Matarazzo Preserve

Twenty-five acres of former Tewksbury farmland where the woods grew back around the fields instead of over them, newly protected, and still being made into a preserve.

Visiting

Matarazzo is a new preserve. As of May 2026 the trails are not yet blazed, there are no preserve maps or signs, and the connector trail from Tree Farm is unfinished. Please stay on the Tree Farm route and do not use the private drive at the eastern edge.

Overview

Matarazzo Preserve is 25.561 acres in Tewksbury Township, protected by Tewksbury Land Trust in December 2025 with a Green Acres conservation restriction – the newest preserve in TLT's care, and one still being built out. An aerial photograph from 1930 shows the property as a grid of open fields divided by hedgerows. Nearly a century later, most of that ground is woods again: mature oak on the stony high corner, rows of planted spruce and pine, and stone walls that once marked field edges now standing in full shade. But several fields never closed. That combination – old farm, returning forest, surviving openings – is what makes this small parcel unusually varied, and it is what the land trust has taken on the work of keeping.

Landscape

The land tilts about a hundred feet, from 786 feet at its southwestern corner down to 688 feet where a stream crosses the northeastern edge. The high ground is the stoniest – cobbly loam over slopes steep enough that boulders sit at the surface, which is very likely why it was the first ground the farming gave up and the reason the oldest-looking forest stands there now. Downhill the soils turn gravelly and porous, soaking up rain rather than shedding it, and at the bottom edge that water surfaces again along an unnamed tributary of the North Branch Rockaway Creek. New Jersey classifies that tributary as Category One – its highest protection for water quality. A spring sits near the eastern boundary under a metal cover, and skunk cabbage and spicebush fill the low, wet ground beside the stream.

Experience

A visit to Matarazzo starts somewhere else. There is no public entrance of its own: you park at Tree Farm Preserve and walk north through the same oak forest, which continues across the boundary without a break. Once you're up on the property the walking changes character every few hundred feet – dim mature woods, then a stand of planted evergreens, then a field of tall grass wide open to the sky, then woods again. Stone walls turn up in unexpected places, one of them running straight east to west through the trees. A weathered storage barn stands near the center of the property; it is closed to visitors, but you'll see it. Be aware that this is a preserve in progress: as of May 2026 the trails have no blazes, there is no map at the junction, and the connector trail from Tree Farm is not yet finished. The eastern edge borders a private driveway, which is not a public entrance. Neighbors here farm, ride, and live close by – this is protected land inside a working, settled landscape, not a wilderness.

Ecology Introduction

Twenty-five acres do not usually hold this much variety. The southwestern half is mature mixed-oak hardwood forest – white, red, black, and chestnut oak with sugar maple, black birch, and hickory, witch-hazel scattered underneath – and it runs unbroken into Tree Farm Preserve, so the two preserves function as one woodland. Elsewhere the Matarazzos planted Norway spruce, white pine, and Douglas-fir, and those stands are now tall enough to walk through. Between them sit the open fields, the rarest habitat on the property and the one that takes work to keep. On the afternoon of May 27, 2026, the land trust's steward heard a wood thrush calling in the woodland and watched an indigo bunting defending territory in one of the shrubby gaps – two birds that need opposite kinds of ground, within a short walk of each other.

Why It Matters

Matarazzo matters most for what it joins together. Its forest is the same forest as Tree Farm Preserve's; the properties simply share a boundary line no animal recognizes. It adjoins the Clucas Farm easement and sits inside a much larger constellation of preserved farmland and open space across Tewksbury. New Jersey's CHANJ mapping – Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey – rates the entire property as a Corridor 1 landscape, the class where wildlife moves most easily. And the water that soaks into this hillside leaves it as a Category One stream, headed for the North Branch of the Rockaway Creek. Twenty-five acres is a small

thing on its own. As the piece that closes a gap between a protected forest and a protected stream, it is not.

Stewardship

The central job at Matarazzo is keeping the open fields open. Left alone they will fill with non-native shrubs within a few years, taking with them the shrubland birds and the light that makes this small preserve so varied — so the plan calls for mowing them in late fall or winter, and for pushing back mugwort and autumn olive that have already moved in. In the woods, the work is slower: heavy deer browsing across this part of Hunterdon County (nearby surveys have found 60 to more than 100 deer per square mile) is keeping young trees from replacing the oaks, invasive barberry, wineberry, and stiltgrass hold much of the former farm understory, and beech leaf disease is expected to take the property's beeches. Trail building and marking come first, and are underway.

Visiting

Park and enter at Tree Farm Preserve, approx. 50 Sawmill Road. Matarazzo has no public entrance or parking of its own; 58 Sawmill Road is a private residence, and the drive along the eastern edge is a maintenance route, not a way in. From Tree Farm, walk north on the connector trail into the Matarazzo woods; from there, informal paths follow the edges of the fields and an old roadbed runs through the forest. Footing is stony in places and the walk climbs roughly a hundred feet. Please note that this preserve is not yet fully marked — as of May 2026 there are no trail blazes, no preserve signs, and no map at the trail junction, so allow extra time to find your way and be ready to retrace your route. The barn is closed to entry. Dogs and hunting: please check with Tewksbury Land Trust before visiting; the property's hunting program is still being set up.

Matarazzo's open fields are the reason a wood thrush and an indigo bunting can be found on the same short walk. Keeping them open means a few days of mowing and invasive removal every winter. Join a stewardship workday, or subscribe to help Tewksbury Land Trust finish making this new preserve a place you can find your way through.