Rancocas State Park (West) – Mount Laurel, NJ

Rancocas State Park (West) AKA Rancocas Woods– Mount Laurel, Burlington County, NJ
Distance – 3 total miles of trails (I did just over 2 miles)
Type – interlocking loops
Difficulty:  3 of 10 – some steep areas
Updated -1/26/26 – added two more trailheads at the suggest of Courtney, who shared that the parking at the park can fill during softball season.

Website – Rancocas State Park
Open – Sunrise to Sunset.

Terrain – hilly woodlands and creekside
Surface – Dirt

Trailheads:
Trailhead #1 – N 39° 59.394 W 074° 51.310 – parking may be full during softball season

Trailhead #2 – N 39° 59.322 W 074° 51.310 – parking near here may be full during softball season

Trailhead #3 – N 39° 59.020 W 074° 51.325 (This is the one I actually used, a good alternate if the ball field is filled up)

Trailhead #4 – N 39° 59.190 W 074° 51.440 – Good alternate when ball field is filled up (thank you to Courtney for sharing it!)

Trailhead #5 – N 39° 59.513 W 074° 51.469 Good alternate when ball field is filled up (thank you to Courtney for sharing it!)

Directions – Spencer Park, Rancocas Blvd, Mount Laurel, NJ

Parking – Good sized lot in Spencer Park

I didn’t realize this and parked by the side of the road on Beach Road near the intersection with E Woods Lane.  Whoops.

Dog friendly? Not posted, but did see people walking their dogs in the park
Stroller friendly? No
Benches? Did not see any
Facilities?: None

Markings – colored blazed on posts and painted on trees

Map – Link to current map of park (as of January 2026)

Trails here:
Ironstone Bluff Trail (0.3 miles) – white blazed
Rancocas Creek Trail (0.5 miles) – yellow blazed
Rancocas Woods Loop (1.4 miles) – orange blazed
Towering Trees Trail (0.8 miles) – blue blazed

Description –

For those that do not know, my day job is an elementary school teacher.  And there’s no crazier time to be an elementary school teacher than the last week before Winter Break in December.  It makes the week before Summer Break look like a graveyard at 2 AM on a Tuesday when it’s 5 degrees out.

Luckily, there’s is nothing else stressful what-so-ever about the holiday season.  Nothing at all.

Which is how I found myself Christmas Eve Eve veering away from my last minute Christmas shopping at my favorite place to buy people things (Second Time Books in Mount Laurel.  I’m a teacher, of course everyone gets books!) and ending up at nearby Rancocas State Park, Mount Laurel Edition.  Rancocas State Park is a strange sort of place.  For one, the state has pretty much nothing to do with it, the county takes care of it.  For two, it has two parts that you can’t get to without a car – Rancocas State Park South in Hainsport and Rancocas State Park North in Westampton, which includes the Rancocas Nature Center and is referred to sometimes by us ancient ones as Rankokus Reservation of the Powhatan Renape (which was first acquired by the group in 1974 and was officially recognized by the State of New Jersey from 1982 until 2010 when the state evicted them).

But there’s also the hidden section of the park, a few miles of trails in Mount Laurel, cut off from the other two parts.  I’ve stopped to hike here many times, but was always hit with a storm, or a family emergency, or some other reason why I couldn’t get on the trails… until Christmas Eve Eve.

Spencer Park was where I should have started, so I’m going to pretend like I started there, even though I started at Trailhead 3.  It’s a fun exercise in pretending.

Parking in the lot, I headed south along the tree line behind the ball fields, until I reached the trailhead at the southeast corner of the park.

 

This puts you on the orange blazed Rancocas Woods Loop, which makes up just under half of the marked trails here.  I headed down the first stretch through the woods through a tunnel of thorns, made a right turn where the yellow and orange blazes overlap, then made a quick left to where the orange blazes went on alone.

The trail then climbed a bit and went through some interesting trees before crossing the yellow blazed Rancocas Creek Trail where it dead ends at the trail we are on (it makes a fishhook, with this spot being the barb on the hook).

