New Jersey

For more than 20 years, local conservationists have sought to protect the Baker Firestone property in the New Jersey Highlands.

In 2016, The Trust for Public Land protected the headwaters of Bear Swamp Creek in Burlington County. The property’s longtime owners might have built a subdivision, but were hampered by strict regulations meant to safeguard the region’s drinking water and natural character.

When a residential subdivision was proposed for the site in 2010, The Trust for Public Land helped purchase this former private campground on the banks of the Toms River to protect it from development.

Cooper’s Poynt Family School is a public elementary school that serves families in a predominantly low-income neighborhood in North Camden. Once a cracked asphalt lot with two basketball hoops, The Trust for Public Land worked with the school community to reinvent the barren schoolyard. Now it’s a bold play space, with colorful new equipment and porous pavement.

In 2002, TPL helped a New Jersey nonprofit acquire a 37-acre day camp to offer animal-assisted therapy for children exposed to domestic violence, emotional abuse, divorce, or drug or alcohol abuse.

In late 2001, TPL purchased 1,044 acres in Ocean County, New Jersey for an addition to Double Trouble State Park, linking it to the Crossley Preserve and the Greenwood Wildlife Management Area.

Several Morristown gardeners founded the nonprofit Grow It Green Morristown (GIGM) and created a community garden on a small vacant lot. In June 2013, The Trust for Public Land helped the town of Morristown purchase and permanently protect the garden.

What would you do if an approved development in your town threatened to overwhelm the scenic landscape of a much-loved local farm with offices, stores, and 590 residences? That’s the crisis that faced rural Andover Borough in Sussex County several years ago.

In late October 2007, TPL conserved this 19.9-acre island located in the Shrewsbury River, which drains into the Raritan Bay.

In October, 2005 TPL helped protect 35 acres that inspired Walt Whitman. The poet composed the last part of Leaves of Grass while staying at historic Indian Spring.

In April of 2001, Voorhees Township, acquired a 49-acre former asphalt plant with plans to turn the majority of the property into an expansive "great lawn" for public use. This project was TPL's first acquisition for Camden County using its Open Space Trust Fund.

In October 2004, TPL worked to purchase and preserve the land and the 12-acre lake to protect water quality and maintain the rural character of the area.

For more than 70 years, the Lighthouse Camp on the Barnegat Bay was a summer retreat for the blind and multiply-handicapped. When the camp was closed, owner Lighthouse International worked with TPL to protect the 90-acre site and to find an alternative use for the camp's 27 buildings in August 2000.

For years, the more than 1,000 students at McKinley Elementary School in Newark's Central Ward, had nothing but a virtual wasteland of asphalt for a playground. The new two-acre park that opened in 2003 includes a track, basketball court, grass playing field, swings and play equipment that is available to students and the community.

In 2002, the community organized to clean up and reclaim this park. Working with neighbors, the city, the school, and the broader community, TPL raised funds for park reconstruction and worked with students, teachers, and area residents to design a new park, which re-opened in the fall of 2005.

In 2008, TPL negotiated the purchase of 112 acres for a township park that will include athletic fields and nature trails. The building and grounds will continue to serve as a school and conference and retreat center for priests, sisters, and other visitors.

Only an hour outside of New York City, the New Jersey Highlands encompass nearly one million rugged acres of forests, lakes, and clear running streams. Stretching diagonally across northwestern New Jersey and forming a greenbelt of farmlands and forests along the burgeoning Pennsylvania- New York - New Jersey - Connecticut corridor, the Highlands are one of the region's most significant resources.

Camden, New Jersey is a city on the rise. The Trust for Public Land is a trusted partner in local efforts to address climate change and community health by creating parks and protecting land for people. Parks, trails, and schoolyards provide multiple benefits: absorbing storm water, offering shady places to escape summer heat, creating neighborhood gathering places, and providing outdoor recreation. We are part of a community of neighbors, policymakers, business owners and others working to make sure that all people in Camden share in the city’s growth. 

The 113 acres known as the Primrose Farm Estates are part of the watershed between Primrose Brook and the Passaic River-important to water quality in New Jersey's Harding Township, and beyond.

Safe, green space is not easily accessible in the neighborhood surrounding this school. And 90% of the people who reside nearby live below the poverty line. Right now, any rainstorm inundates the concrete playground and floods the property so kids have to stay inside during recess, soon native plants and vegetation in absorbent rain gardens will turn a nuisance into a natural wonder. Working with the community, we’ll repair and revive the play spaces, build a new outdoor classroom, and create a vibrant park that’s open to anyone when school isn’t in session.  

Launched in 2001, The Trust for Public Land's River to Bay Greenway program will establish a 70-mile corridor linking existing and proposed open space between the Delaware River in Camden to Barnegat Bay.

Once the site of a shale mine, 46-acre Shale Valley is now part of a larger quilt of protected public lands in the New Jersey Highlands.

For generations, residents of Voorhees Township have cherished the sight of the trotters training on this farm, which was owned by the Stafford family for more than 225 years. TPL helped assemble funding from more than half a dozen public and private sources, and protected the property in 2004.

When combined with existing wildlife management lands and Turkey Swamp Park to the northeast, this 1,443-acre acquisition created 5,400 acres of protected open space.

The densely populated communities of Weehawken and Union City will soon have a new park with a walking and running trail along the perimeter of this reservoir