Montclair packs roughly 175 acres of township parkland into 18 parks, plus easy reach of five more Essex County parks sitting inside or right on the town line. That is more park than most people realize until they actually need one, whether that means a pool on a 95-degree day, somewhere to let the dog off leash or a quiet trail nobody else knows about.
This guide covers every park in town, township and county, with what each one actually delivers and who should bother making the trip. Use the map to find what is near you, or jump straight to the comparison table if you already know what you need. A few things changed for the 2026 season, including pool access, tennis permits and the loss of a set of courts, so check Know before you go before you head out.
Contents
- Find a park on the map
- Montclair’s township parks (18)
- Essex County parks in and around Montclair (5)
- Quick comparison: where to go for what
- Know before you go
- Sources
Find a park on the map
Every park below is plotted by coordinate, along with the main roads, so you can see what is actually walkable from where you live. Tap a park to jump to its entry. The township also publishes an interactive park viewer with property lines if you need that level of detail.
Parks and roads plotted by coordinate. Dot size shows acreage.
Montclair’s township parks
Eighteen parks, all run by the township’s Recreation & Cultural Affairs department. They close between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. without a permit, with three exceptions noted below that close at sundown. Facilities and acreage come from the township’s Parks and Park Facilities listing.
Mountainside Park
33.19 acres · Upper Mountain Avenue · Township
- Where
- Upper Mountain Avenue, Upper Montclair
- Facilities
- Tennis courts, pool, nature trail, basketball court, softball diamond, athletic field, coasting hill, two playgrounds, restrooms
- Best for
- Doing everything in one trip; the iris bloom next door
- Heads up
- Tennis permit required. Montclair High holds courts 1–5 weekday afternoons, 3–6 p.m., March through May. The nature trail closes at sundown.
The park that refuses to specialize. Seven tennis courts by the Recreation department’s count, enough that you can usually find one open on a Saturday morning, though not if the high school teams are on. A pool that turns into the social center of the Upper Montclair set every July. A real wooded trail that dips into something that briefly feels less like suburban New Jersey.
The playground sits toward the back, behind the basketball court, fenced on both sides since it backs right up to the train tracks, though the trains passing through are quiet enough that it’s a non-issue. Two separate play structures split by age, one for toddlers one to three, a bigger one for kids three and up, with benches ringing the area, though there’s not much shade if you’re there in the morning.
Across Upper Mountain Avenue at the base of the park sit the Presby Memorial Iris Gardens, started in 1927 as a memorial to Frank H. Presby, a Montclair resident and a founder of the American Iris Society. More than 14,000 irises across roughly 3,000 varieties bloom from mid-May into the first week of June, which is worth building a weekend around. Presby is county-owned now: Essex County bought the grounds in 2009 with Green Acres money to keep the nonprofit that maintains them from having to sell. If you only see one park in Montclair, this is it.
Nishuane Park
17.66 acres · Cedar Avenue between High Street and Harrison Avenue · Township
- Where
- Cedar Avenue between High Street and Harrison Avenue
- Facilities
- Outdoor stage, pool, 6 tennis courts, 2.5 basketball courts, football field, softball and baseball diamonds, playground, nature area, parking lot
- Best for
- Summer concerts; the overflow when Mountainside is full
- Heads up
- Carey’s Woods closes at sundown. Tennis permit required.
⚠ Nishuane Pool closes for the 2026 season on Sunday, Aug. 16, because of construction in the park. Mountainside and Essex stay open through Sept. 1. Confirm on the township’s Pools & Tennis Courts page.
The town’s outdoor concert life happens on the stage tucked into this park’s southern half, with a scrappier, more neighborhood feel than Mountainside’s polish. Six tennis courts, its own pool, a football field and a nature area round out the rest. There is also a monument to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, and the Montclair African-American Heritage Parade and Festival takes over the park the first Saturday each June, with the parade finishing here and the festival running until 6 p.m. The 2026 edition was the 36th. When Mountainside’s lot is full on a summer evening, come here instead.
