About this spot
Buttermilk Falls drops roughly 80-90 feet down a red shale face of the Kittatinny Ridge in Walpack Township (Layton post office), inside the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Reach it via the Buttermilk Falls Trail off Old Mine Road, a steep 1.4-mile round trip with a small pull-off for parking; entry is free, dawn to dusk. Multiple independent guides and visitor reports describe it as one of New Jersey's best waterfall swimming holes, with people wading and cooling off in the pools along Flat Brook below the falls in summer. The hazard that matters: the approach rock is slick and mossy, and NPS rules prohibit swimming or wading within 50 feet of the waterfall itself or in the falls, so stay in the lower pools and skip the top ledges.