Hike #1031; Lopez to Ringdale

Hike #1031; Lopez to Ringdale

4/23/17 Lopez to Ringdale with Pete G. Wilcox, Kellie Kegan, Timothy Kovich, Sean Patrick O'Riordan (Reardon), Eric Pace, and Aaron Young

This next hike would be another point to point, once again returning to the series of the Lehigh Valley Railroad in the Endless Mountains of PA.

Lumber locomotive in Lopez

This series had been a thing since we finished hiking the old Wilkes Barre and Eastern Railroad. I discovered the Back Mountain Trail, the route of the Bowmans Creek Branch, part of the Lehigh Valley Railroad system.

Jennings Bros logging locomotive

Through these explorations, we discovered countless spur lines that went into all directions for logging. We had discovered another subculture of the Anthracite region: the timber. Of course, timber was needed for everything from construction to burning, but also to tan leather and for mine props. It was a huge business, but gets very little attention compared to the more popular coal mining itself.

Lopez PA station

Pete and I have formed a bit of an obsession with this obscure history and forgotten associated railroad lines. One of Pete’s earliest hikes with us was the first one to cover the Bowmans Creek Branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, which operated from 1887 until 1963. Prior to that, a more ramshackle rail line passed through, owned by the Jennings Brothers who had major lumber interests.

Lehigh Valley Railroad built it’s Bowmans Creek Branch on the earlier Lewis Lumber Railroad to a great extent to the town of Noxen. We had explored much of this, and followed the main line all the way to the town of Lopez, where the line crossed over the Loyasock Creek.
Pete and I did a drive on the last hike in the area to see about the accessibility of the Bowmans Creek Branch beyond. Sadly, it’s all private property, and it’s all a dirt road route that can be easily driven. We didn’t want to try to chance bringing a group through there.

Historic postcard along Bowmans Creek Branch

I’d given up on the area briefly, while Pete looked into whether we could get permission or seek another way around. In this time, he had discovered an obscure 7.75 mile spur line to the Lehigh Valley, the Thorndale Branch.

Only used for a few years, this line was used to reach the village of Thorndale where there was a tannery. Pete had ridden a lot of it recently and took several interesting photos.

Historic image of Lopez PA

The line seemed to questionably end on a hillside without accessing the tannery. Maps from the time showed the rail line ending as well. Most USGS maps even as early as 1935 are from after it was abandoned.

1935 map showing Thorndale and Thorndale Branch as a dotted line

I was interested in the route based on Pete’s recommendation. We’re always trying to connect these hikes out, and one of the places I wanted to reach was the eastern terminus of the Loyalsock Trail, another of Pennsylvania’s serious longer distance backpacking trails.

Historic postcard image of Lopez PA

Pete had a good amount of the hike planned out where to go, but we needed to figure out how to connect it with Loyalsock State Forest at Ringdale.
I started examining maps and found some roads through State Game Lands 13 which would lead out into a development just up the road from Ringdale. It looked like it would work well.

On the rail bed in Lopez

We met at the Loyalsock Trail head in the state forest, by Ringdale, a small community area near Laporte PA. Aaron Young was back to join us for the first time in quite a while as well.
Because we were so far out, the group was smaller, but we were going to have a good time regardless.
We shuttled with as few cars as possible from here to Lopez, and parked on the former Bowmans Creek Branch where we had started the previous one in the series, right by the sign for Lopez.
It’s really a sleepy little town. No one even really drives by let alone hikes.

Where Bowmans Creek Branch crossed the Loyalsock Creek

I walked over to see where the rail line crossed the Loyalsock Creek, looking to the north toward Dushore, longingly. I want badly to walk that section, but this time we’d cover something quite different.

The junction with a spur to the Murray Breaker was just on the other side, where Pete and I had scouted before. It must have really been something else. Murray was at one time the world’s largest coal breaker. It reportedly collapsed in the 1950s.

Historic image

There was reportedly even an oil well up the hill from Lopez near the Murray Breaker. And that is still only on the outside of town, where I would have never expected anything to have been.

A disclaimer sign that the truck is not part of this yard...

The town was quite weird. We immediately found a truck with a disclaimer that a trailer parked nearby was not a part of their own yard.

The town is very sleepy today, but at one time the route we were walking was littered with rail lines as a sort of junction point between Jennings Brothers fifteen miles of lumber lines, and the two Lehigh Valley lines. There was a mining area and a colliery on the other side of the creek at one time as well.

1908 image of Lopez Station

The station was just north of where we had parked, and the junction with the Thorndale Branch was somewhere in there. I saw somewhere that there was another spur to something in town that must have crossed somewhere near where the main drag crosses heading west. I did note some masonry pier attached at an angle to the current road bridge.

