The Delaware water gap runs through the Appalachian mountains between the border of NJ and PA. Home to many waterfalls, including the tallest in PA, tons of hiking and scenic views, the Gap is an amazing national recreation area close to New York City.
We arrived from Connecticut and so began our trip in the northern most tip of the park. We stopped for photos at the park entrance sign and then headed south the rest of the trip. The goal was to see the entire park in a single day if possible.. a goal we failed due to rain. However we returned at the end of the trip for the last hike.
Just south of the entrance to the park was our first real stop. Raymondskill falls is the highest water fall in all of Pennsylvania. The three tiers of this water fall drop over a combined 150 feet. There is only a few minute hike from the parking lot to the large viewing platform at the base of the falls. The main falls are pictured on the left, and a second drop can be seen from the platform as well.
Afterwards a path to the right leads to stairs that will take you to the top of the falls. Near the top we discovered a small cave and you can see another two small drops just upstream. This path continues to an upper parking lot with bathrooms .
Another quick trip south took us to Dingmans falls. This visitor center was closed like many other facilities but had an old world charm from the exterior façade. There is more then ample parking as well.
The trail here is entirely on a boardwalk with several bridges criss crossing the creek. I believe the trail is around a mile long and this will take you to two separate water falls. The first of which is Silver Thread Falls. This is a very tall 80+ foot fall that plummets between a narrow rock gulch. The boardwalk will bring you to a perfect frontal view.
The Second water fall is the namesake of the park, Dingman's falls drops roughly 130 feet and has a significantly greater water flow then Silver thread. This fall is located at the end of the board walk and like Raymondskill falls, has a stair case to a viewing platform located above it. This is easily the second biggest water fall here.
We opted not to climb to the top of this fall as the platform doesn't appear to provide a great view or lead anywhere in particular.
After this we hopped into the car again and headed slightly north from Dingman's. We chose to cross at Dingman's bridge to get to the eastern half of the park. Please note that this is a private bridge and has a $1 toll [as of spring 2021]. I'm sure it's perfectly safe but it's definitely one of the sketchiest bridges I have ever crossed in my adult life.
On our way to our next destination we discovered a mostly abandoned village. Please check our video for details. I did not feel right taking photos here.
The last waterfall of the day is Buttermilk falls. This is one of the tallest, arguably THE tallest, in New Jersey. GPS did a very poor job getting us to the parking lot here. It mixed up a hiking trail as a road, and it appears that this was once used as a legitimate road to the base of the falls.
We parked at the south entrance, which had half a dozen cars, and took the 45 minute walk out to the falls. You'll cross an old car bridge, pass an abandoned barn, the foundations of a home and finally arrive at the falls.
To the left is a staircase that leads to a significant set of hiking trails all the way to the Appalachian trail. The area is also heavily trafficked by bears as the many signs will tell you.
Pictured to the left is the abandoned barn. The door is wide open and you can stick your head inside, but beware of the massive amount of glass scattered all over. The foundation of the home located a few minutes further up the trail also has signs of being burned in a fire. Sadly arsonists love these remote ruins, so I wonder how long this building will really last.
The last stop we managed to make in the day was Millbrook Village. This is a small historical village that is used for historical education and guided tours. Most of the time it's completely abandoned, as any of the many youtubers who have been here will attest. When we visited, it was anything but abandoned. There was a ton of restoration work happening and they were even doing ranger training that day!
Pictured to the right is the grist mill.
The village includes an old church, school, black smith, hotel/boarding house, barns and several homes. One of the rangers was kind enough to give us some material showing which homes were which.
The link to the online version is:
http://npshistory.com/brochures/dewa/millbrook-village-2009.pdf
We wondered around taking pictures of the old buildings but because of the amount of people we didn't stay as long as I thought we would. This turned out to be a good thing as it started to rain and cut our day short. We made a diversion to a different spot we wanted to visit and then returned to the park on our last day instead.
We returned to hike up Mt Tammany, what seems to be the most popular hike in the entire park. Could we have completed this all in one day? Yes. We took the red dot trail up and blue dot trail down, for a combine 4.2 mile hike. Note parking fills up and we had a hell of a time finding a spot. This is steep and you need to bring water.
The first stop on the way up is where the famous view of Arrow island in the Delaware river is located. Many people turned around here and with good reason. The trail remains extremely steep all the way to the top. The view from the summit is pictured to the right. I fully believe it's worth it and loved every torturous second. We met a nice couple who were a bit lost and helped them to the top. The red dot trail gets really over grown at one point and I used google maps to stay on trail, after this section it is fairly easy to stay on point. The blue dot trail down is much longer and a steady descent, but it's fairly unremarkable until you get to the creek. There are multiple small water falls and the cool shaded valley is much welcome at the end of this trip. This trail will spit you out into one of the parking lots and both are connected by a small trail with stairs.
While not as a big as a formal National Park, the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation area is an awesome place for outdoors adventure. There are many more hikes and smaller water falls to discover, and we didn't even touch on the boating, kayaking or fishing.
Make sure that if you are in the northeast that you spend at least a day here like we did!
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