Edgemont Park
15.5 acres · Valley Road · Township
- Where
- Valley Road, between Parkway and Edgemont Road
- Facilities
- Pond, war memorial, accessible playground, 2 softball diamonds, shelter house with restrooms and kitchen, walking loop of roughly four-tenths of a mile
- Best for
- A walk with a toddler; ice skating; the Fourth of July
The park on the cover of every “why we moved to Montclair” listing, and it earns that. The pond anchors it, and the small island at its center holds the Winged Victory war memorial, designed by sculptor Charles Keck and dedicated in 1925. The land was a golf course before the town bought it by bond referendum in 1906, a $100,000 issue led by William B. Dickson, who backed a quarter of the bonds himself. The park opened under the name Harrison Tract.
Look closely at the memorial and you will recognize it: the township folded Winged Victory into its official logo. The accessible playground sits close enough that a parent can watch a toddler on the slide while the light hits the water at golden hour. Ice skating takes over the pond in winter, and the Fourth of July crowd is thick enough that walking, not driving, is the move.
Essex Park
9.9 acres · Chestnut Street and Essex Avenue · Township
- Where
- Chestnut Street and Essex Avenue, beside the Walnut Street train station
- Facilities
- Pool, Clary Anderson Arena (indoor ice), playground, coasting hill, restrooms, high school athletic fields
- Best for
- Watching a game; year-round ice
Less a leisurely park than a working sports complex. One of the town’s three pools operates here alongside the Clary Anderson Arena, the indoor rink the township privatized in 2008. The real identity belongs to Montclair High School, whose teams use these fields constantly. On a fall afternoon, chances are you will find a practice, a game or both. There is a playground and a coasting hill too, which is easy to miss under all the organized activity.
Canterbury Park
8.22 acres · Canterbury Drive and Planchet Drive · Township
- Where
- Canterbury Drive and Planchet Drive, south end
- Facilities
- Coasting hill, basketball court, tennis court, walking track of roughly four-tenths of a mile, playground, outdoor fitness equipment
- Best for
- Sledding, full stop
- Heads up
- A $2.99 million state grant application is pending. Tennis permit required.
Small and unglamorous, beloved for one reason: the coasting hill. The first snow that sticks turns this into the unofficial sledding headquarters of that end of town.
All of it is now in line for an overhaul, if the state agrees to pay for it. In February the township applied for a Green Acres grant, with a cost estimate putting the request to the Department of Environmental Protection at $2.99 million, covering the playground, basketball court, pathways, benches and fitness equipment. Township Engineer Norberto Hernandez showed the council photos of cracking on the basketball court and deteriorating tennis courts, calling the facility at the end of its life cycle.
An earlier version of the plan would have fit pickleball courts inside the existing tennis courts. Residents packed the public hearing to object to the noise and the parking, Mayor Renee Baskerville noted that Green Acres parks have to be open to everyone in New Jersey and that pickleball would pull players from outside the neighborhood, and the council approved the application on the condition that pickleball come out. So the grant is pending, but that fight is settled: there won’t be any here.
Tuers Park
8.14 acres · Stonehenge Road · Township
The Upper Montclair answer to Mountainside’s crowds, the same basic menu, softball, basketball, a playground and bikeways, at a fraction of the foot traffic.
Yantacaw Park
11.51 acres · Club Road · Township
The pond here has a stillness Edgemont’s doesn’t, mostly because far fewer people know to look for it. It is fed by Yantacaw Brook, which drains on toward the Third River and eventually the Passaic. When winter cooperates, ice skating and coasting take over. No restrooms, which is the one thing people wish they had known.
Alonzo F. Bonsal Wildlife Preserve
19.68 acres · Riverview Drive · Township
- Where
- Riverview Drive West, north end of town. Entrance is between two houses and easy to miss.
- Facilities
- Nature trails only. No restrooms, no playground, no programming.
- Best for
- An actual walk in the woods without leaving town
- Heads up
- Closes at sundown. Street parking only.
No tennis courts, no playground, no programming, just trail and tree cover. Roughly a mile of walking, mostly a single loop, and the closest thing Montclair has to a real hike within its own borders. Deer, ducks and a lot of birds. One note from the township: Recreation preserves the land here but does not take in animals or rescue wildlife.
Rand Park
4.18 acres · North Fullerton Avenue and Chestnut Street · Township
- Where
- 155 N. Fullerton Ave., near Montclair High School
- Facilities
- Candy Courts skatepark, basketball court, playground, creek
- Best for
- Skating at any level
- Heads up
- The tennis courts are gone. They are the skatepark now.