Historic image of Lopez Station

I wasn’t quite sure where these rail lines went, but we needed to find our way to the Thorndale Branch. I figured it must be down close to the road out of town, which becomes known as Buckeys Road after it’s the main street.

Historic Lopez image; Edward Smith collection

We started walking the main street through town, and like so many bigger PA towns, it was really really run down. Rather depressing even.

We passed a tiny little post office in a building that looked old. I doubted that it was the actual historic location of the office, but it turns out it was. Many of the buildings in town were architecturally pretty interesting.

Historic image with Lopez PA

We had the feeling walking through the neighborhood that everyone was looking at us, and I suppose they might have been, because no one ever walks through. That’s pretty certain.

An old abutment, which could have been a road

I started watching closely after we crossed the Lopez Creek for signs of any former railroad spurs. It was well graded enough that there could have been one there I thought, even though it was slightly going up hill at that point. I tried to line it all up with the abutment I saw where we crossed, which I’m still not sure was the rail line.
As we walked a little further, we came to a a place known in the town as “The Triangle”. There, we saw a lovely hotel known at different times as the the Hotel Lopez, the Gridiron Hotel, and the Hotel Chesonis.

Historic postcard image of Hotel Chesonis

It was now just a local residence, but the building still maintains much of it’s historic character.
Between the hotel building and another to the right, I noted a level grade that I recalled would have fit in with the railroad spur I was looking into.

Historic image proving my theory that the rail line came through here...

Inspection of the historic postcard shows that there was in fact a railroad exactly where I had thought, and I rather luckily took a photo at the exact angle as another historic photo!

Present view of Hotel Lopez

I had initially thought this line was the Thorndale Branch we were looking for, and that was a mistake. It was just an industrial line going to a mill or something, I’m not sure what exact business was down there; there were so many in this town.

Historic postcard image

We continued to head gradually up hill through town to the west, which then offered a bit of a view down toward the Loyalsock Creek valley and some former farm lands.

McGee Hotel historic postcard image

Looking down, I was watching for where the right of way could have been along the Loyalsock. It was hard to see much of anything, but I thought I could see where it possibly was as a sort of level area across the open fields.

Historic sand plant image

There was a possibility that this spur could have served a sand plant that was once in the town. It would make sense that some sort of business like that might be along the river.

Historic railroad image in Lopez

I don’t believe it was the Mason Silk Mill, because I believe that was on the Bowmans Creek Branch further back near the station. We passed a former building site on the previous hike which only has a single stack remaining to it, which is probably it.

The main street in Lopez and Bowmans Creek Branch crossing

We continued on Buckeys Road and out of town. After passing the last house for a while, I kept my eyes to the right thinking the railroad bed must be out there somwhere.

1904 view of Lopez main street with rail crossing

I didn’t know it at the time, but the rail line was actually up the hill from us, and quite a ways up. It made it’s way off of the Bowmans Creek Branch further south than we had turned. I’m glad to have walked through Lopez, but we’ll have to return to figure out where it came to town.

Historic Mason's Silk Mill image

We passed a field on the right side and joked about crashing a party there that was being advertised on a sign. The further we went on this hike, the further we would be from any kind of civilization. Lopez is barely civilization as it is.

Historic Lehigh Valley Railroad image in Lopez PA at McGee Hotel

We soon took a little break at a spot that had a very peculiar spring. It was a sort of trought and a pipe sticking up for the locals to come by and fill up their water. The road is a dead end, so no one but locals would really try to go that way anyway.

Historic image of construction of Mason Silk Mill in Lopez

There was a lady there already filling up her bottles. She didn’t seem thrilled that there were hikers coming by. When she left, we all filled up our bottles with the good tasting water, and I stood in the trough, which felt pretty good.

Trough!

From here, Pete said we had to go up hill to connect with the old Thorndale Branch. We started climbing rather steeply through the woods, and then out to sort of clearing with a sort of a pathway along it. By the time we got up pretty high, I figured that couldn’t be the way.

Mason Silk Mill in Lopez

We decided to go back down the hill and look for clues as to where the rail line might have crossed Buckeys Road. This of course was a mistake, but seemed like the thing to do at the time.
I found something that looked like a sort of level grade. I wasn’t expecting a well built railroad really, but I had no frame of reference for this line at all.

Jennings Bros. Logging Railroad

The logging railroad lines I was used to were often times very rough. Just sort of stone surface for narrow gauge rails, slapped together knowing they would only be for relatively short term use. That was what I was looking for.

Thorndale Branch

Sean and I took to the woods when I thought I saw something. It could possibly have been an old logging line, but it petered out and didn’t seem like too great a route. We bushwhacked back out of the woods to the road again to continue ahead.
After realizing the error, we finally did bushwhack up the hill rather steeply to find the real Thorndale Branch. It was far better constructed than I had expected to find. It really surprised me that Lehigh Valley Railroad would build something so substantial for only a few years of use, or just to reach a tannery.
It turns out it was probably due to a bitter rivalry between the Williamsport and North Branch Railroad, which had a branch line that reached closer to Thorndale than any of the Lehigh Valley rights of way.

Thorndale Branch

There might have been more logging lines off of this as well, but we didn’t see anything that was absolutely certain to be one, or at least I didn’t. Maybe Pete saw one.
We followed the rail bed for a bit back in the direction we had walked from, to a small creek crossing, and past some lovely springs. We couldn’t backtrack all the way to Lopez to cover the entire thing this time, but we went back a good ways to see it. We then turned around and started following the planned route out through a swath of State Game Lands 13. When the prublic land ended, we had to turn off and get back on Buckeys Road for a bit, because there was a house built right along the rail bed.

1906 image of sawmill industry near Ricketts

We were now into the areas known to be predominantly for logging, as the former farm lands gave way to mostly woods. The last farm land property we came across was this last house.

Historic postcard

The house appeared to be only like a weekend home, but there was definitely someone there. We didn’t want to bother them or cause trouble, so the road was the best way to go.

Schrifogel's Hotel

The area ahead turned out to be far more interesting than I had anticipated. We were coming upon a settlement that never became what was intended.
The Berwick Turnpike, also known as the Susquehanna and Tioga Turnpike, was constructed in the early 1800s, and it crossed Buckeys Road, which changes names ahead to Masonite Road, in this area.

Ellis Cemetery

In 1816, a man named Amos Ellis erected a shanty village at the site for those constructing the turnpike. For a time, the location was called New Thurington, then Shiner’s Mills. Pete took us on a side path to the old and hidden Ellis Cemetery, which was in amazingly beautiful condition.

Ellis Cemetery

It had some very interesting tomb stones unlike others I had seen.
Just beyond, to the west was the old turnpike route where it crossed the Loyalsock Creek. This made it an important location, and it’s a wonder why a town never succeeded here, especially since it also had a rail line for a time.

Schrifogel's Hotel

Just across, on the old Berwick Turnpike, but now on private land (we couldn’t get back on the railroad bed by following the turnpike legally), is the old and now abandoned Schrifogel's Hotel. Coach stops like this were necessary in the days when the turnpike was created.
It was originally an old corduroy road, which is a road that has logs placed to allow for passage over wet areas. The road was narrow and rough, considered the road from hell. Eventually, it was much improved, but while some sections of the historic route were integrated into new roads, the section between Ganoga Lake (then Long Pond) and the town of Dushore were not. It remains a back woods, rough route for over a century.

Pete's labeled google map

We continued on ahead along Buckeys Road, and when we entered State Game Lands 13 again, the road joined with the old Thorndale Branch to continue ahead. We took a side trip to check out a bit of the right of way we had missed while some of the group rested.

Former rail bed

We could easily see Schrifogel's Hotel from the rail bed back there. Pete mentioned I believe that Colonel R. B. Ricketts himself stayed there during travel. It’s a shame it’s in such poor condition today. It will likely collapse before anyone puts any kind of money into it. It’s in a terrible place to be a museum. It would only work as a weekend home or hunting cabin these days.
We returned to the road, which from here is built directly on the railroad bed for a good long while.
We went gradually up hill on the well maintained dirt road, and noted a sign on a post for Old Berwick Turnpike.

Rail bed below the game road

The sign was actually incorrect, because we knew the turnpike was further to the east, but this was the legal access to the public.
We continued on the rail bed/road and crossed over the Ellis Creek on a new bridge. There was no remnant at all of an earlier railroad bridge that I could see at the site.
We headed from the open area near the creek into woods, and the first of several places where the road and railroad bed diverge a bit was at a little hill spot. The road was filled over and up higher than where the rail bed was in a cut, and kind of swampy.

The rail bed in SGL 13

The rail bed weaved around a lot, which made the level nature of it tolerable. Rail beds are tough to deal with when you can see for miles straight ahead.
We came to a couple more places where the rail bed split from the road, and we were actually able to walk the original rail bed, which was narrower and a bit wet, but in my opinion much prettier.
The game road was still open to vehicle traffic for a while, but I really only remember seeing one car pass us on this entire long drivable section.
Eventually, we came to an interesting spot with rock outcrops to the right.

