Sunfish Pond is a

glacial lake A glacial lake is a body of water with origins from glacier activity. They are formed when a glacier erodes the land and then melts, filling the depression created by the glacier. Formation Near the end of the last glacial period, roughly 10, ...

surrounded by a hardwood forest located on the

Kittatinny Ridge Kittatinny Mountain (Lenape: Kitahtëne) is a long ridge traversing primarily across Sussex County in northwestern New Jersey, running in a northeast-southwest axis, a continuation across the Delaware Water Gap of Pennsylvania's Blue Mountai ...

within

Worthington State Forest Worthington State Forest is a state forest located in Warren County, New Jersey, Warren County, New Jersey within the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, just north of the Delaware Water Gap, water gap in the Skylands Region of the stat ...

, adjacent to the

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area is a national recreation area administered by the National Park Service in northwest New Jersey and northeast Pennsylvania. It is centered around a stretch of the Delaware River designated the Midd ...

in Warren County,

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York (state), New York; on the ea ...

. The

Appalachian Trail The Appalachian Trail (also called the A.T.), is a hiking trail in the Eastern United States, extending almost between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine, and passing through 14 states.Gailey, Chris (2006)"Appalachian ...

runs alongside the western and northern edges of the lake. It was created by the

Wisconsin Glacier The Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsin glaciation, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cor ...

during the last ice age. The lake was declared a

National Natural Landmark The National Natural Landmarks (NNL) Program recognizes and encourages the conservation of outstanding examples of the natural history of the United States. It is the only national natural areas program that identifies and recognizes the best ...

in January 1970.

History

The land was purchased by Charles C. Worthington who used the forest as a deer hunting preserve; the lake supplied water to his mansion. In 1965, there was a plan to create a reservoir which would have covered the lake. Casey Kays, a local custodian, led 655 people on a hike to protest the plan. Further hikes and letter campaigns caused the power companies that owned the land to donate it to the state in 1966.

Supreme Court Justice The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest-ranking judicial body in the United States. Its membership, as set by the Judiciary Act of 1869, consists of the chief justice of the United States and eight associate justices, any six of ...

William O. Douglas William Orville Douglas (October 16, 1898January 19, 1980) was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was known for his strong Progressivism, progressive and Civil libertarianism, civ ...

mentioned the lake in his dissenting opinion in the ''

Sierra Club v. Morton ''Sierra Club v. Morton'', 405 U.S. 727 (1972), is a Supreme Court of the United States case on the issue of standing under the Administrative Procedure Act. The Court rejected a lawsuit by the Sierra Club seeking to block the development of a sk ...

'' case. On a hike in 1967, Douglas accompanied more than a thousand people to Sunfish Pond. He said: "It's a vital element in the need to save some of our wilderness from the encroachment of civilization."

Flora and fauna

The lake is surrounded by stands of mountain laurel,

sheep laurel ''Kalmia angustifolia'' is a flowering shrub in the family Ericaceae, commonly known as sheep laurel. It is distributed in eastern North America from Ontario and Quebec south to Virginia. It grows commonly in dry habitats in the boreal forest, ...

, and

Cunila origanoides ''Cunila origanoides'', with the common names stone mint, frost mint, dittany, and American dittany, is a perennial late-summer-flowering subshrub with small purple flowers that is native to the central and eastern United States. It belongs to ...

. Nearby are fields of

Symphoricarpos orbiculatus ''Symphoricarpos orbiculatus'', commonly called coralberry, buckbrush or Indian currant is a woody species of flowering plant in the honeysuckle family. Description ''Symphoricarpos orbiculatus'' is an erect shrub, with greenish-white purple-ti ...

. The lake itself also has

Drosera rotundifolia ''Drosera rotundifolia'', the round-leaved sundew, roundleaf sundew, or common sundew, is a carnivorous species of flowering plant that grows in bogs, marshes and fens. One of the most widespread sundew species, it has a circumboreal distrib ...

growing near the edge.

Visiting

Sunfish pond is a popular hiking destination. Several trails reach the lake, including the

which runs alongside the western and northern edges of the lake. It is the southernmost

glacial tarn A tarn (or corrie loch) is a Proglacial lake, proglacial mountain lake, pond or pool, formed in a cirque excavated by a glacier. A moraine may form a natural dam below a tarn. Etymology The word is toponymy, derived from the Old Norse word ' ...

along that trail. The shortest distance to the lake is 1.2 miles from the Douglas trailhead on

Old Mine Road Old Mine Road is a road in New Jersey and New York said to be one of the oldest continuously used roads in the United States of America. At a length of , it stretches from the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area to the vicinity of Kingston ...

via the Garvey Springs Trail. The Douglas Trail, named after Justice Douglas, can be taken to the Appalachian Trail and then Sunfish Pond. The trails are steep and rocky in places. There is no swimming in the lake. There is a Leave No Trace campground a quarter mile away, but proper food precautions must be followed since black bears are active in the area. There is a collection of ad hoc primitive rock artworks ( cairns) along the northwestern shore.

Gallery

File:NNL plaque, Sunfish Pond, Worthington State Forest, NJ.jpg,

plaque File:Douglas Trail plaque, Worthington State Forest, NJ.jpg, Douglas Trail plaque File:Cairn artwork, Sunfish Pond, Worthington State Forest, NJ.jpg, Cairn artwork along the shore

References

External links