"The Charbor Chronicles": An Afternoon at Duke Farms in Hillsborough, New Jersey

Duke Farms in Hillsborough, New Jersey

This weekend was beautiful in New Jersey. We have had a lot of rain, and quite colder than average temperatures in recent days. We also have experienced some downright hot, almost summer-like days, when it felt hot and humid, bordering almost on oppressive days.

However, this weekend was gorgeous. It also happened to be a weekend off, which my girlfriend and I share every other weekend. So, we wanted to do something to really get a chance to enjoy it.

We had just purchased our vacation tickets to Europe for this August. It was stressful, and parting with that much money might not be a big deal to many, even perhaps most, people, but it was a big deal for us. There were complications, because I am taking my son, but my girlfriend wants to stay longer than it was possible for my son and I to stay. So instead of simply getting our tickets directly through the website, we had to call and talk to agents, at least one of which was dishonest, in order to get our tickets. As of now, while I write this, my girlfriend has different flights not only for the return, since she wanted to stay longer, but also for the departure. We will see if we can switch it, although that may or may not be possible.

We shall see.

In any case, after we both spent quite a bit of the money that we had been saving for some time, we needed to unwind, and take advantage of this beautiful weekend day. She did not have any ideas, and asked for me to decide. So, I thought about some local options. Princeton is nearby, as is Somerville, and both have some considerable charm, although Princeton, particularly, is expensive. We could visit New Hope, Pennsylvania, which is always a favorite, although time would be limited, due to the fact that I have an engagement later on this evening. We thought about a park, such as Colonial Park or Duke Farms.

Ultimately, I thought the best we could do was to unwind a bit at Duke Farms, and then enjoy a good lunch somewhere in Somerville. We really picked a winner in Somerville, and a bit more on that later. But today, I thought I would dedicate another blog entry to Duke Farms, because after visiting it earlier today, I was reminded of how pleasant and beautiful it is. Really, it is one of the nicest places to visit in New Jersey, especially this part of New Jersey.

I have written about Duke Farms in Hillsborough, New Jersey, in the past. So, for now and in the interests of time, it seemed prudent to republish a previous post that I had about Duke Farms, and to add the pictures that I took earlier today.

So, please take a look, and enjoy!

A Visit to Duke's Park in Hillsborough, New Jersey

Originally published on July 12, 2012

So, I had the opportunity to visit someplace new a couple of days ago, and wanted to capitalize on it.

The place is Duke’s Park, in Hillsborough, New Jersey.

Now, I’ll be honest: I had never really even heard of this place before, and knew nothing about it, really.

These are relatively new grounds, having just opened to the public for the first time in a century just last year – on Earth Day of 2011.

It had been owned by one James B. Duke, who was essentially a giant baron in the tobacco industry at around the turn of the twentieth century. He had opened his estate to the public, but it was costing him a pretty penny to try and minimize the damage that visitors imposed. They picked the flowers and did not show an appropriate level of respect and appreciation for the land. Duke subsequently closed the grounds to the public, claiming “vandals” as the reason.

Unfortunately, for over a century, these grounds remained closed to the public in general.

Until last year, when it was reopened in time for Earth Day.

The park has been designed with an environmental theme to it. This has a little bit of irony to it, because James Duke himself was certainly not friendly to the environment at all. It was a different era, of course, and it was popularly believed that humans were meant to rule over the world, and could reshape it largely according to their whims. Duke certainly did not hold back, importing all sorts of foreign wildlife.

According to Greg Gillette (see the link to his blog down below), it was a point of pride for Duke “to be able to remake their environment to suit their needs, not live in harmony with it. To that end, he drained marshes, destroyed habitat, built dozens of man made lakes, imported all kinds of non-native plant species, and constructed twenty miles of paved roads.”

At some point, he even managed to dry out the Raritan River, in order to accommodate the lakes and waterfalls and such that he had designed for his grounds, in his quest to perfect the landscape to his liking.

Still, this is a different age, and there is a stronger measure of environmental conscience today. The grounds have been restored with an environmental theme to them, which was what Doris Duke wished for the grounds once she passed.

Doris Duke is, of course, quite a famous name. Legends abound about her, and there were numerous myths and legends concerning the grounds, as well. Of course, she was mostly reclusive, keeping to herself, and that almost always proves to be fertile ground for stories and gossip to mushroom. Even the plans for what to do with the land after she was gone remained largely a mystery – until, that is, they were finally fulfilled, with the opening of these grounds to the public last year.

So, the visit. The parking lot stands in the shadow of the Farm Barn, which is now the rather spacious visitor’s center. It even offers food and refreshments, as well as clean bathrooms. I cannot talk about the food that is offered, because that was not part of my visit.

The grounds themselves are huge. There is a map, but the map was not as obvious with the points of interest as perhaps they should have been. The place has a lot that could and should be explored.

The streams and lakes are there, of course. There is a decent amount of wildlife, as well – including a large turtle that I saw, pretty far from the lake. Not sure what she was doing out so far away, all by herself. But it was a site to see.

I was half expecting some hiking trails, having seen all the green woods that surround this place. Plus, the map seems to suggest quite a few woods. But hiking is not something that you should expect on these grounds.

That said, this park does offer a lot. It has a distinctly Old World feel to it, complete with statues and fountains and such, as well as foundations of old, stone buildings that have been tastefully allowed to stand the test of time, and now provide a picturesque backdrop to many areas of these park. This includes an old barn where only the stone walls still stand. But within these walls are numerous statues done in an antique style, lending them a European flavor.

The park is huge, also. The map is not the best, but it is helpful, and it does show you what you should explore on your visit. But it does not give you any sense of scale of how huge some of those things are, nor how beautiful. After seeing it (and never having heard of it before), I must say that it is, perhaps, New Jersey’s best kept secret. It compares in scale to the parks in Ringwood, like Ringwood State Park and the Skylands Botanical Garden, and that’s saying something.

Ultimately, there is only so much I can say about it, and I only visited it once. But here’s something that should be seen not only as a compliment, but as an enticement to make your own visit: it was fascinating and beautiful enough for me to already want to pay another visit.

Below is a fascinating link that I borrowed from in order to obtain much of the information in this article: