🦋 Secret Canyon in West Orange
A year or so ago, I was talking with Woody about interesting things to see in West Orange -- he told me how one time he had been walking up Valley to Northfield and had taken a meandering route... Eventually he found himself on "one of those dead-end streets behind Northfield" and had found a secret canyon, with a pedestrian bridge linking dead-end streets on either side of it. Ever since then I've been interested to find this place, and today (I'm pretty sure) I did. The canyon I found doesn't precisely meet Woody's description -- it looks like there has been some construction in the intervening years. Riding up Northfield past Seton Hall (a long slog of an uphill, but not steep enough to make me give up midway along), there are two streets to the left marked "Dead End", Carter Rd. and Beverly Rd. I road up the hill and then back down, and turned right on Beverly -- Turns out it is no longer a Dead End as the road has been looped around to connect it to Carter. (This must be a fairly recent development, Google Maps at least still thinks both streets dead-end.) Right where it loops around, there is the canyon Woody was talking about. No pedestrian bridge anymore, the loop crosses over the canyon and the stream is in a culvert there -- very pretty waterfall where it pours out of the culvert, I tried to get a photo but the maple tree in front of me had its own ideas... There is still no connection to the south -- the dead-end street south of the canyon, also called Beverly, is a private street and gated off.
posted morning of Saturday, July second, 2011
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