Goffle Hill, also referred to as Goffle Mountain and historically known as Totoway Mountain and Wagaraw Mountain, is a range of the trap rock

Watchung Mountains The Watchung Mountains (once called the Blue Hills) are a group of three long low ridges of volcanic origin, between high, lying parallel to each other in northern New Jersey in the United States. The name is derived from the American Native Lena ...

on the western edge of the

Newark Basin The Newark Basin is a sediment-filled rift basin located mainly in northern New Jersey but also stretching into south-eastern Pennsylvania and southern New York. It is part of the system of Eastern North America Rift Basins. Geology Approximatel ...

in northern

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. The hill straddles part of the border of

Bergen County Bergen County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Passaic County Passaic County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of New Jersey that is part of the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, the population of Passaic County was enumerated at 524,118, an increase of 22,892 (4.6%) from t ...

, underlying a mostly suburban setting. While hosting patches of woodlands, perched wetlands, and traprock glades, the hill is largely unprotected from development. Extensive quarrying for

trap rock Trap rock, also known as either trapp or trap, is any dark-colored, fine-grained, non-granitic intrusive or extrusive igneous rock. Types of trap rock include basalt, peridotite, diabase, and gabbro.Neuendorf, K.K.E., J.P. Mehl, Jr., and J.A ...

has obliterated large tracts of the hill in

North Haledon North Haledon (pronounced North HAIL-don) is a borough in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 8,417,Prospect Park. Conservation efforts seeking to preserve undeveloped land, such as the local ''Save the Woods'' initiative (2007–present), are ongoing.Save the Woods.org
Accessed September 7, 2009.

Geography

Goffle Hill generally refers to the ridge of First Watchung Mountain north of the

Passaic River Passaic River ( ) is a river, approximately long, in Northern New Jersey. The river in its upper course flows in a highly circuitous route, meandering through the swamp lowlands between the ridge hills of rural and suburban northern New Jersey, ...

and south of

Campgaw Mountain Campgaw Mountain is the northernmost ridge of the volcanically formed Watchung Mountains, along the border of Franklin Lakes, Oakland, and Mahwah in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. Located almost entirely within the bounds of Ca ...

. West of the ridge is a narrow valley dividing the tall peaks of the

Preakness Range The Preakness Range is a range of the trap rock Watchung Mountains on the western edge of the Newark Basin in northern New Jersey. A large portion of this range is included in High Mountain Park Preserve, offering miles of hiking trails with vista ...

(part of Second and Third Watchung Mountain) from Goffle Hill. The east side of the ridge faces out over a wide, shallow valley extending to the Palisades.Thomas Francis Gordon. Gazetteer of the State of New Jersey – A General View of its Physical and Moral Condition, together with a Topographical and Statistical Account of its Counties, Towns, Villages, Canals, Railroads, &c. Published by D. Fenton, 1834.
Available via Internet Archive
/ref> Historically, the ridge comprising Goffle Hill was known as Totoway Mountain, with the name ''Goffle Hill'' applied to the more prominent southern part of the ridge. Today, the name Goffle Hill is commonly used to describe the entire ridge despite the fact that the northern and southern sections of the ridge are quite different in terms of topography and surficial geology.

Southern Ridge

The southern ridge traverses the boroughs of Prospect Park,

Haledon Haledon ( ) is a borough in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 9,052, an increase of 734 (+8.8%) from the 2010 census count of 8,318, which in turn reflected an in ...

North Haledon North Haledon (pronounced North HAIL-don) is a borough in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 8,417,Hawthorne Hawthorne often refers to the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne may also refer to: Places Australia *Hawthorne, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane Canada * Hawthorne Village, Ontario, a suburb of Milton, Ontario United States * Hawt ...

and the township of Wyckoff, running generally north to south. Starting at the

Great Falls of the Passaic River The Great Falls of the Passaic River is a prominent waterfall, high, on the Passaic River in the city of Paterson in Passaic County, New Jersey. The falls and surrounding area are protected as part of the Paterson Great Falls National Histor ...

, the southern ridge rises gently to the north, culminating at an elevation of 602 ft just inside of Hawthorne, near the border with North Haledon and Wyckoff. The summit marks the highest peak of Goffle Hill, though comparable peaks exist in the northern part of the ridge. The southern ridge is distinguished from the northern part of Goffle Hill by the presence of trap rock glades and vertical basalt cliffs which rise abruptly on portions of its eastern flank.

