Newark

Branch Brook Park is a 360-acre park located in the northern section of Newark, between the neighborhoods of Forest Hill and Roseville. It’s famous for having more than 4,000 cherry blossom trees in more than 14 different varieties and for hosting the annual Cherry Blossom Festival in April (no wonder why it’s dubbed “Cherryblossomland”). The park was created in 1895 by the Essex County Parks Commission and was the nation's first county park. The area served as an Army training ground during the Civil War, and in the 1920s it grew exponentially through private donations from a handful of prominent Newark families. Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York’s Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, designed the park to give it a natural look and feel with swaths of wild meadows and forests. The park’s celebrated cherry trees were the result of a 1927 gift from Caroline Bamberger Fuld, sister of department store magnate Louis Bamberger. Print a map from branchbrookpark.org and take a self-guided walking tour of the park during daylight hours.