The next short section brought me across the blue blazed Towering Trees Trail.  To the right, the blue blazes lead to streetside parking (which is where I actually parked to start my hike… shhhh!).

The trail meanders another short distance to where it comes out at Beach Road.  Look left, and you’ll see where the trail heads back into the woods.

The orange blazes headed back into the woods and curved to head east.  Having finished the west side of the trail system, I was, as SNL Jeopardy Sean Connery told Alex Trebek, “I’m waiting to be impressed.” (What quote did you think I was going to use?)

Well now, on the short south end of the park, I started to be impressed.  The trail is on high bluffs overlooking small Mason’s Creek, which I’d get views of all along the short southern stretch, then for about 1/3 of the way up the east side of the trail system.

I did, eventually, run into the blue blazes of the Towering Trees Trail again.  The trails hit each other at a four way intersection.  Left and straight would put us on the blue blazed trail, right would keep us on the orange blazes.  I stayed right, because views of the creek!

All good things must come to an end, and Mason’s Creek runs out where we meet up once more with the yellow blazes of the Rancocas Creek Trail. Here, the trails would overlap for a short while.  However, I was very distracted here by more tree roots.

The loss of Masons Creek is more than made up for by the trail reaching the south branch of Rancocas Creek.  The elevation had dropped by this point to where I was even close to the water.

The yellow and orange trails diverged.  The yellow blazes headed west, I stayed heading north with the orange blazes, because creek.

The orange blazes now met the white blazes.  To the left, they would overlap for a short while.  But being the brave souls that we are, I headed right, leaving the orange blazes I had followed for the entire hike so far to see what the white blazes had to offer.

At some point, I saw some awesome tree roots.  I took a gazillion photos of them.  What I didn’t notice (and maybe you will) is that white trail blaze on the tree on the right (like didn’t notice meaning I only noticed it for the first time now, when posting this photo for the trail write up).  Whoops.  So I ended up off the blazed trail (although with its very well worn path, I’m not the first to not walk down that hill).

The “trail” headed down hill and made a “T” with the white blazed trail, which is when I realized I had messed up.  While I could have just turned left to continue on my way, I noticed from the map that in missing my turn, I had missed the viewpoint.  I did not walk all this way to miss a viewpoint!  So I turned right and made the short walk to the viewpoint of the South Branch of Rancocas Creek.

Looking up the trail from the viewpoint, I realized where I had missed my turn.  Whoops!  On well, onward!  I headed back down the white trail to complete it’s horseshoe, as it followed along Rancocas Creek until it reached the intersection with our old friend the orange trail (which overlapped with the blue trail here as well).

I made a right turn and followed the duel blazes


I had a last glimpse of Rancocas Creek and arrived at my final intersection.  Here, the blue trail leave the orange.  The orange blazes headed for Rancocas Blvd.  The blue blazes headed for the parking lot at Spencer Park.  Saying goodbye to the orange blazes, I set off down the blue trail for the parking lot.

Where I safely arrived back at the parking lot that I totally parked in and not some other parking space that doesn’t make sense for this blog article because I’ve been doing this for almost 13 years now and it would totally be embarrassing if I didn’t park at the ideal trailhead so luckily if I ever did such a thing I totally would play it cool in my blog entry so that nobody knew.

Ratings:

What I liked – More trail that I had expected, high bluffs and some elevation changes, pretty view of the creek (will be fewer of them if you go when the trees have leaves), and, of course SO MANY AWESOME TREE ROOTS!  Also, it’s like three minutes from my favorite book store.

What could be better – My shopping could have been done.  This is probably not the fault of the trail, but you can’t be too careful.

Overall rating – I give this a 7 out of 10!

Nearby: Why not check out the other two sections of Rancocas State Park?  Rancocas State Park South and the trails at the Rancocas Nature Center/ Rancocas State Park North.

You can also paddle on Rancocas Creek here at “the forks” starting at Iron Works Park, although probably not with a four year old in a canoe like I did (also, check the tides).