Northern Ridge

The northern part of Goffle Hill, underlying the area of Sicomac and the boroughs of Franklin Lakes and a section of

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

, exists primarily as a low, broken ridgeline lacking in large precipices and running northwest to southeast. Modern maps show only one named peak on the northern ridge, a small trap rock prominence known as Knob Hill which attains an elevation of . This peak, which is located just north of Summit Ave in Franklin Lakes, marks the only significant trap rock found at the surface of the northern ridge. In addition to Knob Hill, five other unnamed peaks reach an elevation over five hundred feet, with the highest summit on the northern ridge reaching an elevation of 584 ft in Franklin Lakes.

History

Goffle Hill was first inhabited by the

Lenape The Lenape (, , or Lenape , del, Lënapeyok) also called the Leni Lenape, Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. Their historical territory includ ...

, whose language the ridge’s historical name, Totoway Mountain, is derived from. ''Totoway'', or the more contemporary ''Totowa'', means ‘the falls between river and mountain’. The term was used to describe the

, which spill over a notch in the ridge of First Watchung Mountain. Europeans later applied the name to the section of ridge north of the falls. The ridge’s modern name, Goffle Hill, is derived from the Dutch. ''Goffle'' is a corruption of the word ''gaffel'', which means ‘fork’, referring to the fact that Goffle Hill stood at a fork in a prominent Lenape trail.Nelson, William & Shriner, Charles A. ''History of Paterson and its Environs (The Silk City) Vol. I''. Lewis Historical Publishing Company, New York and Chicago, 1920. See Page 80.
Available via Google Books
For a time, Goffle Hill was also known as Wagaraw Mountain. ''Wagaraw'' was a Lenape term, meaning ‘low country at the bend of the river’ –the north bend of the Passaic River. It is fitting that the ridge’s Lenape names are derived from terms involving the Passaic River. Lenape camps have been discovered mostly along the banks of the river’s tributaries at the foot of the hill. Originally, these streams served as a vital freshwater and fishing source. Later, with the arrival of Europeans, the hill’s streams powered mills, aiding in the settlement and farming of the northern Passaic River valley. Trap rock and sandstone ( freestone) quarrying on the hill served the building boom that occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. During the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

, the hill, as with the rest of the Watchungs, served as a lookout. In 1780,

General Lafayette Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (6 September 1757 – 20 May 1834), known in the United States as Lafayette (, ), was a French aristocrat, freemason and military officer who fought in the American Revolutio ...

’s light infantry were stationed on the eastern flank of the hill. Lafayette’s headquarters were situated at the foot of the hill in what is now

Goffle Brook Park Goffle Brook Park is a public, county park spanning much of the length of Goffle Brook through the borough of Hawthorne in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. Since its designation and construction between 1930 and 1932,Paul D. Ledvina. O ...

in Hawthorne.François Jean Chastellux & Howard C Rice. ''Travels in North America in the Years 1780, 1781 and 1782''. (Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va.) University of North Carolina Press, 1963.

Geology

Goffle Hill formed as molten rock extruded onto the surface 185 million years ago. At that time the range occupied the northern section of an active rift valley running through northern and central New Jersey and part of Pennsylvania. After the rift failed in the early Jurassic, the range was elevated as erosion removed the sandstone and shale surrounding the basalt lava flows of Goffle Hill.U.S. Geological Survey - NYC Regional Geology, Mesozoic Basins
/ref> The northern part of Goffle Hill, except in a few locations, is buried under a mantle of glacially derived sediments and sandstone, greatly reducing its topographic prominence.Salisbury, Rollins D. & Peet, Charles E et al. ''The Glacial Geology of New Jersey''. Geological Survey of New Jersey – Volume V of the Final Report to the State Geologist. MacCrellish and Quigley, Book and Job Printers, Trenton, NJ, 1902. See Page 558, part of Chapter XII - Drift of the Triassic Plain.
Available via Google Books
The southern part of the ridge displays a significant amount of trap rock, though some underlying red sandstone reaches up to the ridgeline halfway along the border of North Haledon and Hawthorne where quarrying has stripped away overlying trap rock. The majority of exposed trap rock occurs along high mural precipices facing to the east. Exposures of

hornfels Hornfels is the group name for a set of contact metamorphic rocks that have been baked and hardened by the heat of intrusive igneous masses and have been rendered massive, hard, splintery, and in some cases exceedingly tough and durable. These pro ...

on Goffle Hill are limited, but they occur readily in at least one location. Along the Hawthorne-North Haledon border a contact can be seen between adjacent sandstone and basalt. This contact reveals the presence of indurated red sandstone that has been baked into a grey hornfels by the heat of the First Watchung lava flow.

