Once Tony's Pond — and the one Kinnelon lake open to the whole borough.
The lake at the heart of this neighborhood began as a modest body of water known as Tony's Pond — for whom, the records don't say. Around 1960 it was dug out and enlarged, with the help of the Army Corps of Engineers, into the lake known today as Lake Reality.
A contractor's flyer from 1961 advertised the homes rising around the new lake as Lynnview Estates; the same streets are known today as Arbor Estates. The development filled in through the 1960s and 1970s as one of Kinnelon's lakeside neighborhoods.
The Lake Reality Beach Club took shape in the mid-1970s — a Herald-News article from April 1976 records its origins — and a lakeside pavilion was planned in 1978. Unlike Kinnelon's other private lake communities, Lake Reality opens membership to residents from across the borough, making it the one Kinnelon lake the whole town can join.
Lake Reality is not the only made lake in this corner of the borough. By local accounts nearby Lake Rickabear — a spring-fed lake that was once a private lake club — is today a Girl Scout camp, one more of the highland waters that gave Kinnelon its lake communities.
Like Fayson Lakes and roughly 150 other New Jersey lakes, Lake Reality turned to the state's dam-restoration loan program. The New Jersey DEP awarded a $750,000 low-interest loan — at 2% — to bring the lake's dam up to current standards, to be repaid by residents over twenty years. The dam is not in danger of failing; the state is simply requiring an update. But the loan carries a catch: the Borough of Kinnelon must sign on as co-applicant. Should the council decline, the dam would be decommissioned and the lake permanently drained.
The Dam Situation
A dam, an assessment, and a council co-signature — without it, the lake is drained. It is the same shape of civic question Kinnelon faces again at 43 North Road: a decision that belongs to the whole community.
“A pond became a lake — and the lake became a question for the whole borough.”
From the community
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Sources
Compiled from publicly available sources; where accounts differ, the most widely documented version is used. Community corrections welcome.
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