Things to Do in Rockaway, NJ: Main Street, Splitrock Reservoir, and the Wildcat Ridge Hawk Watch

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Rockaway is two places, and knowing which one you are heading to saves a lot of confusion. Rockaway Borough is the compact old village along Main Street, just over two square miles, with the Morris Canal history, the taverns and the lake. Rockaway Township is the sprawling one that wraps around it, nearly 46 square miles reaching north into the Highlands, and it holds the mall, the reservoirs, the hawk watch and thousands of acres of protected forest. They share a ZIP code and almost nothing else.

Between them you get a real walkable Main Street and some of the most rugged hiking in Morris County, usually within fifteen minutes of each other. Here is how to spend a day in both.

Start on Main Street in the Borough

Rockaway Borough’s Main Street is a working village center rather than a boutique strip, and that is the appeal. The buildings are genuinely old, many retaining their original 1800s architecture, and the businesses are the everyday kind: a barbershop, a florist, a pharmacy, a couple of taverns that have been there for generations.

For breakfast, Riverside Shoppe at 26 East Main Street is the one to know. It was reopened by third and fourth generation members of the Arico family, and they kept the original fixtures and family keepsakes in the room. The menu carries family names, including Aunt Karen’s Egg in a Hole and Roe Roe’s Famous Crumb Cake. They open at 7 a.m. most days and close at 2 p.m., and they are closed Tuesdays. They also run a food truck called Riverside Shoppe On the Go.

A few blocks down, Missy’s Main Street Cafe has been serving breakfast and lunch since August 2015, and describes its own cooking as comfort food with whacky twists. It is closed Mondays.

For later in the day, Mill Lane Tavern at 8 Mill Lane bills itself as your friendly neighborhood bar since 1946. It opens at 7 a.m. on Saturdays, which tells you something about the kind of place it is. The Exchange at 160 East Main Street runs 26 beers on tap and live entertainment nightly from 8 p.m., with open mic on Mondays and karaoke on Tuesdays. It is open seven days a week until 1 a.m.

The Route 46 corridor is the most international food in town

This surprises people. The stretch of Route 46 through the Borough has quietly become the most varied dining strip in this part of the county.

ALEV Mediterranean Grill at 76 Route 46 is a family run Turkish BYOB. Alev means flame in Turkish, and the owners say the recipes have been in their families for many generations. Caffe NaVona at 147 Route 46 is the dress up option, an Italian restaurant with a grand piano in the room and live entertainment on the patio Monday through Saturday from 6 to 10 p.m. It is closed Sundays. Thai Nam Phet at 296 US Highway 46 East rounds it out, closed Mondays.

One honest note: there is no craft brewery in Rockaway. Searches turn up Rockaway Brewing Company, which is in Long Island City, Queens, and has no New Jersey location.

Park Lake belongs to both towns

Park Lake is the one place where the Borough and the Township genuinely share. It is jointly owned and maintained by both, with entrances off Lakeside Drive on the Borough side and Mount Hope Road on the Township side.

There is a 0.7 mile paved walking path open to bikes and rollerblades, a playground, picnic tables and a volleyball court. Leashed dogs are welcome. Shoreline fishing is permitted outside the beach area. In winter the lake is monitored for public ice skating when conditions allow.

The Rotary Memorial Gazebo here hosts free summer concerts, and we cover that lineup each season in our guide to the Park Lake Gazebo summer concert series.

Worth knowing before you pack a swimsuit: the beach area is maintained by Rockaway Borough and is members only in summer. Township residents can buy memberships through Rockaway Borough Recreation. The same goes for Mount Hope Pond on Burnt House Garden Road, which is a Township residents only swimming beach requiring a badge through Community Pass.

The hiking is the real reason to come

Rockaway Township holds an unusual amount of protected land, and most visitors never see it.

Splitrock Reservoir at 420 Splitrock Road is the headline. It is a 650 acre state owned reservoir inside Farny State Park, ringed by roughly 1,500 acres of wilderness, and it looks like something much further north than Morris County. The rules are specific and the Township states them plainly: public access for fishing and kayaking is from the public access parking area near the dam only, car top watercraft only, no gas motors, no shoreline fishing, and hiking only on marked trails. Anything else is treated as trespass. The parking area is a dirt and gravel lot reached by about a mile of dirt road.

From that lot, the white blazed Four Birds Trail runs roughly 19 miles end to end, but the segment most people hike is a 6.2 mile out and back with a viewpoint over the reservoir at about the three mile mark. It is rugged Highlands rock with some scrambling and a stream crossing, so wear real shoes.

Wildcat Ridge Wildlife Management Area, off Green Pond Road, is the other big one. The Wildcat Ridge Hawk Watch sits on a rock outcrop about a mile up from the parking at the end of Upper Hibernia Road, with views southeast across the coastal plain toward Manhattan on a clear day. It is staffed by volunteers of NJ Fish and Wildlife during two seasons, roughly February 15 to May 15 in spring and August 15 to November 15 in fall.

Wildcat Ridge also holds the Hibernia Mine, one of the largest bat hibernacula in the eastern United States. It is gated and every shaft opening is sealed for public safety and to protect the colony. Look at it as history and conservation, not as somewhere to explore.

