Both lakes have been the focus of water-quality improvement efforts by the state, including invasive aquatic-weed control and watershed protection in association with a local non-profit organization.

The park is open all year, with many recreational activities available, including hiking, birdwatching, cross-country skiing, swimming, boating, and camping.

According to the commission's first annual report, "the forests are 'the great savings banks of nature' from which we have been taking the interest and reducing the capital".

[4] From his acquisition of the lake in 1888 until his death in 1905, Newark-based rubber and harness manufacturer Andrew Albright, Sr. (1830–1905), sought to prevent free public access to the lake for fishing and strenuously fought state efforts to exercise its legislative and eminent domain powers to compel such access.

[5][6] In August 1914, his children and heirs Andrew Albright, Jr. (1874–1930), and Elizabeth Spurr (1869–1934) sold 544 acres (2.20 km2) which included the waters of Swartswood Lake, to the commission for $30,000.

Boat liveries and picnic shelters to be maintained under proper control will make it available to a large number of people" and to stock the lake with fish.

[13][15] However, association members have criticized the New Jersey Division of Environmental Protection for failing to address the identification or harvesting of invasive species from the lake.

[19] The park, and its bodies of water, are located within the watershed of the Paulins Kill, a tributary of the Delaware River.

[25] The lake and valley is underlain by a two-mile-thick (3.2 km) layer called the Martinsburg Formation, a turbidite sequence of weaker sedimentary materials, mostly slate, greywacke sandstone, shale, and limestone derived from Ordovician-period deep ocean floor deposits from 540 to 400 million years ago.

[23][26] These materials of these bedrock formations included geological components of a large Precambrian or Mesozoic continent that separated and subsequently was periodically submerged beneath shallow seas.

During these intervals, these components accumulated a layer of deposited marine sediment and carbonate rock during the Ordovician and Silurian eras.

[23][26][29] Duck Pond is a woodland vernal pool, a depression in the forest, unconnected to a stream, with a dense soil layer that impedes the water from flowing out easily.

[13] Swartswood State Park offers 65 tent and trailer camping sites that accommodate up to six persons each and include a "fire ring, picnic table and lantern holder".

After replacing the dam, Vail sold the mill property three years later to the trustees of Blair Academy who owned it until 1969.

[37] The park's 1.2-mile (1.9 km) Grist Mill Trail begins at the site and features a stand of red cedar trees, steep terrain, and views of the southern parts of lake.

The lake "are stocked with brown, rainbow and brook trout in the spring", and are also populated by channel catfish, largemouth and smallmouth bass, chain pickerel, perch and panfish.