Description:

From the parking area, follow the footpath that leads along the rear of the manor house. (You might want to combine your hike with a tour of the historic manor house. Tours are generally available between 10 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., Wednesday to Sunday; for more information, call (973) 962-7031.) Near the end of house, turn right and climb the stone steps. At the top of the steps, turn left on a dirt road. In about 200 feet, turn right onto another woods road. Here, the blue blazes of the Manor Trail begin. You will be following these blazes for the rest of the hike.

At 0.3 mile, you will come to a Y intersection. Follow the blue blazes as they bear left onto a grassy woods road (the main road ahead is marked with white blazes). The Manor Trail passes through an area where the thick understory forms a canopy overhead. It then bears right, leaving the road, and proceeds into the woods on a footpath. Follow the blazes carefully as the trail continues through a rocky, wet area, crossing several small tributary streams. After crossing the main stream at 0.7 mile, you will notice a flooded 30-foot wide excavation to the right of the trail.

The trail now begins to ascend and soon joins an old woods road. At 1.2 miles, the trail descends to cross another wide stream. (Both streams feed Sally's Pond, which will be encountered near the end of the hike.) It briefly parallels the stream on a rocky footpath and then ascends gradually, eventually joining another old woods road.

At 1.5 miles, the trail crosses the route of a gas pipeline, opening a vista to the west. The hills across the valley are part of the section of Sterling Forest purchased by Passaic County in 1990 as a county park and now administered by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. The valley once was the site of several iron mines, including the Hope and Peters Mines. The Peters Mine was opened around 1740 and produced iron ore for over 200 years.

Just beyond the pipeline crossing, the Manor Trail joins a wide woods road and begins a gradual descent. About half a mile later, you will notice long strands of one-inch-thick twisted-strand wrought iron cables imbedded in the trail. These iron cables are remnants of mining activity during the nineteenth century at the nearby Hope and Peters Mines. It is possible that they were intended for use in a gravity conveyor system for the iron ore, constructed in 1858 but apparently never put into successful operation.

The trail now approaches Margaret King Avenue, and the sounds of the traffic on this road can be clearly heard. The trail swings to the left as a side road, blocked off with boulders, leads down to Margaret King Avenue. Following a wider woods road, the trail soon goes by an occupied residence on the right. After passing tennis courts on the right, a dirt road to the right leads out to the Ringwood Municipal Building, as the trail bears left, continuing ahead on a wide woods road.

Just ahead, at 2.6 miles, the trail passes an open area to the right, with Sally's Pond beyond. A short distance ahead, a cemetery comes into view on the right. The two large graves nearest the trail are those of Robert Erskine and his assistant. Erskine, a Scottish engineer, was hired to run the local mines in 1771, and he sided with the Colonies during the American Revolution, serving as Surveyor General to the American army. Near the pond are the graves of members of the Hewitt family, owners of the manor house in the late nineteenth century. An iron gate adjacent to the trail marks the graves of the Morris family.

The trail now crosses two bridges over streams. These streams, which lead to Sally's Pond, are the same streams that you crossed earlier in the hike. At the next fork in the road, marked by two abandoned buildings on the left, the trail curves to the right. Follow this road ahead, past the manor house, to your car in the parking area, completing the three-mile loop.