose name means endless hills, formed a natural highway and boundary across the region.

The park owes its existence to the generosity of Anthony and Susie Kuser, a wealthy couple who owned a resort and much of the summit land in the early twentieth century. In 1923 they donated the property to the state to be preserved as a public park, and they commissioned the great stone monument that crowns it. Completed in 1930, the obelisk was built to honor the state's war veterans and was modeled loosely on the Washington Monument, and it remains the tallest structure of its kind in New Jersey.

The High Point Monument is a tapering obelisk faced in local quartzite and granite, rising 220 feet from the summit. A stairway climbs its hollow interior to a small observation area near the top, and from there, or simply from the base, the reward is one of the widest views in the state. On a clear day the eye travels over the Pocono ridges of Pennsylvania, the rolling farmland and reservoirs of New York, and the long green wave of the Kittatinny running south.

The summit is an exposed, breezy place, cooler and windier than the valleys below, and the light shifts dramatically with the weather. At dawn and dusk the ridges fade into layered blue silhouettes, and after a storm the air can turn crystalline, extending the view for many miles. It is a spot that rewards patience and a clear sky.

Below the monument the park spreads across a large tract of Kittatinny forest, oak and maple on the slopes giving way to a rare surviving cedar swamp in a cool, boggy hollow, a remnant of a colder age preserved as a natural area. Lake Marcia, a spring-fed pond near the summit, offers a beach for swimming, and quieter waters draw paddlers and anglers.

The park is threaded with trails for every ability, from gentle loops around the lakes to steep, rocky climbs along the ridge. The Appalachian Trail passes through on its long journey from Georgia to Maine, and hikers on it cross this high New Jersey ground on their way north or south. In winter, when snow holds on the ridge, some of the trails serve cross-country skiers.

Spring comes late to the high ridge, with wildflowers, migrating birds, and the forest slowly leafing out after the valleys have already turned green. It is a quiet, fresh time to hike before the summer crowds.

Summer draws swimmers to Lake Marcia and hikers to the cooler heights, where the ridge breeze offers relief from valley heat. Autumn is the showpiece season, when the surrounding hills flame with color and the long view from the monument becomes a sea of red and gold. Winter is cold, snowy, and starkly beautiful, though the summit road and some trails may close, and the exposed ridge demands warm layers.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.