⚠ If you came here for tennis, that ship has sailed. Township tennis now means Mountainside, Nishuane or Canterbury.
Rand’s courts are now Candy Courts, the town’s skatepark. The path here ran a decade long: Skate Essex and the Montclair High School skate club lobbied for years, the council voted in 2021 to designate two of the four courts as a temporary skate space, and a later resolution made it permanent.
What landed is better than a compromise. Olympic skateboarder and X Games medalist Alexis Sablone, who is also an architect, designed the skateable sculptures, and Tony Hawk’s foundation, The Skatepark Project, backed the build alongside local grassroots groups. It is a public artwork you are allowed to ride. There is a basketball court right alongside it and a creek running through the park.
George Washington Field
2.38 acres · Baldwin Street and Glenridge Avenue · Township
A true border field, split between Montclair and Glen Ridge, renovated through a shared service agreement between the two towns with matching $150,000 grants from the Essex County Recreation and Open Space Trust Fund. The synthetic turf, installed for the 2015 reopening, handles baseball, softball, field hockey, lacrosse and soccer, and you’re just as likely to run into a Glen Ridge team as a Montclair one. Parking is on street only.
Kaveney Field
2.2 acres · Grove and Walnut streets · Township
Lit for evening games, the park with the most serious junior baseball and softball activity on a weeknight. Restrooms and a patio area round out the amenities, and the field’s location in the middle of the Fourth Ward’s commercial strip, half a block from the Walnut Street train station, means it doubles as a stop on the way to somewhere else as much as a destination of its own.
Porter Park
2.25 acres · Orange Road and Harrison Avenue · Township
Benches and gardens built for sitting still, not doing, on the wedge where Orange Road and Harrison Avenue split. The kind of small park that only survives well because people actually show up for it: a resident group called Friends of Porter Park has organized specifically around keeping it maintained and beautiful.
Bird Sanctuary
3.45 acres · Highland Avenue, above Mountainside Park · Township
A wooded natural area with no facilities and no signage to speak of. Most residents drive past the turn without noticing it sits just above Mountainside’s main lot. Good for bird watching, and worth knowing about if the ridge reservations feel like too much of a production.
Graz Park
0.57 acres · Claremont and Bloomfield avenues · Township
Less a park to visit than a park to pass through, a triangle of land wedged between three roads with a gazebo nobody uses since it sits too close to Bloomfield Avenue’s traffic. The benches face away from the avenue, which tells you everything about the design problem.
Watchung Park
1.10 acres · Watchung and Midland avenues · Township
A pleasant interruption rather than a destination, close enough to Watchung Plaza and the Watchung Avenue train station that most people passing through are headed somewhere else.
Sunset Park
0.63 acres · Norwood Avenue and Sunset Park · Township
Gardens and benches, small enough to miss at 25 miles an hour, and most people do.
Crane Park
0.31 acres · Lackawanna Plaza, Bloomfield Avenue · Township
A third of an acre of gardens and benches wedged into the plaza, built for a 15 minute pause between errands. The smallest park the township maintains.
Christopher Park
1.55 acres · Label and Christopher streets · Township
Open space with no facilities, but the name has a real story behind it. It traces back to Christopher Andrew Hinck, who with his brother Claus Frederick Hinck bought up the land between Walnut Street and Watchung Avenue in the 1860s and set about turning it into home lots. They never meant to keep it. Christopher Street, Frederick Street and this park are what’s left of the deal, along with Hinck’s Alley, the longest of Montclair’s secret walkways, which ran along the border of the brothers’ holdings.
Essex County parks in and around Montclair
Five county parks sit inside Montclair or right on the town line. They run on the county’s own hours and its own permitting office, entirely separate from the township’s. For county park permits, call 973-268-3500.
Brookdale Park
121.41 acres · Grove Street, Bellevue Avenue and Watchung Avenue · Essex County
- Where
- Bordered by Grove Street, Bellevue Avenue and Watchung Avenue. About 43 acres in Montclair, 78 in Bloomfield.
