Long before anyone divided North and Central Jersey, Native American people lived, hunted, farmed, and traveled throughout the region. Archaeological evidence shows an Indigenous presence in New Jersey extending back more than 10,000 years. When Europeans arrived during the early 1600s, they encountered the Lenape, often called the Lenni Lenape, whose homeland included New Jersey and portions of New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.
Northern New Jersey was associated primarily with the Munsee-speaking Lenape, historically called the Minsi or “People of the Stony Country.” Central Jersey was occupied largely by Unami-speaking Lenape communities, known as the “People Down River.” The Raritan Valley and Watchung Mountains formed a broad transition between them, not an official boundary.
Indian Trails Across Northern New Jersey
The Trails That Crossed New Jersey
Long before colonial roads were built, the Lenape traveled through northern and central New Jersey along an extensive network of footpaths. These routes connected villages, rivers, hunting grounds, planting areas and coastal settlements. Their exact courses changed over time, so the lines on the map should be understood as historical reconstructions.
Great Minisink Trail
The Great Minisink Trail was one of New Jersey’s most important Lenape routes. It connected the Minisink settlements along the upper Delaware River with communities near the Raritan Valley and the Navesink coast, passing near present-day Newton, Netcong, Morristown, Springfield, Metuchen, and Middletown.
Minsi Path and Assanpink Trail
The Minsi Path followed the Delaware River corridor north from the Philadelphia region toward Minisink Island. It connected Lenape communities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania with the larger network of trails leading toward the Susquehanna Valley.
The Assanpink Trail began near the Delaware River at present-day Trenton and continued through Princeton and Kingston toward New Brunswick and the Raritan River. Dutch and English travelers later followed this route, and sections eventually became part of the King’s Highway and present-day Route 27.
Pompton Trail
The Pompton Trail linked the Minisink region with Pompton, the Passaic Valley, and Hackensack. Following natural passages through the mountains and along the Pequannock River, much of its general course is associated with present-day Route 23.
Tuckaraming Trail
The Tuckaraming Trail crossed the Raritan Valley through the areas of Somerville, Plainfield, and Scotch Plains before reaching Elizabeth. Its western branches continued through Ringoes toward the Delaware River, helping form the corridor later followed by Old York Road.
Navesink Trail and Burlington Path
This trail crossed central New Jersey from Crosswicks through Freehold to the Lenape communities around Middletown, Shrewsbury and Navesink. It provided access to coastal fishing and shellfish grounds and later became an important colonial road between Burlington and the shore.
Manunkachunk Trail & Western Branch of the Minisink Trail
The Manunkachunk Trail began near a Lenape village close to present-day Belvidere. It crossed northern Warren County through Great Meadows and Hackettstown before joining the larger trail system near Netcong. The western branch extended from the Delaware River near present-day Phillipsburg through Clinton and White House toward Somerville. Later roads, including portions of United States Route 22, followed the same broad east-to-west corridor.
Hackensack Trail
The Hackensack Trail passed through the lower Hackensack River valley and connected Lenape communities near Hackensack, Bergen, and Newark Bay. It also provided access to waterways leading toward Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Passaic River.
Amboy Trail & Upper Path
The Amboy Trail connected Elizabeth, Woodbridge, Perth Amboy, and the lower Raritan River. It linked inland settlements with important fishing, trading, and canoe routes around Raritan Bay and Staten Island.
The Upper Path traveled southwest from the New Brunswick and Piscataway area toward Princeton. Colonial maps later described roads along this corridor, although the precise relationship between those roads and the earlier Lenape path remains uncertain.
Lower Trail
The Lower Trail also began near the lower Raritan but followed a more southerly course through Milltown and Hightstown toward Crosswicks and Trenton. It connected river communities with the Assanpink and Burlington trail networks.
Lenape villages were commonly located near rivers, fertile valleys, and food sources. Trails connected the Delaware River, Raritan Valley, New York Harbor, and Jersey Shore. European settlement gradually displaced many Lenape communities during the 1600s and 1700s, but the Lenape did not disappear. Their descendants continue to preserve their culture and connection to New Jersey today.
Continental Army and the Rev War Roadways Tied to Those Trails
During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army depended on New Jersey’s established roads to move soldiers, artillery, supply wagons, and military messages between the Hudson River, Morristown, the Watchung Mountains, Princeton, Trenton, and Philadelphia. Many of these roads grew out of older Lenape trails that followed the most practical passages through river valleys, mountain gaps, ridgelines, and stream crossings. Colonists later widened them for horses and wagons, creating a mature transportation network connecting farms, mills, ferries, taverns, and villages.
For the Continental Army, these roads made rapid movement and resupply possible while providing access to protected encampments and defensible terrain. Troops could pass through corridors such as Paramus, Morristown, Bound Brook, Princeton, and Trenton while remaining connected to food, forage, communications, and reinforcements. The army was therefore moving across a military landscape shaped in part by Indigenous knowledge generations before the Revolution. Washington’s forces did not use these routes because they were Native American trails, but because they had become New Jersey’s most practical and strategically valuable roads.
