Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
National Wildlife Refuge · Basking Ridge, New Jersey
Seventy-eight hundred acres of swamp woodland, marsh and grassland twenty-six miles from Times Square, and it exists because local people stopped an airport. In 1959 the Port Authority proposed a jetport here that would have paved the basin; residents of Morris County raised the money themselves, bought up land parcel by parcel, and gave three thousand acres to the federal government in 1960. IN 1968 IT BECAME THE FIRST WILDERNESS AREA EVER DESIGNATED IN THE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE SYSTEM. It is the bed of a glacial lake, it holds nearly two hundred and fifty bird species, and it is the most consequential piece of grassroots conservation in New Jersey.
32 Pleasant Plains Road, Basking Ridge, New Jersey, 07920, United States
FREE, with free parking and no permit required. The refuge is open daylight hours year round; the visitor centre keeps shorter daytime hours and federal holiday closures apply. THE WILDERNESS AREA TRAILS FLOOD ANKLE TO KNEE DEEP in spring and after rain and have no boardwalks — wellington boots are the correct footwear for much of the year. SECTIONS CLOSE SEASONALLY for nesting, deer management and flooding; check current closures before travelling. NO DOGS ARE PERMITTED ON REFUGE TRAILS, including the Wildlife Observation Center boardwalks — the adjacent Morris County lands allow them. Drones prohibited without a special use permit.
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