If you tried to swim at Spruce Run this summer, you already know how the season went. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's own park page for Spruce Run Recreation Area has carried one line all year: the swim area is closed for the 2026 season. No lifeguard schedule. No concession-stand hours posted for the beach. Just the advisory, sitting at the top of the page since at least June, next to a standing notice about confirmed harmful algal blooms in the reservoir.
Today is Labor Day. The unofficial marker for when a summer like this one gets tallied up. And the tally for Clinton Township is stranger than it should be: the township's most swimmable reservoir went dark for an entire season, and almost nobody had to change their plans.
The Reservoir That Was Always the Backup
Spruce Run covers 1,290 acres and holds 67 drive-up tent and trailer sites open from April through October, the kind of park where you pull in, unload a cooler, and walk to a sandy beach with volleyball nets and a playground. It was built in the 1960s primarily as a backup water supply for the state during droughts, with recreation layered on top. That's the version of Spruce Run most people know: convenient, family-scaled, easy to reach off Route 31.
Round Valley Reservoir sits a few miles away, inside the same township, and it's a different kind of body of water entirely. At roughly 180 feet, it's the deepest lake in New Jersey, according to the township's own outdoor recreation page, and it covers more than 2,000 acres. It has a lifeguarded swim area of its own, and unlike Spruce Run's, that beach carries no closure advisory this year.
That's the part worth sitting with. This wasn't a case of one lake closing and residents losing their nearest option. It was one lake closing while the deeper, larger, more serious one down the road kept running the way it always has.
| Spruce Run | Round Valley | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | 1,290 acres | Over 2,000 acres |
| Depth | Not officially stated | 180 feet, the deepest in NJ |
| Swim area, 2026 | Closed for the season | Open, lifeguarded |
| Camping | 67 drive-up tent/trailer sites | Wilderness only, hike or paddle in |
| Best known for | Beach, picnic groves, boat rentals | Depth, trails, backcountry camping |
Getting to the Water the Hard Way
Round Valley's camping setup tells you everything about how differently the two parks are used. There's no drive-up option. Campers backpack or mountain bike three to six miles along the steep, rocky Cushetunk Trail to reach a site, or paddle one to four miles by boat, according to the state park's own camping details. It's the only state park in New Jersey that offers true wilderness camping, and the difficulty is the point. Nobody ends up on those campsites by accident.
The trail network around it isn't an afterthought either. A few of the routes that connect into Round Valley and the surrounding preserve:
- Cushetunk Mountain Preserve, administered by Hunterdon County and straddling Clinton and Readington Townships, connects directly into the Round Valley trail system. The township's own hiking page notes these trails stay lightly used even by local standards, drawing a small, steady core of hikers, trail runners, and mountain bikers rather than casual visitors.
- Columbia Trail, about five miles from downtown Clinton, is the flatter counterpoint. A multi-use path that runs north from High Bridge into Morris County, tracing the South Branch of the Raritan the whole way. It's the one you take a bike or a stroller on.
- Ken Lockwood Gorge, roughly 15 minutes out, was named one of the ten most beautiful spots in New Jersey by NJ Monthly. Boulders the size of cars, real rapids, and a stand of Northern Hemlock most people never notice unless they're already looking for it.
None of that trail mileage depends on a beach being open. When Spruce Run's swim area went dark, the hiking, biking, and paddling infrastructure that already threads through the township absorbed the difference without anyone having to build anything new.
A Downtown Calendar That Never Needed Either Lake
Here's the part that actually reframes the town. Walk through what Clinton Township's calendar looked like this summer and you'll notice the reservoirs barely show up in it.
Friday Night Music ran downtown from May 22 through September 4, spilling across multiple locations on Main Street each week, according to the Guild of Clinton's events calendar. It wrapped its final show three days ago. In July, the Rotary Club ran its annual duck race, sending rubber ducks over the falls near the Red Mill while people lined the bridge to watch them cross the finish line. On August 29, the Town of Clinton held its annual picnic at Hunts Mill Park, running from 3 p.m. until dusk with food, games, and a fireworks display to close out the evening.
Not one of those events happens at Spruce Run or Round Valley. They happen on Main Street, on the bridge over the South Branch, at a park built for picnic tables and a fireworks show. The town's actual social rhythm, the part residents build a summer around, runs through downtown and a handful of parks that have nothing to do with either reservoir's swim status.
That's the claim worth making plainly: Spruce Run's beach closing didn't cost Clinton Township its summer, because the summer was never really built on that beach. It was built on Friday nights downtown and a picnic at Hunts Mill Park, with the reservoirs sitting a few miles out as options for people who wanted the water, most of whom had Round Valley as the deeper, more established choice anyway.
What's Already Loading Up for Fall
The town doesn't pause between seasons so much as swap which building is drawing the crowd. The Red Mill Museum Village at 56 Main Street runs its Haunted Red Mill every October, a tradition that's been going for more than three decades and stands as one of the museum's largest annual fundraisers. Visitors work through mazes, outdoor trails, and a slow hayride along the river before ending inside the mill itself, a building with more than 200 years of history behind it. The museum posts each year's exact weekend dates on its own events page closer to the date.
That same building is also mid-way through a longer project this year. The Red Mill Museum Village and the Hunterdon Art Museum, which faces it across the river in a stone mill built in 1763, launched a joint initiative called Mill to Mill as part of Handwork 2026, a nationwide celebration of American craft tied to the country's 250th anniversary. Their Textile Fellowship still meets most Fridays from 1 to 3 p.m., alternating between the two museums, open to makers at any experience level who want to drop in.
The Version of the Town That Actually Held Up
None of this is a story about a park failing. It's a story about which pieces of Clinton Township turned out to be load-bearing. The beach at Spruce Run went dark for a full season and the town's outdoor life didn't buckle, because the deeper reservoir down the road, the trail network stitching the two parks together, and a downtown calendar that runs on Main Street rather than a swim schedule were already doing the actual work. If you're trying to understand what makes this township tick day to day, that's a better place to start than any single park's beach hours.
If a fall stroll through downtown Clinton or an afternoon on the Cushetunk trails has you thinking more seriously about putting down roots here, Bonnie & Greg know this township well beyond its parks. Reach out for an instant home valuation and a conversation about what's actually available in Clinton Township right now.
