Thomas Paine Trail – Cherry Hill, NJ

Thomas Paine Trails – Cherry Hill, Camden County, NJ
Distance – 0.5 miles of trails, just under 3/4 of a mile to do it all.
Type – Interlocking loops
Difficulty: 2 of 10 – small incline, bit of mud

Website – Cherry Hill Trails
Open – Sunrise to Sunset.

Terrain – Small hills, swamp
Surface – Woodchips, boards, dirt

Trailheads – N 39° 56.082 W 074° 58.840

Directions – Fountain Court, Cherry Hill, NJ

Parking – Streetside parking.

Dog friendly? Yes
Stroller friendly? Would be a tough one for strollers
Benches?: None
Facilities?: None

Markings – Posts at intersections
Map –

From the Cherry Hill Trail Crew website.

Description –

I lived in Cherry Hill off and on for seven years, including in the early days of this blog.  One of my favorite things about Cherry Hill is that tons of little pieces of woods have been given quality little trail systems.  From our earliest days, we’ve loved visiting places like Croft Farm, Kresson Trails, and Barclay Farms, and since we started the Cherry Hill Trail Crew has added even more trails, like the great little trails at Cherry Valley.

Every once in a while, I’ll realize they have some trail that I missed.  Hooray!  About a year ago, one of these was the Thomas Paine Trail!

Now Thomas Paine, as every child who ever had me for US History knows, brought the Paine on the British Empire by writing the famous works Common Sense, which argued that it was just plain obvious that the 13 colonies needed to break away to make a new country, and The Crisis, which rallied Americans to the cause during the dark days of late 1776 and early 1777 and which Washington has read to his soldiers before the famous crossing of the Delaware. Thomas Paine wasn’t from Cherry Hill, but the nearby school is named in honor of the man who eventually settled in Bordentown, NJ.  You can walk by his house there and see a pretty sweet statue of him up there in Bordentown.

Anyway, it’s March!  There’s a trail I haven’t done!  Let’s do it!

To start, you can access the trails from Fountain Court in Cherry Hill, NOT FROM THE SCHOOL PROPERTY.  Plenty of parking along the side of the road, and a nice big trail kiosk at the trailhead, like pretty much every one of the Cherry Hill Trails.  It’s not long, but it was a lovely 15 minutes.

You start with a slight downhill on the Green Trail.

There is already swampy areas to your left.

I hit the first intersection quickly (everything comes quickly on these trails) and opted to head straight to do the outside part of the loop.

Eventually we made it onto the red trail and then the yellow trail, which bottoms out in the swamp area near Pennsauken Creek.  Now Pennsauken Creek is a fun paddle, but definitely not this high up!

There are some stretches of boards through this section, which always makes a hike feel like part of an Indiana Jones movie.

I then climbed back out of the small swampy area.

From there, it was a turn back on the green trail toward the car and heading for home.  Fun!

Bordentown is also a fun spot to stop to visit Thomas Paine.

Nearby: Any of the Cherry Hill Trails listed in the opening of this post are great!