Ecology

The native forests of Goffle Hill have been devastated by suburbanization and disease. An 1894 New Jersey forestry report indicated that, in addition to

oak An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...

, redcedar and

chestnut The chestnuts are the deciduous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Castanea'', in the beech family Fagaceae. They are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce. The unrelat ...

were the most abundant trees on Goffle Hill. Today, chestnuts have been eliminated by the accidental importation of

chestnut blight The pathogenic fungus ''Cryphonectria parasitica'' (formerly ''Endothia parasitica'') is a member of the Ascomycota (sac fungi). This necrotrophic fungus is native to East Asia and South East Asia and was introduced into Europe and North America ...

in the early twentieth century. Redcedar, which was cited as the most prevalent tree on the ridge in 1894, a pioneering tree of

secondary forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...

, can be found only in a few isolated clusters along the southern ridgeline. A few trap rock glades continue to exist on Goffle Hill, though development is slowly reducing their numbers. The majority of the remaining trap rock glades straddle the ridgeline of Goffle Hill along the border of

North Haledon North Haledon (pronounced North HAIL-don) is a borough in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough's population was 8,417,Hawthorne Hawthorne often refers to the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne may also refer to: Places Australia *Hawthorne, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane Canada * Hawthorne Village, Ontario, a suburb of Milton, Ontario United States * Hawt ...

. Residential development has been hindered somewhat at the ridgeline due to the presence of high, vertical basalt cliffs. However, quarrying has removed a considerable section of trap rock glade in this area. Perched wetlands are scattered along the ridge. One of the larger wetlands contains Goffle Pond, which feeds a headstream of

Goffle Brook Goffle Brook is a tributary of the Passaic River which flows south through a section of Passaic County and Bergen County in New Jersey and drains the eastern side of the First Watchung Mountain. Heading up the brook from the confluence with th ...

. Other significant wetlands help feed Molly Ann Brook and

Deep Voll Brook Deep Voll Brook, also known as Deep Brook (USGS captioned name), is a tributary of Goffle Brook and part of the Passaic River watershed. The brook drains part of the eastern flank of First Watchung Mountain, cutting through portions of Bergen ...

Conservation

Development along Goffle Hill has accelerated in recent years, with new homes and backyards being built atop former trap rock glades and forests. As the ridgeline of the mountain has become increasingly suburbanized, fears have been raised about runoff and the continued destruction of what could be preserved in the public interest. Locals in Hawthorne in Wyckoff have formed an initiative known as ''Save the Woods'', which is seeking to preserve of woodlands soon to be developed. Other initiatives to stop a townhouse development in Hawthorne and a residential development Wyckoff have failed. It is thought that these developments have since led to an increase in local flooding.Brienza, Michael ''Letters to the Editor: Barrister at Deep Brook project will have effect on Hawthorne''. Hawthorne Press, Vol 83, No. 30. July 26, 2007.
Available online via Save the Woods News & Press
. As of 2009, Goffle Hill contains no preserved land. Only one park, Hofstra Park, a municipal recreation facility maintained by Prospect Park, exists wholly on Goffle Hill.

, maintained by

Passaic County Passaic County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of New Jersey that is part of the New York metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, the population of Passaic County was enumerated at 524,118, an increase of 22,892 (4.6%) from t ...

, sits on the foot of the hill, partly overlapping the lowest part of the eastern flank.

Recreation

From north to south, *High Mountain Golf Club *

* Hofstra Park

References

External links

New York-New Jersey Trail Conference - Watchungs Region
{{Geology of the Newark Basin Landforms of Bergen County, New Jersey Landforms of Passaic County, New Jersey Ridges of New Jersey Watchung Mountains Volcanism of New Jersey