I taught high school English for more than twenty-five years, and one thing never changed: students remember a place better than a paragraph. You can read that George Washington passed through Bloomfield in 1778, and it will sit in your memory for about a week. Stand at the corner where his horse actually turned, and it stays with you for good.

That's really what this trail is about. Essex County doesn't advertise its Revolutionary War history the way Boston or Philadelphia does. There's no walking tour with matching t-shirts. But the history is here, tucked into cemeteries, church greens, and one very good overlook, and a good part of it sits within twenty minutes of wherever you're reading this. What follows is a route I'd plan for a Saturday: eight stops, roughly four hours with time to linger, running from Bloomfield down through Belleville and Newark and finishing with a view that puts the whole day in perspective.

A quick note before we start. Several of these markers sit on private property or in front of homes where people live their ordinary lives. You can see and photograph everything from the public sidewalk or roadway. Please don't go beyond that.

The Thomas Cadmus House, Bloomfield

Start in the Watsessing section of Bloomfield, at the corner of Washington Street and Ashland Avenue. The stone house here traces back to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Cadmus, a militia officer, farmer, and mill owner who built his home on this spot in 1763. Cadmus commanded troops during the defense of New York in 1776, and local tradition holds that George Washington himself stopped at the house on July 9, 1778, on his march north after the Battle of Monmouth. The house was rebuilt in 1915 using the original foundation and stones, which is why the marker out front reads "site of" rather than describing the structure you see today.

Cadmus later became an elder at the church in what's now Belleville and helped lay the groundwork for the congregation that would eventually give Bloomfield its name. He's buried, along with much of his family, in our next stop.

Bloomfield Green: The Presbyterian Church & the Joseph Bloomfield Monument

Drive about a mile to Bloomfield Green, a four-acre common that's been at the center of town life since before the Revolution. It served as a militia training ground as early as 1775, years before anyone built a church on it. That came in 1796, when a local Presbyterian congregation broke ground on a sanctuary of red sandstone, designed by Samuel Ward.

Here's the part that explains the whole town's name. In July 1797, Major General Joseph Bloomfield, a wounded veteran of Brandywine and Monmouth who would later serve as New Jersey's governor, visited the congregation and gave a speech on the Green. He then donated the money needed to finish the church's exterior before winter. The grateful congregation named their parish after him, and when the township incorporated in 1812, it took his name too. A boulder monument on the Green marks the spot of that 1797 speech, standing just a few steps from the church itself, which is now part of the Bloomfield Green Historic District.

Bloomfield Cemetery

A short drive south brings you to Bloomfield Cemetery, where Thomas Cadmus, his wife, and several of their children were reinterred after being moved from the family's original burial ground. Walking the older sections here is a quiet way to connect the names on the street signs around town, Cadmus Avenue among them, back to the people who actually lived on this land in the 1700s.

Belleville Dutch Reformed Church

Cross into Belleville, and you'll find the Reformed Church of Second River, also known as the Belleville Dutch Reformed Church, along with its historic churchyard. This is the congregation Thomas Cadmus served as an elder from 1794 to 1797, and where he donated fourteen acres of land for a parsonage. The cemetery holds a memorial to soldiers from this area who served in the Revolution, many with surnames, Speer, Vreeland, Rutan, Cadmus, Hornblower, that still label streets and neighborhoods across Belleville and Nutley today. Brigadier General Philip Van Cortlandt, who fought at Saratoga and later commanded New York regiments, is also buried here.

The Second River Battlefield Marker

A five-minute drive brings you into Branch Brook Park, where a 1932 marker commemorates what's remembered locally as the Battle of Second River. Historians don't fully agree on which specific skirmish it refers to, accounts point to clashes in this area in early 1777, again in the fall of that year, and once more in 1779, along with running engagements as British forces pursued Washington's retreating army west across New Jersey in late 1776. What's certain is that this stretch of the Passaic River valley saw real fighting more than once, which is easy to forget while jogging past it on a Saturday morning.

Military Park, Newark

Head south into downtown Newark for Military Park, a six-acre triangle that appears on maps of the city as early as 1667. Newark's founders set it aside as a training ground, and it earned its name honestly: militia drilled here during the French and Indian War, and Continental Army troops camped here during the Revolution. The park later served as a recruiting ground during the Civil War and World War I. Trinity and St. Philip's Cathedral, an Episcopal church on the park's edge that dates to the mid-1700s, was pressed into service as a field hospital during the war for independence.

Old First Presbyterian Church, Newark

A short walk or drive up Broad Street brings you to Old First Presbyterian Church, whose congregation dates all the way back to 1666, making it older than the town of Newark's own official founding stories usually credit. The building standing today went up just after the war, replacing the meetinghouse that stood across the street during the Revolution itself. During the fighting, the church's minister, Reverend Alexander MacWhorter, was an outspoken supporter of the American cause, he traveled to encourage Continental Army troops after their difficult retreat in late 1776, and later served as a chaplain. A plaque at the church lists nearly four dozen Revolutionary soldiers and patriots buried in its cemetery, a reminder of how many ordinary Newark residents this war actually touched.

Eagle Rock Reservation, West Orange

Finish the day with a fifteen-minute drive up into the Watchung Mountains. During the war, the Continental Army used ridgelines like this one as observation posts, watching for British troop movements out of Staten Island and Manhattan as part of a chain of signal stations that ran along these hills. You won't find a plaque marking a specific battle at Eagle Rock, but you will find one of the best views in New Jersey, a wide sweep of the Manhattan skyline and, closer in, the towns you've spent the day driving through. It's a fitting way to end the trail: the same high ground that once served as a lookout for an army now serves as a lookout for the rest of us.

The Route at a Glance

If you'd rather see the whole day mapped out before you go, here's the order I'd follow, along with roughly how long I'd spend at each stop.

Frequently Asked Questions

In Closing

You can drive through Bloomfield, Belleville, Newark, and West Orange a hundred times without ever noticing most of what's described above. That's not a criticism of the towns; it's just how daily life works. We drive past things. What changes when you deliberately slow down for an afternoon is small, but real: Washington Street in Bloomfield stops being just a street. Military Park stops being just a place to eat lunch on a bench. You start to see the layers underneath the town you already know.

That's really the same thing I try to help people do when they're buying or selling a home here. A house is never just square footage. It sits inside a story that started long before any of us arrived, and understanding that story tends to make people feel more at home once they've moved in.