For years the constraint on a Saturday here was the table. You planned around whether anywhere in the borough was serving past eight, and if the answer was no, you drove to Wyckoff or Ridgewood. That has quietly flipped. Pazza took the space next door on Franklin Avenue, picked up a liquor license and opened a full bar with seating for about fifty and later hours Thursday through Saturday. Farm & Flour on Pulis Avenue, which opened as a breakfast and lunch room, now serves dinner Wednesday through Saturday from 4:30 to 8:30. The evening end of a Franklin Lakes Saturday got longer.
The daylight end got shorter, and it is about to get shorter on a schedule most residents do not carry in their heads. Three separate closing dates land in a three-week window this November, and they belong to three different authorities. None of them are posted together anywhere.
The nine weeks, in closing order
Today is the last day of August. Here is what the rest of the outdoor season looks like from here.
| Date | What ends | Practical effect |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday, November 1 | Daylight saving time | The G. Thomas Donch Nature Preserve is open dawn to dusk, so the after-work loop effectively ends that week |
| Sunday, November 15 | Boating season on the upper basin | Last day to put a kayak, canoe or paddleboard in the water at the preserve |
| Saturday, November 21 | Franklin Lakes Farmers & Artisan Market | Final Saturday of the outdoor season at Veterans Plaza |
Counting from this Saturday, that is twelve market Saturdays and eleven paddling weekends. The boating window closes six days before the market does, which is why people who do both in the same morning tend to be surprised in mid-November when the launch is done and the tents are still up.
The borough sets the boating season at April 1 through November 15 and limits it to the upper basin. Craft have to arrive on top of or inside a vehicle, trailers are prohibited, motors of any kind are prohibited, and launching happens only at the designated launch next to the parking area off High Mountain Road. The Mayors Wellness Campaign ran guided kayak tours at the preserve with Ramsey Outdoor this past June, and the borough's news page is the place to confirm whether any run before the season closes.
The sign at the entrance says something different now
If you have not been down the drive past the old reservoir buildings since last fall, the name changed. What residents have called the Franklin Lakes Nature Preserve since it opened in June 2011 was renamed the G. Thomas Donch Nature Preserve in a ceremony on October 11, honoring the mayor who was in office when the borough bought the property in 2006. That purchase, made with help from the New Jersey Green Acres Program and the Bergen County Open Space Program, was the largest land acquisition in the borough's history. Before that it was the Haledon Reservoir, dammed on Molly Ann Brook in 1919 to supply Haledon, North Haledon and Prospect Park, and by the mid-2000s it was disused.
The practical piece: the mapping apps are catching up unevenly. The borough's preserve page lists the address as 1 Russ Schroeder Way with the entrance off High Mountain Road, and still publishes the old North Haledon address for older GPS units. If you are sending out-of-town family to meet you there, send the High Mountain Road landmark rather than the name. The brown sign on the left comes up about half a mile past the smaller pond.
Which loop you pick depends on how much light you have left
The preserve holds 120 acres of public recreation around a 75-acre lake, and the internal trail system runs 2.3 miles. That is the number people repeat. The number that actually tells you what you are walking into is the elevation: AllTrails puts the three routes here between 6 and 45 feet of total ascent, with the longest at 1.6 miles. This is not a hike. It is a flat lap with tree roots, which is exactly why it works with a stroller, a leashed dog and forty-five minutes.
Three ways to use it as the light shortens:
- The half-hour version. The accessible trail, built as an ADA-compliant path from the parking lot along the water's edge with boardwalk sections and viewing platforms, runs as a lollipop off the main woods road and rejoins it through the pine grove on a pontoon crossing. Accessible picnic tables sit along it.
- The hour version. The white-blazed Preserve Shoreline Loop around the perimeter, with the blue-blazed Island Bridges Trail cut across the northern end. That half-mile blue section runs the earthen dikes and the two floating bridges installed in October 2013, and it is the only place in town where you stand in the middle of the water looking back at High Mountain.
- The long version, if you started early. The red-blazed connection through the fence opening links to the 11.2 miles of trails at High Mountain Park Preserve in Wayne. The New York-New Jersey Trail Conference has maintained the trails inside the preserve since December 2011 and publishes a free trail map.
Fishing requires a New Jersey license, dogs are fine on leash, and swimming, grilling and fires are not permitted at any point in the season.
Lorrimer turns 70 in the middle of a renovation
The other set of trails in town is having a bigger year than the signage suggests. Lorrimer Sanctuary at 790 Ewing Avenue marks its 70th anniversary in 2026. Lucine L. Lorrimer left the property to New Jersey Audubon in 1956, and the main house, parts of which date to the late 1700s, served as the organization's first headquarters. Fourteen acres, roughly eleven of them walkable on self-guided trails, and the loop most people do is about half a mile. No dogs on this one.
What has changed on the ground is the understory. Deer fencing went up around the property after a variance was secured pro bono, and the native plants that had been browsed out for decades are coming back. Anyone who walked it five years ago and remembers bare ground under the oaks should look again this fall.
"It's an awesome opportunity for people to connect with nature in the middle of suburbia," sanctuary director Kirsten Holt has said of the property.
Behind the anniversary is a capital project. A $1 million leadership gift from the Winifred M. and George P. Pitkin Foundation went to New Jersey Audubon's campaign for a major renovation here, and a later anonymous pledge of $250,000 was structured as a challenge to match. Phase one modernizes the building while keeping its historic character, bringing city water, a new septic system, gas heat, electrical and air conditioning. Phase two adds an expanded classroom and outdoor learning space. The center currently sees roughly 5,000 visitors a year. The stated goal is a facility that can host 10,000 students annually, which would make it a meaningfully different building for a town of this size. Fall programming has already started up, including an after-school nature club session beginning September 30. Registration details are on the New Jersey Audubon site.
Twelve Saturdays left at Veterans Plaza
The Franklin Lakes Farmers & Artisan Market runs Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Veterans Plaza, 745 Franklin Avenue, through November 21, organized under the Mayors Wellness Campaign. Admission is free and the roster runs to about thirty exhibitors across produce, meat and dairy, baked goods and handmade work. In past seasons the final Saturday has been run as a costume-and-candy day, with vendors handing out treats to kids who show up dressed.
The routing that makes the most of a short day: market first at 10, since the produce vendors are picked over by noon, then the preserve loop between 11:30 and 1, then lunch. Roast'd at 807 Franklin Avenue roasts in small batches on site if you want the coffee before the walk rather than after. Market Basket, the gourmet anchor of the Urban Farms Shopping Center on Franklin Lake Road, covers the version of this Saturday where you skip the walk and take the food home.
One deadline worth putting on the calendar
The borough is collecting resident photographs for its 2027 municipal calendar. The theme is "Through the Seasons," images must be taken in 2026, high resolution, horizontal, and without people in the frame, with a maximum of five per photographer submitted to [email protected]. Given that the preserve reflects the whole ridge line in still water on a clear October morning and that the borough is unlikely to receive many submissions shot in November, the next eight weeks are the practical window.
That is the shape of the season here. The town's outdoor calendar closes in a narrow band in November while its indoor one has been getting longer, and the residents who get the most out of the next nine weeks are the ones who know which of the two is actually running out.
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