- Facilities
- Fenced dog park, rose garden, two sledding hills, archery range, fitness loop, 11 tennis and 6 pickleball courts, 4 ball diamonds, running track and grandstand, playground, pollinator garden
- Best for
- Off-leash dogs; roses in June and September; sledding after the first real snow
- Heads up
- The tennis and pickleball courts are run under contract and charge an hourly fee per player. Everything else in the park is free.
- Note
- Third largest park in the county system. Designed by the Olmsted Brothers, largely built by WPA labor.
The park most Montclair residents treat as their town green, though most of it is technically in Bloomfield. The Essex County Rose Garden was established in June 1959 by the New Jersey Rose Society and the county parks department, and now holds more than 500 bushes across nearly 150 varieties in 25 beds, peaking in June and again in September. The slope below it, Rose Garden Hill, is the other reason people come: it is one of the best sledding hills in the area, wide enough that a big snow-day crowd spreads out instead of queuing. The archery field in the northwest corner is the second spot, and the calendar works in sledders’ favour: the Bloomfield Archers run their open Sunday shoots April through October, so the range sits idle exactly when the snow shows up. The tennis center added six pickleball courts in 2019, the first in the Essex County system, alongside eleven tennis courts. One thing to know before you drive over with a racket: Brookdale’s courts are managed under contract by Elite Tennis Academy, run April through October, require checking in with the attendant, and charge an hourly fee per player. They are the only courts in the Essex County system where you have to pay. And Brookdale Dog Park, opened in November 2007 with separate runs for large and small dogs, is the only official off leash spot in town. Much of this is looked after by the Brookdale Park Conservancy. The Pod’s own Saturdays in the Park series started here, with a lot more detail than fits in this guide.
Eagle Rock Reservation
408.34 acres · Eagle Rock Avenue · Essex County
- Where
- Spanning West Orange, Montclair and Verona. The Eagle Rock outcropping sits on the Montclair–West Orange line.
- Facilities
- Skyline overlook, September 11th memorial, nature trails including the Lenape Trail, picnic and cooking areas, softball field, restrooms, parking lots
- Best for
- The Manhattan view; a longer walk in real woods
Shaped starting in 1898 by the Olmsted Brothers firm, on a ridge used as a Revolutionary War observation post. The overlook facing the Manhattan skyline holds the Essex County September 11th Memorial, dedicated Oct. 20, 2002, just over a year after the attacks. It was the only 9/11 memorial to list all 3,000 victims’ names until the World Trade Center Memorial was dedicated in 2011.
The site has grown since. A monument to the 33 flight crew members aboard the four planes was added in 2009. A 7,400-pound steel and concrete artifact from the World Trade Center’s foundation was installed in 2011, along with a plaque honoring the EMTs who responded. A Search and Rescue Dog Statue followed in 2016, honoring the roughly 350 dogs that worked the recovery. The Lenape Trail skirts the eastern edge of the park, and the Highlawn Pavilion restaurant sits on the grounds.
Mills Reservation
157.15 acres · Normal Avenue · Essex County
- Where
- Normal Avenue, straddling Montclair and Cedar Grove. Parking at Normal Avenue or Old Quarry Road.
- Facilities
- Four main trails plus a mile and a half of the Lenape Trail. No restrooms.
- Best for
- Ridge walking; the Quarry Point view; spring hawks
- Note
- The Lenape Trail exits into Mountainside Park, so you can walk between two parks on this list.
The quieter, less photographed cousin to Eagle Rock. The Davella Mills Foundation bought 118.9 acres and gave it to the county in 1954 with the stipulation that it stay undeveloped and in its natural state forever; land swaps and purchases in 1962 and 1967 brought it to its present size. The Olmsted Brothers had a hand in the design here too.
At the end of one trail sits Searchlight No. 13, a mysterious circular concrete platform at Quarry Point that local historians still debate. The leading theory is a World War II searchlight position, one of a ring around New York City; another is a base for a water tower serving the quarry’s steam machinery. Nobody has definitively confirmed it. The quarry itself operated below Quarry Point from 1890 to 1918, blasting rock from the cliff face, before any of this was a park.
