If you have lived in Franklin Lakes for any stretch of time, you know the lake off High Mountain Road as the Franklin Lakes Nature Preserve. The signs have changed. The borough now calls it the G. Thomas Donch Nature Preserve, and the address on newer maps reads 1 Russ Schroeder Way. Older GPS units will still route you to 1196 High Mountain Rd in North Haledon, which is fine.
The rename is not the story. The story is what has quietly assembled around the preserve while most residents were still calling it by its old name: an on-site paddling concession with published weekday hours, a scheduled series of guided evening kayak tours running through late August, and a trail spine that connects a 2.3-mile loop to 11.2 miles of ridge trail in Wayne. For a resident who thinks of this place as "the lake with the walking path," the summer of 2026 is the season worth relearning it.
What the New Name Marks
The preserve sits on the site of the former Haledon Reservoir, dammed in 1919 on Molly Ann Brook and left unmaintained by the mid-2000s until Franklin Lakes acquired it. It opened to the public in June 2011 after the two dams were repaired, and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference began blazing trails in early 2012. The renaming, in that context, is less a rebranding than an acknowledgment that the preserve has grown into something more programmed than a repaired reservoir with a shoreline path.
What that looks like on the ground: 120 acres of passive recreation around a 75-acre lake, an ADA-compliant accessible trail with boardwalk sections and viewing platforms out to the water, and a designated boat launch adjacent to the parking area off High Mountain Road. The infrastructure is a partnership between the Borough of Franklin Lakes and the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, funded primarily with County and State grants.
The Tuesday Nights Worth Putting on the Calendar
The single most useful piece of information for a resident this summer is the Mayors Wellness Campaign kayak tour schedule, run in partnership with Ramsey Outdoor. Four evenings, all Tuesdays, all at the Donch Preserve:
- Tuesday, July 7, 6:00 to 8:00 PM
- Tuesday, July 28, 6:00 to 8:00 PM
- Tuesday, August 11, 5:30 to 7:30 PM
- Tuesday, August 25, 5:30 to 7:30 PM
Each tour opens with a short kayaking introduction, a safety briefing, and outfitting including a personal flotation device. It is a low-impact way to see the lake from a vantage most residents never get, which is the middle of it, at the hour when the light drops behind the First Watchung ridge and the surface goes still. Registration runs through the borough; the schedule is published on the Franklin Lakes borough site under News and Events.
The Paddling Center, Quietly
Outside of tour nights, Ramsey Outdoor runs an on-site rental concession at the preserve. Rentals include kayaks, canoes, pedal boats, stand-up paddleboards, Hobie Mirage kayaks, and Hobie Mirage Eclipse pedal boards. Published operating hours are Monday through Thursday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM with last rental at 3:00 PM, and Friday through Sunday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM with last rental at 5:00 PM. Everything is weather permitting. Questions go to 201-327-8141.
The fishing is the beat most residents underplay. The preserve requires a New Jersey state license, and it has been cited among the state's 100 best fishing spots. Common catches include largemouth bass, black crappie, pickerel, yellow perch, sunfish, catfish, and the occasional carp large enough to make a story out of.
"The preserve, which requires a fishing license, has been listed as 'one of the 100 best spots for fishing in New Jersey.'" — Ramsey Outdoor
Where the Loop Actually Goes
Most residents who walk the preserve do the Preserve Shoreline Loop, the white-blazed path of roughly 1.5 miles that circles the former reservoir. It is a reasonable morning. What the map does not show at a glance is how the loop hands off. Two additions are worth knowing.
The first is the blue-blazed Island Bridges Trail, which cuts across the dike complex projecting into the lake. Two floating pontoon bridges, installed in October 2013, close the gaps in the earthen dikes so the trail runs continuously across the water. It is the closest a walker in Bergen County will come to standing in the middle of a lake without a boat under them.
The second is the red-blazed connector to High Mountain Park Preserve in Wayne, which opens the 2.3 miles inside the Donch Preserve onto 11.2 additional miles of ridge trail. For a resident who has done the shoreline loop enough times to have it memorized, this is the upgrade. You can start at the High Mountain Road parking lot, cross the dam, follow the Shoreline Loop to the red trail, and be climbing traprock inside twenty minutes.
The Rules Locals Forget
The preserve is programmed lightly, but the rules are specific enough that a first-time paddler should read them before showing up with a truck and a trailer.
- Boating is permitted only from April 1 through November 15, dawn to dusk.
- No motors of any kind, and no trailered boats. Watercraft must be transported inside or on top of a vehicle and hand-carried from the lot to the designated launch off High Mountain Road.
- Personal flotation devices must be worn by the operator and all passengers. Anyone under 16 needs adult supervision.
- Swimming and wading are prohibited, on the shore and from boats. This is a passive preserve, not a beach.
- Dogs are permitted on leash. Alcohol, grilling, and open fires are not.
- Fishing is allowed with a valid New Jersey state fishing license. Ice fishing is not.
These are not obscure. They come straight from the borough's preserve page. They also account for most of the friction visitors run into on a first trip, which is usually the trailer question or the swimming question, both of which have the same answer.
Building a Weekend Around It
The most useful way to think about the Donch Preserve this summer is as a hub rather than a stop. A Saturday that begins with the 9:00 AM opening of the paddling center, follows an hour on the water with a walk over the floating bridges of the Island Bridges Trail, and ends with a late lunch pulled from the Market Basket counter at Urban Farms Shopping Center is a full morning that never leaves a five-minute radius. A Tuesday evening built around a guided kayak tour is a different kind of week, one that ends with the lake going gold at seven and the ridge quiet behind it.
The preserve has been here in some form since 1919, in its current form since 2011, and under its current name only recently. What has changed is not the water. What has changed is that a resident now has a published calendar to work from, a concession to rent from, and a trail network on the other side of the dam that most people who live within two miles of it have never walked. That is worth a summer's attention.
If a move within Franklin Lakes is on your horizon this year, or you are helping family compare neighborhoods where the daily texture matters as much as the house, The Premtaj Team is here for the quieter conversations. Contact Us when the timing is right.
