Iconic New Jersey restaurant is for sale after 75 years

It has a history and location like no other restaurant in New Jersey.

The popular restaurant has been owned by the same family since 1949 and has been a favorite for generations. Legendary musicians, including the Beach Boys and Pete Seeger, performed on the back lawn.

Now the Walpack Inn in Sussex County is for sale, along with a house and cabin on the surrounding property.

The 29-acre property at 7 National Park Service Road Route 615 is in the famously isolated town of Walpack, which has fewer than a dozen residents. The building in which the restaurant is located has seven bedrooms and six full bathrooms, including an apartment above the dining area.

It hit the market early last week, four months after the family announced it wanted to sell the property.

Jim Heigis, the owner, was a kid in Rutherford when his parents bought the restaurant four years after it opened. They moved their family to Sussex County.

Heigis, 86, lives in the house on the property with his wife, Lee. He remains a familiar guest at the Walpack Inn, which also hosts weddings and other events.

“People will stand in the restaurant and say, Wow, this is a place. Do you know what I tell them? It took a lifetime. I’ve spent my life here,” Heigis told NJ Advance Media on Wednesday.

The asking price will not be made public, said Lara Darco, the manager of the Walpack Inn and Heigi’s daughter.

“Serious buyers can contact our agent about the sales price,” said Darco, who lives in Pennsylvania.

Sotheby’s International Realty, which is listing the property, describes it as a “rare and unique” opportunity, noting its location in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, about a 90-minute drive from New York City.

Sotheby’s officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Although the restaurant will remain open for dinner on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, its future is unclear. Darco said she doesn’t know if a buyer would want to continue operating the restaurant, but the family plans to keep it open until a sale is finalized.

The Sotheby’s listing states that the property “offers endless opportunities for expansion.”

“I hope they keep it as a restaurant,” Heigis said.

The site could have potential as an outdoor music venue, citing long-ago outdoor performances by Peter Paul and Mary, Arlo Guthrie and Charlie Daniels, he said.

The Beach Boys drew the largest audiences in the 1980s, Heigis said.

“We had 7,000 people behind the restaurant,” Heigis said.

Numerous public events took place on the inn’s lawn. It served as the meeting point for the Walpack Wilderness Challenge, a duathlon for cyclists and runners that ended about a decade ago.

It features an outdoor tent — 105 feet long and 65 feet wide, with seating for 250 people and a dance floor — for weddings and other celebrations, Heigis said. The apartment and holiday home on the property are usually rented by guests attending celebrations.

The Walpack Inn is located a short distance from Main Street, which was relatively busy in 1949, when the town had a few hundred residents. But today the area is mostly quiet.

Walpack is still about half a century after the federal government wanted to build a dam that would have buried much of the town under a lake. The government bought up much of the land in the area before abandoning the project.

The town had just nine residents in 2019, down from 384 in 1970.

During the changes, the Walpack Inn was the heart of the town.

Early post-World War II menus were handwritten and included dinners such as fried rib steak, spaghetti, fried lamb chops, and hamburger steak, all for less than $3.

A particularly popular meal – lobster with fries and coleslaw – cost $1.25.

“We paid 75 cents for a lobster,” Heigis said with a laugh.

“That was one of the ways we built the business. “You have to give someone something, maybe a little different and at a reasonable price,” Heigis said.