One point of confusion worth clearing up. The spring hawk count is conducted from Mills, because the view south is better here. The famous fall count happens across the street at the Montclair Hawk Lookout on Edgecliff Road, a separate New Jersey Audubon sanctuary of about an acre and the smallest in the state. It is the second oldest continuous hawk watch in the country, behind only Hawk Mountain; NJ Audubon dates its sanctuary to September 1959, while the first formal counts were organized in 1957 by three members of the Montclair Bird Club, Ruth Edwards, Sue Haupt and Ruth Beck. Red tailed hawks, bald eagles and kestrels all ride this ridge during migration.
Anderson Park
14.85 acres · Bellevue and North Mountain avenues · Essex County
- Where
- 274 Bellevue Ave., Upper Montclair, beside the Upper Montclair train station
- Facilities
- Athletic field, footpaths, benches. On the State and National Registers of Historic Places.
- Best for
- A short loop; June concerts; the September crafts fair
Montclair resident Charles W. Anderson offered the land to the Essex County Park Commission in 1902, voters approved a bond issue to accept it, and John Charles Olmsted, son of Frederick Law Olmsted and cofounder of the Olmsted Brothers firm, designed the park. It was called Montclair Park until 1909, when the name changed at the town’s request to honor Anderson.
It still functions as a genuine village green for Upper Montclair, largely because Friends of Anderson Park has spent since 2006 making sure it does. The group presents Music Under the June Moon, a free chamber concert with the Chamber Music Society of North Jersey, and a Fine Arts and Crafts Fair takes over the park in September. For years the concerts were staged beneath the Olmsted Oak, a roughly 250-year-old tree that John Charles Olmsted photographed when he scoped the site in 1904. The oak came down in 2024; a bench in the park is made from it.
Glenfield Park
20 acres · Maple Avenue · Essex County
- Where
- Maple Avenue at Bloomfield Avenue, Fourth Ward. About 19 acres in Montclair with a corner in Glen Ridge.
- Facilities
- Wally Choice Community Center, synthetic turf practice football field, 3 tennis courts, 2 basketball courts, 2 softball diamonds, 2 playgrounds, nature trail, 40-space lot, restrooms
- Best for
- Organized sport; community events; tennis without a township permit
Donated to Essex County by the township in 1910 and designed by the Olmsted Brothers, same as Anderson and Brookdale. It is the focal point of Montclair’s Fourth Ward. Behind the fields there is a genuine pocket of woods along Toney’s Brook, known as the Glen.
The Wally Choice Community Center anchors the park and roughly doubled in size in a project completed in 2023: a new 10,000-square-foot building with a large activity room, a computer room, a kitchen, an outdoor patio, a Montclair police substation and a 40-space lot, plus a synthetic grass practice football field and sports lighting. The work ran more than $10 million, funded through the county capital budget and a $5 million grant from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs. When the plans were unveiled in 2021, County Commissioner Brendan Gill, a Montclair resident, predicted the finished park would be “the crown jewel of the county park system.”
Know the name on the building. Wally Choice was a Montclair native and an Army veteran who was good enough at basketball to become the second African-American to play in the Big Ten at Indiana and, his son said, the first named a captain in the conference. He played with the Harlem Globetrotters and in the Eastern Professional Basketball League, then came home, opened Choice Pharmacy on Bloomfield Avenue and became one of the founders of Montclair Grass Roots, which has run summer camps here for decades and helped shape the park itself. The county named the old park house for him in 2009. He died in 2018, and his name moved to the new building when it opened.
