Ringwood, NJ: A rural lifestyle 40 miles from New York City

With its forested hills, winding roads, and glistening lakes and reservoirs, Ringwood, NJ, feels more like the Catskills than a New Jersey suburb. That country charm is what attracted Linda and James Pentifallo when they decided to leave their longtime home in River Edge, Bergen County.

“My wife really wanted to be on a lake, but I thought, ‘We’re not going to be able to afford that,’” says Mr. Pentifallo, 64, owner of the Ridgefield Hobby store in Ridgefield, N.J.

However, earlier this year they bought a three-bedroom cabin on Cupsaw Lake – one of many lakes in Ringwood – for $599,000. Their new home reminds Ms. Pentifallo, 65, a retired office manager, of her family’s lake cabin in the Adirondacks.

“We’ll go out on deck and have a cocktail and enjoy the view,” Mr. Pentifallo said. “The great thing about Ringwood is the location: you’re in the countryside and yet you’re not far from the city.”

Orly Steinberg, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Village Square Realty in Ridgewood, said many buyers start their search in northern New Jersey’s pricier cities, only to realize that in Ringwood they can “afford a nice home and more where get their money’s worth’. Others, she said, discover the neighborhood on weekend outdoor adventures.

“During the pandemic, 30 percent of our customers were from out of town,” said Ms. Steinberg, a longtime Ringwood resident. “Everyone was walking the trails. That brought people forward, and a lot of them bought permanent homes, and some weekend homes.”

Because many people work remotely, she added, “You can work in a beautiful setting, with a view of a lake or trees.”

Amanda Navojosky, 35, and her fiancé, James Kalan, 33, paid $660,000 for a four-bedroom house on 3.3 acres in Ringwood last summer. Ms. Navojosky is a biomedical engineer who travels to hospitals to lead clinical trials, and Mr. Kalan is a data analyst who commutes to Westchester County twice a week.

The couple previously lived in an apartment in Rochelle Park, in Bergen County, but “wanted more space and a slower pace of life,” Ms. Navojosky said. Their new home is near the Monksville Reservoir, where they plan to kayak in warmer weather.

One of Ringwood’s greatest assets is Ringwood State Park, which includes Shepherd Lake; the New Jersey Botanical Garden at Skylands; and Ringwood Manor, once the country home of Abram Stevens Hewitt, who made a fortune in iron mining and later entered politics, serving as a member of Congress and mayor of New York City in the late 1800s.

While many of Ringwood’s natural resources are protected as a park or watershed for reservoirs, the municipality has also faced an environmental hazard: a cleanup is underway on a 500-acre Superfund site that was contaminated by paint sludge and other toxic waste dumped in the 1960s. and 1970s by a former Ford Motor Company plant in nearby Mahwah.

What you will find

Ringwood extends over 26 square miles in northern Passaic County, about 40 miles northwest of Midtown Manhattan, and is bordered by West Milford to the west, Ramapo Valley County Reservation in Mahwah to the east, Wanaque and Oakland to the south , and Sterling Forest State Park. and Tuxedo, NY, to the north.

The community is less diverse than New Jersey as a whole: its approximately 11,500 residents are approximately 84 percent white, 9.2 percent Hispanic, 2.2 percent Asian, 1.6 percent black and 1.3 percent Native American. (By contrast, New Jersey’s population is 52.9 percent white, 21.9 percent Hispanic, 15.4 percent black, 10.5 percent Asian, and 0.7 percent Native American.) Ringwood is home to a longstanding community of indigenous Ramapough Lenape people.

Housing styles include cottages and cabins built as summer homes and later winterized; Cape Cods, bilevels and colonials from the 1960s and 1970s; and McMansions built in the late 20th century. There are few apartment homes or multi-family homes.

What you pay

As of early December, there were 12 homes for sale in Ringwood, including a two-bedroom duplex for $112,321 and a five-bedroom, 6,320-square-foot home for $3.7 million.

According to data from the Garden State Multiple Listing Service, 104 homes sold for an average price of $483,500 in the year ending Nov. 1, 2023. During the previous twelve months, 140 homes were sold for a median price of $462,000.

The drop in sales reflects a nationwide slump that Ms. Steinberg and other observers attribute to high mortgage rates.

The atmosphere

Ringwood has no downtown shopping area. Instead, most commercial activity centers on two strip malls on Skyline Drive.

Residents of the three lake communities – Erskine, Cupsaw and Skyline – often build their neighborhood connections around the lake associations, which offer summer camps, beach clubs, dinners, holiday parties and other activities.

For outdoor enthusiasts, there are a number of natural spaces to explore. In addition to Ringwood State Park, there are several parks and nature reserves nearby, including Ramapo Mountain State Forest, Norvin Green State Forest, Wawayanda State Park, Long Pond Ironworks State Park, and Tranquility Ridge Park.

The schools

Ringwood has four schools serving about 1,100 of its younger students: those in kindergarten through third grade attend Robert Erskine Elementary School or Peter Cooper Elementary School, which also has a kindergarten program; fourth and fifth graders attend Eleanor G. Hewitt Intermediate School; and students in sixth through eighth grades attend Martin J. Ryerson Middle School.

Older students attend Lakeland Regional High School in neighboring Wanaque, which has 900 students in ninth through 12th grades. In the 2021-2022 school year, average SAT scores were 547 in reading and writing, and 524 in math, compared to state averages of 538 and 532.

The commute

New Jersey Transit runs buses from a park-and-ride lot at Skyline Drive to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan. The trip takes an hour to an hour and 20 minutes and costs $10.75 one way or $267 per month. (However, Skyline Drive is a steep thoroughfare that is sometimes closed in winter weather.)

Those who prefer to drive to Midtown can take Route 208 or Interstate 287 into neighboring Oakland, a drive that can take as little as an hour or more than an hour and a half, depending on traffic. Interstate 287 also connects commuters to business centers in Morris, Bergen and Westchester counties, as well as other suburban areas.

The history

European immigrants began mining iron ore in the Ramapo Mountains around Ringwood in the 18th century. An early ironmaster, Robert Erskine, served as a mapmaker for George Washington during the Revolutionary War. The iron mines of Ringwood and nearby areas provided iron for the war effort, including the chain across the Hudson River which blockaded British sailing ships.

From the mid-19th century, Peter Cooper and his son-in-law, Abram Stevens Hewitt, ran the ironworks. The family, which also founded Cooper Union College and Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum, donated their summer home in Ringwood to the state of New Jersey in the 1930s; it is now a museum and part of Ringwood State Park.

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