Salem Township turned 235 farm acres into walking country

Salem Township says it wants to keep its rural character, and one of the clearest examples sits at Salem and Five Mile roads. The township’s Farm Preserve holds 235 acres of rolling farmland and open landscape with marked paths available from dawn to dusk.

Two smaller preserves add different ground nearby. The 25-acre Anthony and Rose Shatter Family Preserve protects mature woods and wetlands. The 27-acre Creekshead Nature Preserve holds buttonbush swamps and spring wildflowers.

Together they make land preservation visible. The fields are not scenery fenced behind private property. They are places where residents can walk through the farm-and-woodland landscape the township is trying to keep.

The three properties are separate preserves with different entrances and trail conditions, not one connected park. The Farm Preserve is the open, rolling walk; Shatter is the wooded one; Creekshead is the wetland stop. Use Salem Township’s current maps to choose the right entrance and stay on marked paths, especially where public land meets working farms or private property. The experience is deliberately simple: trails, fields, woods, and the chance to see what rural preservation looks like on the ground.