Colonial Lake focus for annual greenways hike
Welcome to “Take a Hike!” An on-going series presented by the Lawrence greenways, trails and open space groups to feature a different park and its trails each month. The monthly trail articles will provide you with a little history of each park and a site map of the trails.
You can view all the trails in Lawrence at http://www.lawrencetwp.com/documents/LawrenceTrailGuide.pdf and you can link to all of the groups that support preserving open space to enhance the overall quality of living in Lawrence Township.
Lawrence Township, in partnership with volunteer organizations and assistance from the state, county and Lawrence, has done a great job of preserving open space throughout the Township. Currently over 25 percent of the town is preserved as open space. A number of these parks have trails that provide an easy walk to experience a part of Lawrence you cannot see from your car. The parks are free and open to all. Open space actually increases in value the more you use it so come out and use your parks.
We are starting this series with the trails around Colonial Lake. Colonial Lake is located in south Lawrence off of Brunswick Pike next to the newly renovated Colonial Lane Bowling Alleys and across from the Lawrence Shopping Center.
The Lawrence Greenways committee is sponsoring its 22nd annual hike this year at Colonial Lake on Sunday, Oct, 21. Paerticipants will meet at 1 p.m. behind Colonial Lanes so you can get a close up view of the lake and trails with a group of your neighbors. For more details on this walk see http://www.lawrencegreenway.org/index.html.
Colonial Lake is a 25-acre lake that is the focal point of this park. The lake is part of the Shabakunk Creek and the creek’s watershed. The Shabakunk Creek is 7½ miles long with its headwaters in Ewing. The watershed drains from Ewing at I-95 and Scotch Road and Hopewell at Federal City and Lawrenceville-Pennington Road through the Shabakunk Creek into the Colonial Lake and out through the Assunpink Creek into the Delaware River by the Trenton War Memorial. You can view the Shabakunk Creek river gauge at http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Gauge2/detail/id/44733/ .
The park also includes tennis courts, exercise/jogging path and a variety of playground equipment. An 8-foot-wide paved path hugs the shoreline of Colonial Lake. At the east end of the lake, near the footbridge, there is a rocky outcropping on a grassy little hill covered with pine trees. This rock outcrop is over 600 million years old, and marks the edge of New Jersey’s sandy and flat coastal plain to the east and south. Standing here 600 million years ago you were “at the beach.”
Colonial Lake is a man-made lake that was part of the Colonial Lakelands overall development. It was developed in 1924 when the Colonial Land Co. built a dam on the Shabakunk Creek.
The area that is now the lake was part of the Thomas Stevens Farm which was settled in 1750. The dam flooded the lowland called the Steven’s Meadow. It was originally developed as a swimming area with boats and canoe launches for the surrounding Colonial Lakelands homes. It was eventually deeded to Lawrence Township.
Hundreds of years before the Thomas Steven Farm the Lenni Lenape Indians lived and hunted in the woods along the Shabakunk Creek including in the meadows where Colonial Lake now stands.
The town now maintains the lake in good condition. However, prior to that the lake was slowly filling in with sediment from lack of maintenance. In fact, before the lake was dredged you could stand in the middle of the lake in ankle-deep water. A number of township volunteer groups worked with the town and the neighbors around the lake to dredge the lake and maintain its conditions today.
The lake is the only township park with a water feature. The lake is stocked each year by state Division of Fish and Game in April before the fishing season starts. Recently, native plantings were contributed by the Lawrence Township Environmental Resources committee to enhance the watershed area and to combat evasive plant species.
Enjoy your parks and the trails that are here for you to use to explore the wildflowers, birds, mammals and amphibians that inhabit them. There are a few guiding principles to follow. Remember carry in and carry out. All the trails in the guide are easy walking but some natural footpaths will be muddy in wet weather, and summer growth may obscure secondary trails. Always protect yourself against poison ivy and ticks in woods and meadows.
Enjoy Colonial Lake Park and its trails and let us know how we can make our open spaces better.

