Discover Livingston: History, Art and Parks

Livingston offers a variety of reasons to stay: local history at Old Force Homestead, art at Riker Hill Art Park, and trails through parks. To plan your visit, you can choose based on your interests. The museum and artists’ studios have recurring visiting dates; the trails vary in length and format. They include interpretive trails as well as a historic tour you can take on foot or by car. The cultural events provide fixed points of reference for planning your stay; for the trails, you can instead compare length, format, and activity.

History and Art in Livingston

Old Force Homestead is currently a museum and the home of the Livingston Historical Society. The Force Homestead Museum, at 366 S. Livingston Avenue, is open to the public on the second Sunday of each month. Volunteer museum guides from the Livingston Historical Society offer free tours. The Barn Museum displays tools and artifacts from earlier times.

Riker Hill Art Park was formerly a United States missile-tracking facility in Livingston, New Jersey. The buildings at Riker Hill Art Park were converted into 38 artists’ studios. The studios open twice a year: each year, the first weekends in June and November feature an open house and an art sale. Compared with the monthly museum date, studio visits are therefore concentrated on two weekends per year.

Parks and Trails

A 1.5-mile trail winds through the woods at East Hills Park. Much shorter is the ¼-mile interpretive trail in Memorial Park: it starts at Littell’s Pond and runs along Slough Brook. Prospect Park is a wooded park covering 29 acres. It has interpretive hiking and biking trails, including accessible routes.

The Livingston Historic Trail is a 4.2-mile, self-guided walking or driving tour of Livingston’s historic resources. The Livingston Historic Hike, designed by Boy Scout Troop 16, is ten miles long and forms a loop. It includes and extends the Historic Trail; its starting point is the home of the Livingston Historical Society at Force Homestead. In addition to length, the format matters: the Historic Trail can be taken on foot or by car; the ten-mile Historic Hike is more than twice as long as the 4.2-mile trail and forms a loop.

Livingston Skate Park is a facility for skateboarding, inline skating, and BMX riding; use is at your own risk. This sets it apart from the hiking and biking trails mentioned above and makes it a separate planning consideration if skating or BMX is among your travel interests.

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