For something gentler, Egbert’s Lake Park at 864 Green Pond Road is 72 acres around a lake with a gravel walking path, benches and a picnic shelter. The Township’s own description is the best part: the lake was once a thriving recreation resort with summer cottages, fell into disrepair in the 1970s, and has since been restored to an untouched state with all the cottages removed. Rockaway Township opened it as a park in 2006. Boating and fishing are permitted, swimming is not.

Lake Ames Park off Snake Hill Road offers a walking trail circling the lake with picnic tables, boating, fishing and ice fishing, again with no swimming.

Iron built this place

Rockaway was the first district in America to actively work and mine iron ore, and by 1776 Morris County was the principal smelting center in the country. Hibernia Furnace ran from 1763 to 1913 and ultimately yielded over five million tons. The Mount Hope Mine was New Jersey’s largest iron ore producer at roughly six million tons. The last mines closed in 1959.

Mount Hope Historical County Park sits over that old mining complex with close to five miles of trails, including a 2.7 mile trail system and the 1.5 mile Sred Trail, and you can still see shafts, passages and slopes in the ground. The 1868 Mount Hope Miners’ Church stands on the property and was added to the National Register in 2012. The park straddles the Rockaway Township and Wharton line, and the Morris County Park Commission lists it with a Wharton address. Open daily sunrise to sunset, dogs on a six foot leash.

The Ford-Faesch Manor House at 629 Mt. Hope Road is the ironmaster’s stone mansion, with walls two to three feet thick and nine English fireplaces. In 1772 Jacob Ford Jr. leased the Mount Hope iron works to Swiss born ironmaster John Jacob Faesch, whose operation supplied munitions to the Continental Army. Fifty workers were exempted from military service to keep it running, and Washington authorized the employment of 35 Hessian prisoners captured at Trenton. It is on the state and national registers and is under restoration. The Historical Society of Rockaway Township opens it several times a year and arranges tours.

In the Borough, the Rockaway Borough Historical Museum at 199 West Main Street opens the fourth Sunday of most months from 1 to 3 p.m., closed July and August. A recent addition to the collection came from Borough resident Bob Comer, an engineer at Reaction Motors in the Borough during the early space race, who donated research material, patent applications and technical drawings.

Next door at 82 East Main Street, the Joseph Jackson House now serves as the Rockaway Borough Public Library with a local history museum inside. Jackson was a Rockaway industrialist who also served as Postmaster, Morris County Judge and a state Assemblyman. The Veterans Memorial Tower stands beside it, carrying the names of Borough residents who served from the Spanish-American War through Iraq and Afghanistan.

One more piece of town lore, published by the Borough itself: in the early 1900s Rockaway had two railroads, a trolley line, an iron foundry, two Morris Canal basins, a bicycle factory, a three story department store selling everything from bonnets to bedsteads, and three hotels. One of them, Riggot’s Hotel at Main and Wall Streets, is remembered as a place Annie Oakley often visited when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was playing in New York.

Rockaway Townsquare and the Mount Hope corridor

Rockaway Townsquare at 301 Mount Hope Avenue is the regional anchor, an enclosed mall with over 140 stores anchored by Macy’s, JCPenney and Raymour and Flanigan. Sit down options include The Cheesecake Factory and P.F. Chang’s. Parking is free and there are designated rideshare zones. A Dick’s House of Sport has been announced for the former Lord and Taylor space.

The mall is also a venue in its own right. We cover the circus that comes to Rockaway Townsquare and FoodeesFest, which brings more than 40 food vendors to the property.

For something to actually do rather than buy, Rockaway Lanes at 365 US Highway 46 is a PBA host bowling center with laser light bowling nights, leagues and a pro shop on site.

When to go

Rockaway’s calendar is busier than its size suggests. The Tri-County Fair runs in June. Germania Park’s Oktoberfest lands in September. The Borough Historical Committee runs a Cars and Coffee show at Fireman’s Field on Beach Street in July, which drew over 125 cars from the 1920s to current models in a recent year, plus a town wide yard sale in September.

In late October, the Dark Lake Spooktacular at Park Lake is run by the Township in collaboration with the Borough and draws crowds in the thousands. New for 2026, the two recreation departments launched a joint Scarecrow Showdown, with scarecrows going up around Park Lake in October.

Getting there and parking

Rockaway sits in northern Morris County, roughly 35 miles west of New York City. Interstate 80 is the main artery, with Exit 35 at Mount Hope Avenue for the mall and the Township retail corridor and Exit 37 also serving the Township. US Route 46 runs through the southern end of the Borough and connects to Denville and Dover. County Route 513, Green Pond Road, runs about 14 miles north through the Township and is the road to Hibernia, Wildcat Ridge and the northern parks.

There is no NJ Transit train station in either Rockaway. The nearest stations are Denville and Dover. NJ Transit bus route 880 connects Morristown Station to Rockaway Townsquare via West Main Street and Route 46, on weekdays only with no Sunday service.

Parking is free and plentiful at the mall. Main Street in the Borough is on street village parking. Trailhead lots at Splitrock and Wildcat Ridge are unpaved and fill early on good weather weekends, so go in the morning.

For more around the county, see our guide to Morris County towns.

Featured image: Joseph Jackson House, Rockaway, NJ by Zeete, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Community traditions include Rockaway Township Day at Peterson Field.