Quick comparison: where to go for what
| What you need | Where to go |
|---|---|
| Swimming | Mountainside, Nishuane, Essex — Nishuane closes Aug. 16 |
| Sledding | Canterbury is the hill everyone goes to, and Rose Garden Hill at Brookdale is the biggest; also Mountainside, Nishuane, Essex, Yantacaw |
| A real hike | Mills Reservation, Eagle Rock, Bonsal Preserve |
| Off-leash dog | Brookdale Dog Park — the only one in town |
| Toddler playground | Mountainside (split by age), Edgemont (accessible), Essex |
| Tennis | Township courts at Mountainside, Nishuane and Canterbury need a free resident permit. Glenfield is county-run and free. Brookdale charges an hourly fee per player. |
| Skateboarding | Candy Courts at Rand Park |
| Ice skating | Edgemont and Yantacaw ponds when they freeze; Essex indoor arena year-round |
| Night ball games | Kaveney Field — lit |
| Archery | Brookdale — open Sunday shoots April through October, and the field doubles as a sledding hill in winter |
| Somewhere to sit | Porter, Anderson, Crane, Sunset, Watchung |
| Bird watching | Mills, Bird Sanctuary, Bonsal; Montclair Hawk Lookout for the fall count |
| Flowers | Presby Iris Gardens at Mountainside, mid-May to early June; Brookdale Rose Garden in June and September |
| Concerts and events | Nishuane outdoor stage, Anderson in June, Edgemont on the Fourth. Check the Pod’s events calendar for what’s on this week. |
Swipe the table sideways to see the full list →
↑ Back to map from the comparison table
Know before you go
Hours and permits
Township parks close between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. without a permit, with three exceptions that close at sundown instead: Carey’s Woods in Nishuane Park, the Mountainside Park nature trail and the Alonzo Bonsal Wildlife Preserve. Any organized activity needs a permit; the township posts a Park and Facility Permit application online, and Recreation & Cultural Affairs handles reservations for fields and pavilions. No cooking, no glass containers and no alcohol in township parks. Essex County parks run on the county’s own hours and its own permitting office entirely.
Recreation has moved. The office is now at 219 North Fullerton Avenue, second floor, not 205 Claremont.
Tennis now takes a permit
Residents need a free township tennis permit each season to play the municipal courts at Mountainside, Canterbury and Nishuane. Ages five and up, proof of residency required, and you have to have the permit with you on court. A permit holder may bring one out-of-town guest. Play is capped at an hour when others are waiting, and private professional instruction is not allowed on township courts. Register through the township’s Pools & Tennis Courts page.
If you would rather skip the paperwork, the county courts at Glenfield are open to anyone at no charge. Brookdale’s tennis and pickleball courts are open to anyone too, but they are run by a concession, operate April through October and charge an hourly fee per player.
Pools: what changed in 2026
Nishuane, Mountainside and Essex are the town’s three municipal pools, open noon to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends and holidays.
- They are not on the same closing date. Nishuane closes for the season Sunday, Aug. 16, because of construction in the park. Mountainside and Essex run through Sept. 1.
- Nonresidents can buy in for the first time. A state Green Acres compliance officer notified the township in a June 2025 letter that resident-only access violated the program’s terms, since Green Acres funds local parks in exchange for guaranteed public access. A township ordinance passed May 19, 2026, and sales opened June 16. Day passes run $30 for a nonresident adult and $20 for a child or senior. Limited seasonal badges are also available: $500 family, $170 adult, $120 child or youth, $50 senior, with three business days needed to prepare them.
- All three pools are cashless. No cash is accepted anywhere. There is a QR code at each pool for day passes, and you will need proper ID.
- Resident day passes are $15 for an adult and $10 for a child or senior, with proof of residency required at the gate.
Essex Pool was closed for part of the summer after a failed motor. Check before you drive over. If you are sorting out a summer schedule, several of the day camps in our Montclair summer camps guide walk to these pools, and campers need their own township pool permit.
Dogs
Dogs must stay on leash everywhere in town except Brookdale’s fenced dog park, no exceptions.
↑ Back to map from Know before you go
Sources
- Township of Montclair — Parks and Park Facilities, Parks in Montclair and Pools & Tennis Courts
- Essex County Department of Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs
- Montclair Local — Canterbury Green Acres hearing, pool access, Washington Field, Glenfield, Searchlight No. 13, the Olmsted Oak and skatepark coverage
- Montclair History Center — Winged Victory, Mills Reservation, the Hinck brothers
- Brookdale Park Conservancy, Friends of Anderson Park and Presby Memorial Iris Gardens
- New Jersey Audubon, Montclair Hawkwatch; Skate Essex and The Skatepark Project
Park hours, fees and facilities change from season to season — always confirm current details with the township or the county before you go. Spotted something that has changed or that we missed? Email us at hello@montclairpod.com and we’ll update this guide.
This article is part of The Montclair Pod’s free local guides, alongside our guides to summer camps, independent shops, restaurants and the magnet school system. This guide covers every park in town at the same level of detail, but the Pod also walks through them one at a time in an occasional series called Saturdays in the Park, no fixed schedule, just a deeper look every other Saturday. The first installment covered Brookdale. Subscribe to the podcast for weekly Montclair news and neighbourly chatter.
