A 62-acre slice of Green Pond Mountain in Rockaway Township -- an occasional target for development -- will now be preserved and eventually opened to hikers.

The $725,000 purchase, announced yesterday, ends years of questions about the land's fate and puts into public hands a parcel complete with a cliff that offers panoramic views for miles.

"There is a series of cliffs on Green Pond Mountain and this was the only cliff on this part of the mountain that wasn't protected," said David Epstein, executive director of the nonprofit Morris Land Conservancy, which helped close the deal. "Now the public will have the ability to hike through there."

Buying the land from Patrick Merner will also provide a missing link to a system of hiking trails that outdoors enthusiasts hope will one day extend from the Appalachian Trail in West Milford south to Patriot's Path. Merner, of Kinnelon, could not be reached yesterday.

In the past, Merner attempted to get the township to continue Notch Road through the property that extends from Notch Road in the Oak Ridge section of Jefferson Township to just south of the Craigmeur ski area in Rockaway Township, Epstein said.

"It would have been a shortcut for a lot of people to get to (Route) 23 and this quiet wilderness area would have been turned into a suburban mess," he said. "From a trail perspective this is an absolute, key piece."

It was in mapping the trail network in 1996 that the Boonton Township-based Land Conservancy found out Merner owned the Green Pond Mountain property.

To buy it, the Morris County Park Commission put up $225,000; Rockaway Township contributed $100,000 plus a $200,000 county open space grant it won for the purchase.

The remaining $200,000 was contributed by more than 90 Green Pond residents after a round of community meetings and a door- to-door campaign. Emilio De Lia, president of the Green Pond board, said the community was galvanized by a long-standing fear its "rural way of life" was threatened by development.

In the same news release, Rockaway Township Mayor Louis Sceusi praised the acquisition, saying it will permanently preserve Green Pond Mountain's ridge line. The mostly undeveloped ridge runs from Route 23 to Route 80.

Surrounding property, owned by the Newark watershed or the Green Pond Corp., already enjoys protection, Epstein said. "This was the hole in the donut," he said. "It's a little wilderness area that would have just been destroyed."

Under the preservation plan, the county will now be able to take the trails of the Morris County Greenway atop Green Pond Mountain. At that point, it becomes part of the 40-mile Farny Highlands Trail network, which connects a number of local parks.

Eventually, the goal is to extend the system to the Rockaway River into Jefferson, where it will link with a trail to Mahlon Dickerson Reservation. That, in turn, links to the Highlands Trail system.