By Tom Boghosian • tfboghosian44@gmail.com
Wharton State Forest offers a variety of hiking trails, with major trailheads at both Atsion in Shamong Township and Batsto Village in Washington Township. Sierra Club hikers enjoyed a number of these this past winter—primarily out of Batsto Village—but we did not exhaust all the possibilities.
There is something for everyone. Trailheads adjacent to Batsto’s main parking area offer well-blazed loop trails 1, 2, or 4 miles long and glimpses of geese and kayakers out on Batsto River and Batsto Lake. There is also quick access to the 50-plus mile Batona Trail, running between Bass River State Forest and Ong’s Hat in the Brendan T. Byrne State Forest.
All the trails offer a quiet and a solitude that is surprising given the short distance to Atlantic City and Philadelphia. They take you into pine-dominated woods with scattered oak and, along the rivers and swamps, tall cedar trees. Along the white trail (4 miles), you see the impressive resurgence and growth of pine seedlings taking the place of trees recently burned by wildfire. After a few years, trees are already shoulder-high or better. Various fungi grow at ground level and from tree trunks on either side of the burn area.
A short walk south on the Batona Trail takes you to the newly blazed Sand and Water Trail (0.87 miles) and the 1808 Trail (1.6 miles). The trails can be combined with a connecting trail to make a 6-mile loop hike. There are many well-maintained bridges to take you through Mordecai Swamp and along the 1808 Trail to old Crowleytown (now Buttonwood Hill Campground). The tall cedars make it hard to believe that this whole area had once been clear-cut for mast making and furniture for sale up and down the Atlantic via the very close-at-hand Mullica River.
Remnants of the area’s iron and glassmaking history are readily visible in Batsto Village. It’s worth the walk to check out the skeleton of a barge boat used to mine bog iron from the river, visit the mansion, or see a lumber mill powered by a race (fast-moving current of water) off the Batsto River—and lots more. The road through the village also takes you to the yellow-blazed Mullica River Trail where you can wander beside the waterway and return via Batsto River Road to get a view of two waterways in one trip.
There is a lot to do in a relatively small area.