The Mill Creek Marsh nature trail in Secaucus lifts a visitor up, over the swampland, affording a view of egrets, Atlantic White cedars, the Manhattan skyline, and also, a parking lot.
The 209-acre Meadowlands region, which includes Secaucus and surrounding towns, is famous as a flyway for Eastern birds and a locale for swamps and marshes. Despite encroaching development, it maintains an active ecology and several nature trails that are easy to access.
One of those opens up right beside the parking lot to Bob’s Discount Furniture on Route 3, but soon takes a traveler to more gentle terrain.
Mill Creek Marsh was once going to be the site of 2,750 townhouses. Instead, according to a state Meadowlands website, “In 1998, the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission restored the property, re-establishing tidal flows, creating open-water impoundments, and replacing the phragmites with native plant species in order to attract a diversity of aquatic life and birds.”
The trail is free and begins next to the back parking lot at Bob’s at 3 Mill Creek Drive.