Cloverdale Farm: a cranberry bog you can read on foot

A farm becomes a park

Ocean County says cranberry farming at this property began in the late nineteenth century. Several generations of the Collins family worked the farm; Katherine and William Collins operated its bogs and tree farm for more than fifty years. The county acquired the 90-acre property from Katherine Collins in 2004 through its Natural Lands Trust Fund. The result is an unusually legible public landscape: the old farm structures and the bogs remain close enough to explore in one walk. The visitor center opened in 2015, and the former cranberry sorting building was restored in 2018. Ocean County park information; county self-guided trail brochure.

Follow the berries through the farm

The county brochure numbers seventeen stops. Early in the walk, the visitor center marks the farmhouse site: the nineteenth-century house burned in 2010, and the current center was rebuilt afterward. The nearby sorting house was first a bunkhouse. It later held a Hayden separator: berries bounced down slanted boards so firm fruit continued toward the loading dock while soft fruit dropped out. That simple machine helps explain how the harvest became something a truck could carry to market. The root cellar is another reminder of work before refrigeration; county interpretation says electricity reached this farm in 1957. Ocean County trail stops 1, 3 and 4.

Farther along, look for the old sawmill site, the reservoir and the water-control features around the bogs. Cranberry production depended on more than plants: growers leveled low ground, cut drainage ditches, built dikes and used sluice gates to control flooding. The brochure identifies a borrow pit where sand or gravel could be taken for dike repairs and notes that growers also spread sand on bogs to stimulate cranberry growth. Four Mile Branch runs through the property on its way toward Manahawkin Lake and the Barnegat Bay watershed. These stops let a visitor read the farm as a water system, not merely a field of berries. Ocean County trail stops 5, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 14.

Other livelihoods, living habitat

The Collins family planted Christmas trees in 1979 to supplement farm income after the cranberry harvest, according to the county's trail guide. A sphagnum-moss shed recalls another Pinelands product: moss was gathered, dried and sold for uses including packing plant roots. Around the cultivated bogs, the trail moves through pine and oak uplands and a forested wetland with Atlantic white cedar, red maple and highbush blueberry. The brochure also marks a prescribed-burn site and explains how planned fire can reduce wildfire fuel. The route makes the farm's seasonal work and the surrounding ecology visible together. Ocean County trail stops 9 and 12–17.

Plan the walk

Use the county's public address, 34 Cloverdale Road, Barnegat, NJ 08005, and follow its signs to the park; the county brochure notes that Cloverdale Road is a dirt road. The 1.4-mile self-guided trail begins by the visitor center and loops through the farm and woods. Download the county trail map and match the numbered brochure stops as you walk. The park's current webpage lists opening at 7 a.m. and seasonally changing closing times; the visitor center is listed Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., except major holidays. Check the county park page before leaving, especially for the day's closing time. Stay on the public trail around the bogs.