Barclay Farms Trail – Cherry Hill, Camden County, NJ
Distance: 1.5 miles total (we backtracked and wandered a bit)
Type: Loops
Difficulty: 1 of 10 (Blue trail is even ADA accessible)
Terrain – Stream, fields, forests
Trailheads – Parking lot – 39° 54.306’N, 74° 59.822’W
Directions: 209 Barclay Ln, Cherry Hill, NJ 08034
Website: Barclay Farms Website
Maintained by the good people at Cherry Hill Trail Crew
Map:
Markings – None, but trails are very easy to follow.
Description: So Cherry Hill has 10 trails in town that they have built and maintain, and Barclay Farms is the crown jewel of that system. It’s short (only 1 mile in marked trails), but it’s sweet. I started my walk by going around the pond, coming back to peek over the bridge, then taking the trail out to the river and leaving on the lowlands trail. You could wander it however you like, it’s a nice spot to explore.
In the parking lot.
Barclay Farm in the background.
Very nice bridge across the pond.
Pond.
They even put stairs in.
Didn’t I tell you they did a nice job with this trail?
River.
Flowers.
Flowers.
Trail next to the river.
River.
Coming off of the lowlands trail.
Lovely landscaping.
From March to August, the museum/house is open for tours on the afternoons of the first Sunday of the month. Definitively worth your while to coordinate and take both in at the same time. While the house isn’t super old (built in 1816 by Joseph Thorn), the farm goes back to John Kay before the Revolutionary War. In more recent times, it was owned by the Cooper family (decedents of the founders of Camden) who sold it to Cherry Hill Township in the 1970s.
The trail was recently declared a National Recreation Trail. The farm itself is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Historic house and property, pond, woodlands, marsh, gardens... a little bit of everything!
None.
Nice location.
Just about everything else.
Visited here today. The trails don’t look like your pictures. The trails are overgrown and not well maintained. Some of the boards are rotting. There are many areas that need stone or boards since they are very muddy and slippery. It just plain looks like it has been forgotten. I was surprised since the Barclay Farmstead house and area around it are well maintained.