If you've caught wind of the new rail trail everyone in this corner of Passaic and Morris County has been talking about, you might assume it eventually reaches Pompton Lakes. It doesn't. Not the finished version, anyway, and not yet.
That's not a knock on the borough. Pompton Lakes has its own mile of paved trail along the Ramapo River, and it's been open for seven years. But the flashy $32 million project nearby, the one that pulled a crowd on opening day and got county commissioners cutting ribbons, runs between Pequannock and Wayne. It never crosses into Pompton Lakes at all. Meanwhile, the trail that actually would run through town, connecting it to Wanaque, Bloomingdale, Ringwood, and West Milford, exists only as a feasibility study. This fall, a public survey just wrapped that could decide whether these separate pieces ever get stitched together, and Pompton Lakes sits right in the geographic middle of that decision.
The Mile You Can Already Walk
Start with what's real. The Morris Canal Greenway is a borough-built path that opened on National Trails Day, June 1, 2019, following a ribbon cutting after construction wrapped the previous summer. It runs about a mile along the former Pompton Feeder, the waterway that once fed the historic Morris Canal, starting near the intersection of Mathes Avenue and Riverview Road and ending near the south end of Lincoln Avenue by the Pompton Lakes Municipal Utilities Authority. Along the way it passes Lincoln School, gives you a view of the Pompton Falls, and cuts behind Stiles Park before reaching the red trail entrance to the South End Trails.
The path was funded through the Passaic County Open Space Trust Fund and an NJDEP Recreational Trails Grant, with the borough covering the local match. It's crushed stone, ten feet wide, built to survive a flood without washing out. It's not a regional showpiece. It's a genuinely useful stretch of everyday infrastructure, and it's already yours.
The Trail Nearby
Now compare that to what opened nearby. The Pompton Valley Rail Trail is a 5.1-mile paved path built on the old New York, Susquehanna and Western rail bed, running from River Drive in Pequannock Township to the Mountain View Train Station in Wayne. It's the longest bike and pedestrian trail the Morris County Park Commission maintains, and it opened with a ribbon cutting on May 29, 2025, drawing around 100 people to the trailhead behind the Pequannock First Aid Squad.
The project cost $32 million, funded through a federal grant administered by the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, and construction took three years. Morris County Director Tayfun Selen called it a safe and scenic way to walk or bike to the train station, one that cuts down on car traffic. County officials projected the trail could draw as many as 200,000 visitors in its first year. Commissioner Douglas Cabana, at the opening, noted it runs nearly twice the length of the well-known Traction Line trail in Morristown.
All of that is real, and it's a short drive from Pompton Lakes if you want a longer stretch than the Greenway gives you. But it stays inside Pequannock and Wayne. It was never designed to touch Pompton Lakes, and as built today, it doesn't.
The Trail That Doesn't Exist Yet
Here's the piece that would actually change the math for Pompton Lakes: the Highlands Rail Trail. This one follows the old New York and Greenwood Lake Railway corridor, a line that was abandoned in stages after the iron mines gave out and cars made the trip to Greenwood Lake easier, fully abandoned by the mid-1960s. Passaic County's feasibility study defines its focus area in plain terms: the Borough of Pompton Lakes, the Borough of Wanaque, the Borough of Bloomingdale, the Borough of Ringwood, and the Township of West Milford.
Some sections of the old corridor, particularly the ones owned by the North Jersey District Water Supply Company near the Wanaque Reservoir, are already walkable in an unofficial sense. The county's own study describes the surrounding land as scenic and wooded, with views tied to the region's history. But this is a feasibility study, not a funded project with a start date. It's a plan on paper, one that names Pompton Lakes as a stop but hasn't broken ground.
What This Fall's Survey Was Actually Asking
So you have a finished trail in town, a finished trail next door that skips town, and a proposed trail that would run through town but doesn't exist. The connective tissue between these three things is the part that just happened.
Through Labor Day, which fell on September 7 this year, the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority ran an online survey asking residents and trail users to identify gaps and barriers in the regional trail network. Part of that effort was the Pompton Valley Rail Trail Extension Study, which is specifically exploring how to connect the trail's northern end in Pequannock Township to the southern end of the Highlands Rail Trail in Wanaque Borough. Look at a map and you'll notice the obvious thing: Pompton Lakes sits directly between those two points.
"Whether you walk or bike these trails regularly or just enjoy them from time to time, we want to hear from you. Your knowledge and experience of our trails helps us identify opportunities to improve safety and make our trail network even better."
That's Morris County Commissioner Stephen H. Shaw, who also serves as Third Vice Chair of the NJTPA Board of Trustees, explaining why the survey mattered. It's closed now. What comes next is recommendations, drawn from that public input, that will shape whether and how these separate trail systems eventually connect. There's no funded construction timeline yet. There's a study, informed by residents who bothered to answer a survey about a trail they may not have realized was being planned around them.
Where to Actually Go This Weekend
None of this changes what's walkable today. If you want to get outside without driving anywhere:
- The Morris Canal Greenway, entrance at Mathes Avenue and Riverview Road, for a flat mile along the river with a Pompton Falls view partway through
- Rotary Park, along the shore of Pompton Lake, a good spot to sit after a walk or paddle
- The boat launch on Terhune Drive, with parking on site, if you want to get out on the water instead of beside it
- Stiles Park, tucked along the Greenway route behind some of the riverfront homes
- The borough's dog park, for anyone whose walking companion needs off-leash time before or after the Greenway loop, which allows leashed dogs but nothing off-leash
If you want the bigger, newer trail, the Pompton Valley Rail Trail is a short drive into Pequannock or Wayne, with parking available near Washington Park. Just don't expect to walk there from downtown Pompton Lakes. Not yet.
The Practical Read
The honest version of this story isn't that Pompton Lakes is missing out on something everyone else has. It's that the borough already has a real, finished, well-built piece of trail infrastructure that gets less attention than it deserves, sitting quietly between two much bigger projects, one finished and one still theoretical, both of which happen to bracket the town geographically. The survey that just closed is the first real mechanism anyone has put in place to ask whether those three pieces should ever become one network. Nobody's promising a shovel in the ground. But the fact that Pompton Lakes is named specifically in the county's own planning documents, and that this fall's extension study runs directly through the gap between Pequannock and Wanaque, means the borough is closer to that conversation than it's been before.
If you're already out on the Greenway most weekends, that's worth knowing. If you've been waiting for the bigger trail to show up at your door, the paperwork stage just moved a step forward, and it's worth watching what the recommendations say next.
Anthony Jordan grew up walking these streets before he ever sold a house on them, and he keeps half an eye on this kind of local planning the same way he keeps half an eye on everything else in Wayne and Pompton Lakes. If you're thinking about what a move in this area might look like, or just want to talk through what's changing in town, Anthony Jordan is easy to reach for a conversation, no walking shoes required.
