Walk through the archway on Main Street that reads "Morris Canal Preserve" on a cool morning this fall, and the path does exactly what you'd expect. Paved, flat, shaded, running behind the Mill at Little Falls condominiums with the falls visible below and the old canal bed running alongside the Passaic River. It feels like the start of something longer. Most people walk it out and back, maybe a half mile each way, and call it done.
What most residents don't realize is that this paved stretch and the greenway a few blocks away at Wilmore Park aren't actually the same trail. They're two separate pieces of the old Morris Canal route, split by a bridge over the Peckman River that's been out of service, and the only way to connect them on foot right now is a road detour that most walkers never bother to find.
The Canal Walk Splits Where You'd Least Expect It
The Morris Canal itself ran 102 miles across New Jersey when it was built in the early 1800s. Most of it disappeared once railroads took over freight, but roughly 30 miles survive today as the Morris Canal Greenway, built out in scattered segments along the original route. Little Falls holds two of those segments, and they don't touch.
The first is the paved path off Main Street, the one behind the Mill at Little Falls, running along the Passaic River with the canal bed and the falls beside it. The second starts at Wilmore Park and cuts through Peckman Preserve, a 12-acre pocket of meadow and wetland that Passaic County maintains as passive open space. On a map, these look like they should connect into one clean loop through the center of town. On the ground, a bridge over the Peckman River sits closed, and the only way to get from one segment to the other is by walking a stretch of Cedar Grove Road that has no separate footpath.
Here's what each half actually offers:
| Morris Canal Park (Main Street) | Peckman Preserve extension | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | Archway off Main Street, behind the Mill at Little Falls | Wilmore Park |
| Surface | Paved, roughly 0.8 mile, then a grassy path continuing toward Route 3 | Paved once you reconnect past the road detour, about 1 mile |
| The catch | None, straightforward out and back | Peckman River bridge is out, requiring a Cedar Grove Road detour with no sidewalk |
| What you'll see | The falls, the old canal bed, Passaic River views | Open meadow, wetlands, and the wildlife that comes with 12 undeveloped acres |
Strung together with the road detour, the combined route runs about 3.1 miles round trip according to trail mapping data, an easy walk with under 50 feet of elevation gain that takes most people under an hour. But that number only shows up if you know the detour exists. Without it, the two segments function as separate short walks that happen to share a name.
Why This Matters More Once the Weather Turns
Summer humidity keeps a lot of people to the shaded paved stretch near the falls and nothing more. Fall is when the full 3.1-mile version actually gets used, cooler mornings and better light making the Cedar Grove Road stretch feel less like a detour and more like a reasonable connector between two pieces of the same trail. If you're planning to walk it that way, the only real caution is that road segment. There's no dedicated path there, so it means walking a shoulder next to traffic for a few blocks before the paved section resumes.
None of this is a complaint about the trail. Peckman Preserve is genuinely worth reaching. It's the kind of small, unmanicured open space that a lot of denser Passaic County towns don't have anymore, meadow and wetland sitting a few minutes' walk from Main Street. The issue is simply that most residents have only ever experienced half of what's technically the same greenway, because nobody tells you the bridge is out until you're standing in front of it.
Wilmore Park, the access point for the Peckman side, does double duty as the town's outdoor stage. It hosted this summer's Little Falls Concert in the Park series, including a show from local act Your Mom's Hot in early August, the kind of evening where the same green space that's quiet on a Tuesday morning walk fills with folding chairs and blankets by Thursday night. It's a reminder that these aren't just trail segments on a map. They're the actual backdrop for how the town spends its weekends, which is exactly why it's worth knowing how they connect and where they don't.
The Ballpark Everyone Still Calls "The Jackals' Field"
A similar kind of outdated mental map shows up elsewhere in town, at Yogi Berra Stadium on the Montclair State University campus. Ask most longtime residents what happens there and the answer is usually the same: Jackals games, minor league baseball, fireworks on Saturday nights. That was true for a long time. It stopped being true in 2022.
The New Jersey Jackals played their home games at Yogi Berra Stadium from 1998 until 2022, when the team moved to Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, a former Negro leagues ballpark with its own significant baseball history. Their last regular season home game in Little Falls was August 25, 2022. The Jackals now play their home schedule in Paterson, not on the Montclair State campus.
What's left behind isn't empty. Yogi Berra Stadium is still an active ballpark, now serving as home field for the Montclair State Red Hawks, an NCAA Division III program, and the NJIT Highlanders, a Division I team. Montclair State carried out a $5.3 million renovation ahead of the 2024 season, adding new turf, a new scoreboard, updated bullpens, and LED lighting built to broadcast standards. If you show up expecting professional minor league ball and instead find a college doubleheader, that's not a mistake on the schedule. That's just what the stadium is now.
The Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center still sits adjacent to the stadium, open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m., closed Mondays and Tuesdays. The permanent collection includes all ten of Berra's World Series rings and two of his three American League MVP awards, along with rotating exhibits on broader baseball history. It's easy to walk past assuming the whole complex still runs on a Jackals schedule, when in practice the museum keeps its own hours independent of whatever team happens to be playing next door.
What to Actually Do With This
If you live in Little Falls and haven't walked the canal loop since before the pandemic, the geography is worth revisiting this fall. The paved stretch near the falls is still the easiest entry point, but the Peckman Preserve side is reachable too, once you know the bridge detour runs through Cedar Grove Road rather than expecting a direct connection. And if a friend from out of town wants to catch a game at Yogi Berra Stadium expecting the Jackals, it's worth checking the Montclair State or NJIT schedule first, because the team that made the stadium famous plays its home games in Paterson now.
Little Falls hasn't changed as much as some of the maps in people's heads have. The falls are still there. The museum still opens most days of the week. The canal still runs through the middle of town in pieces. Knowing where the pieces actually connect, and where they don't, is the difference between walking the same half mile every fall and finally seeing the rest of it.
If you're weighing a move in or around Little Falls and want a read on how a specific block or property fits into the town's day to day, Joseph D Charles Jr has spent years working this exact stretch of the Passaic Valley. Let's Connect.