From Lenape Footpaths to New Jersey Highways
The highway overlay reveals an important pattern, but it must be interpreted carefully. New Jersey highway engineers did not simply copy a map of Lenape trails. Instead, many Lenape paths had already become colonial roads, wagon routes, stagecoach roads, and turnpikes. When automobiles arrived, the state widened, paved, and numbered portions of those existing corridors.
This transformation accelerated after 1912, when New Jersey began planning an integrated state highway system. The State Highway Department was created in 1917, United States highway numbers appeared in 1926, and New Jersey reorganized its state routes in 1927. By then, some ancient travel corridors had been in continuous use for centuries.
Route 46, Route 23 and Route 27
West of Netcong, much of the corridor followed by United States Route 46 developed from the Manunkachunk Trail. The Lenape path connected the Great Minisink Trail near Netcong with Manunkachunk village near present-day Belvidere. It became a local road, was incorporated into New Jersey’s early state highway system, and was designated part of United States Route 46 in 1936. The modern highway has been widened and relocated in places, so it follows the historic corridor rather than every turn of the original footpath.
New Jersey Route 23 follows the broad corridor of the Pompton Trail, which connected the lower Passaic Valley with Pompton and the Minisink settlements in northwestern New Jersey. During the early 1800s, parts of the route became the Newark and Pompton Turnpike and the Paterson and Hamburg Turnpike. Those roads were later absorbed into the state highway system, with Route 23 receiving its present number in 1927.
The Assanpink Trail ran from the Trenton area through Princeton and Kingston toward New Brunswick. Dutch and English travelers adopted the path, portions became part of the King’s Highway, and the corridor later carried the Lincoln Highway during the early automobile era. Today, much of that historic line is New Jersey Route 27. South Brunswick still identifies Route 27 as the old Indigenous trail and major thoroughfare of earlier centuries.
United States Route 22
The clearest example in central New Jersey is United States Route 22. The Lenape trail shown on the map from the Delaware River through Clinton, White House, and Somerville became the Easton and New Brunswick Road. Clinton Township records that after World War I, state and federal officials selected this established corridor for improvement and transformed it into United States Route 22. The highway still follows the same general east-to-west passage identified on Snyder’s map as the Western Branch of the Minisink Trail.
The Great Minisink Trail and Route 124
Part of the Great Minisink Trail through Morristown, Madison, and Chatham later became the Morris Turnpike. It entered the early state highway system and was eventually designated Route 24. After the modern Route 24 freeway was constructed on a different alignment, the older road through Madison and Chatham became Route 124. Route 124, not the present Route 24 freeway, preserves this portion of the earlier travel corridor.
The pattern is remarkably consistent. The Lenape selected routes that followed river valleys, crossed mountains at practical gaps, remained on firm ridges and reached dependable river crossings. Colonial travelers enlarged those paths for horses and wagons. Turnpike companies improved them for stagecoaches, and twentieth century highway departments paved and numbered them for automobiles. The pavement may be modern, but several of New Jersey’s busiest transportation corridors began with decisions Indigenous travelers made centuries before the automobile existed.
The overlay should not be used to claim that Interstate 80, Interstate 78, Interstate 287 or the modern Route 24 freeway were themselves Lenape trails. These limited access highways may parallel older travel corridors, but they were engineered largely on new alignments. Visual similarity alone does not establish a direct historical connection.
Old York Road and Route 179 and County Route 537
The Tuckaraming or Naraticong Trail became the foundation of Old York Road, the major colonial route between Philadelphia and New York. The road was opened through Hunterdon County during the early 1700s and later carried stagecoaches and commercial traffic. In the automobile era, its surviving sections became parts of Route 179, Route 28, and County Routes 514, 567, and 637. The National Park Service specifically confirms that present-day Route 179 generally follows Old York Road through the Mount Airy area.
The Burlington Path began as a Lenape route between the interior and the shore. In 1684, colonial authorities formalized it as a road connecting Perth Amboy and Burlington. It was renamed Monmouth Road in 1796, and much of the surviving corridor became County Route 537 and local Main Streets through Monmouth County.
Railroads of Northern New Jersey
From the 1870s through the 1890s, private companies selected railroad routes to create profitable connections between cities, factories, farms, coal fields, and ports. Engineers surveyed possible alignments, looking for gentle grades, broad curves, stable ground and affordable river crossings. In northern and central New Jersey, railroads frequently followed river valleys and crossed the Watchung Mountains through natural gaps. Investors, landowners, and towns also influenced the decisions because a station could increase commerce and property values.
From about 1900 through the 1930s, railroads focused more on improving existing lines than opening new territory. Companies straightened curves, reduced grades, and constructed bridges, tunnels, cuts, and embankments to move trains faster and carry heavier loads. Although railroads sometimes occupied the same general corridors as Native American trails and early roads, they rarely followed them precisely. A horse or automobile could climb steep hills and negotiate sharp turns, but a heavily loaded steam locomotive required a much flatter and straighter route.
Now its Your Turn…
Go For a Walk
Below is a list of a few historic walking paths and trails you can visit today. Know of one?
Tell us in the comments at the bottom of this page.
