Willow Oak Natural Area – Vineland, Cumberland County, NJ
Distance –  about 2.3 miles of trail total
Type – Web of trails
Difficulty:  3 of 10

Website – https://www.vinelandcity.org/
Open – Sunrise to Sunset.

Terrain – woods, wetlands, and fields
Surface – Mostly dirt trails

Trailheads –
Trailhead 1 – N 39° 28.990 W 074° 56.976

Trailhead 2 – N 39° 29.372 W 074° 56.976

Directions – 4106 E Landis Ave, Vineland, NJ 08361
or 4115 Post Road, Vineland, NJ

Parking – Small lot on each end.  Southern lot is larger.

Dog friendly? Unsure
Stroller friendly? Parts of the trails might be navigable by strollers with offroad wheels
Benches? Some very scattered benches

Facilities?: No facilities

Markings – Some blazes, some posts.

Map –

Description –

Who was Mary Treat?  I had no idea before I met Deborah Boerner Ein, author of Mary Treat: A Biography and Mary Had a Little Zoo, who ended up a few spots down from me at the Whitesbog Book Fair a few years back.  So who is she?  Awesome, that’s who she is (Mary, although Deborah also seems awesome)!

“Botanist, entomologist, naturalist, 19th century flora and fauna hunter, nature writer, teacher, pioneer, trailblazer, daughter, sister, wife, aunt. All of these titles describe Mary Treat… Treat corresponded with Charles Darwin more than any other woman scientist as they shared groundbreaking work on carnivorous plants and evolutionary—as well as revolutionary—principles in the 1870s.” ~ marytreat.com

At some point this year, the City of Vineland will be renaming the trails at the Willow Oak Natural Area in Mary Treat’s honor.  So this is not a book review post (but I loved the book on Mary Treat and found it fascinating and you should totally buy it), but instead a trail review of a set of trails I ran to do after finishing the Mary Treat books because they’d been on my list forever (and also  because Family Adventure New Jersey did it and it looked really fun) and because it just seemed like the right time.

Of course, it was not the right time (January 24) because a blizzard was coming, the day started in the single digits, and it never got out of the teens.  But do I have any sense does anything stop this intrepid explorer?  Of course not!  (My kids did have sense, none of them wanted to come

I found the probably-not-shockingly-empty-parking lot (there was one other car, but he was not getting out of it to go hiking.  We have a word for that… smart!).

As I often do, I decided to stick with the outside loop of the trail system as a guide and them poke my head into the middle when it looked interesting.  So I stepped past the trail sign and turned right to follow the orange blazes.

I like hiking in the winter, because the woods looks so different than when everything is alive.  I had told myself I was going to take as few photos as possible, since I’m not hip enough to have those fancy gloves that you can work your phone screen with and it was bitterly cold to keep taking my gloves on and off.

And, of course, I ignored my plan and took too many photos anyway.  Who needs feeling in their extremities?

Anyway, this first stretch had a lot of tree ID signs.  I love tree ID signs, because after 13 years of running a hiking blog and many more of being a Scout, my ability to recognize trees, birds, tracks, etc (other than, “that’s a tree!”) is pretty embarrassingly bad.

I enjoyed the first curve of the trails up to the intersection with the yellow trails, listening for birds (no?  Not even them today?  Why am I out in this cold?) looking at tree signs and then trying to look carefully at trees, and crossing a little bridge.

Here, I opted to keep going straight on the orange trail, because I usually like to hike the outside loop of a new trail as much as possible.

I used this strategy over and over until I made it to a large, open field area.  The trails here look like they were mown during the growing season.  With the mercury failing to push 20 degrees, I think the area is good on mowing for a bit.  Even on this chilly day, a few birds flitted about, likely looking for their mittens and earmuffs.

The field trail made a little loop.  I did take the spur on the far end of the field, which led to the larger parking area on Post Road.  I then turned right around and came back to keep looping around the field.

It was then time to cut over to the western part of the trail system.  The trail headed back into the woods at the southwest corner of the open field area.

The west side was definitely wetter, with some swampy areas, puddles, and a few ponds too.

This split along the pond ended up not mattering… it rejoined almost immediately.

See?

Touchdown!

Having reached my favorite possible place on any trail, a cedar swamp, I decided to save walking through it on the orange trail and take my first real side trip, switching to the yellow trail which bisects the woods north to south.

Sorry cedars, you’ll have to wait.

The yellow trail was not as wide and clear, but with it being January, it was no problem to follow other than I had trouble feeling my fingers because they’d been out of the gloves too long taking photos of cedar trees.


Parts of the trail were just slightly elevated over areas that may be wet when it rains and is also above the temperatures where water is a liquid.

The trail went all the way through, but worried about my fingers, I decided that the main trail that cut through the middle of the preserve north to south was far enough today, and backtracked down the yellow trail to where I had left it at the orange trail (with the cedars).

Having arrived back at the cedars, I hung out long enough to lose feeling in my fingers again.

Then it was a short walk back to where I started at the parking lot.

Having completed the trail, it was off to one more hike, a drive past the Palace of Depression, and then home before we got socked with 9 inches of snow!

Ratings:

What I liked – THE CEDARS!  Nice variety of areas for such a short trail.

What could be better – Could someone turn the heat up a smidge?

Overall rating – 6 of 10