Branch Brook Park

Branch Brook Park. Historic Site. , This is the oldest park in the first county park system established in the United States, and an outstanding example of naturalistic landscape design. The Essex County Park Commission, formed in 1895, acquired the first 60 acres from the City of Newark that year. Later land donations and purchases expanded the park by the mid-1930s to its present 2-mile length in Newark and Belleville. Named for a brook that flows into the Passaic River, these 360 acres once contained swamps, cornfields and a training camp for Civil War troops. Most of the design was by John Charles Olmsted, stepson of Frederick Law Olmsted, planner of New York’s Central Park and the U.S. Capitol grounds. A large lake, ponds, winding paths, meadows and woods surround numerous recreation facilities. A skating rink now occupies a former reservoir that was carved out of a brownstone quarry near Clifton Avenue. Branch Brook’s 3,000 cherry trees are the largest collection in the nation, begun in the 1920s by Caroline Bamberger Fuld, sister of a department store magnet. This elaborate gateway, modeled on one is Scotland, was donated in 1899 by Robert Ballantine, whose brewing family once owned some of this land. The park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.