Rail bed in SGL 13

I don’t know how Pete managed to find this spot, but when he was scouting the line for this hike, he came across this rocky formation and decided to c heck it out. It turned out to be some really cool natural little caves in the rocks easy enough to walk through
I climbed down into an interesting rocky crack, which went like a cave ahead, away from the road/rail bed for a ways. It had an interesting rock along it that I wondered if it was some sort of weather related formation, or some sort of a fossil.
I passed through, and it led to another wide crack in the rocks, where I could go left or right, so I went to the right.

Rock formations in SGL 13

I made my way through the last crack and emerged over by where Pete had gone from the top with Sean and Kellie. I think from there everyone got into some cleft somewhere and followed by back out the way I came in.

Weird rock formation

I passed the weird rock formation and began climbing up out of the crack to get back to the rail bed, but slipped and fell hard on my hand holding my supposed waterproof-drop proof Nikon Coolpix Camera. I shattered the lens cover, and while it took pictures, they were now all blurry from the cracks. This was a major drag. I fortunately had another similar camera at home I’d gotten from Lerch, but I didn’t bring it. I would have to use my phone for a camera for the remainder of the day. We turned right back onto the old rail bed and continued ahead. We had passed a vehicle gate soon before the rocks, so we would not be seeing any cars for a long time, not that we saw any anyway.

Wrecked my camera

We weaved around more corners on the line, and passed a couple more little areas where the rail bed deviated from the game lands road.
We made a right curve and crossed a tributary to the Glass Creek, and the group sat down by the bridge to take a break. There was a section ahead that was questionable, the last spot where this rail bed and road separated before reaching Thorndale, and I wanted to see it. I was also just frustrated from having wrecked my good camera and just needed to walk it off. When everyone else stopped, I just walked ahead.

Glass Creek former crossing

I was slowly going down hill because we had already crested the height of the land before Thorndale. The right of way was very grassy and quite open in this area for a bit. When it finally turned to the left, the point of diverging was quite obvious to me.

Thorndale Branch

I turned into the woods and the rail bed immediately went into a rock cut. There were trees down blocking it, but I was able to get around them. Pete had told me he tried to get through on it, but he was trying to bully his bicycle through, which is far tougher, and he didn’t make it without turning back. I was hell bent on getting through.
The rail bed went into a first meadow of very thick weeds, but most were not abrasive. It then went back through woods, through another bit of a cut, and then onto a larger wetland on a low fill. This led to where it used to cross the Glass Creek’s main tributary.

Thorndale view

The rail bed went through one more cut, then onto a higher fill before reaching an open area where pastures had been cleared out to the former site of Thorndale. I looked down and could see the foundation sof the long buildings that made up the Thorndale Tannery.

Thorndale Branch

This was the end of public land, so I went to the right skirting fences to get to the road again. The others did not follow me through the weeds (I think Sean and Naaron did or something, but showed up later than the others). I waited on the road below for them to catch up, and we went up along the fence to return to the railroad bed.
This was where the old USGS maps showed the line following a slope and then abruptly ending, which made no sense to us at all. We continued now to the south, and the rail bed continued gradually descending along a high shelf.

Thorndale Branch

I had assumed that there were once tracks that went all the way around to the tannery building below, but that the USGS maps simply didn’t show them.
When we got to where the USGS maps showed the end, we continued ahead a bit, and there was a rather obvious grade continuing, and curving to the west. The character of the construction changed quite a lot from the cinder base of the Lehigh Valley line to the stone base of the old logging railroads I had been used to.
As we walked a bit more, it was less obvious, and we had what might have been another line just to the south. There was another tributary parallel with us heading to the west.

The rail bed just below Thorndale

Soon, I found something that looked promising, and Sean and I followed it on out around the bend. There was no doubt that this was the rail line, because the dips where the ties would have been were all there. We followed it right to Glass Creek to the very obvious former bridge site that carried the tracks over. We waded across and went up the other side, then waited for the others to catch up.
Not everyone wanted to wade through the creek as some of us did, and so they explored up and down stream a bit before finally opting to just wade across. We had a nice break on a slope just south of where the rail bridge used to be.

Former bridge site at Thorndale

Once we were all together again, we followed an off trail route to the south. We remained close to the Glass Creek, and eventually crossed over it to the other side where it was convenient.

Old corduroy road

Pete had a map that showed another “railroad bed” on the other side. It sort of made sense to us that there was a spur of the Williamsport and North Branch Railroad just to the south, closer than the main artery the Lehigh Valley Railroad had, the lumber and tannery interests would make a connection to there as well.
At first, what we found appeared to be a railroad bed, but then it was far too oddly graded to be a rail line. It was an old corduroy road, which was still pretty interesting. The route is probably a hundred years old like the Berwick Turnpike. It got pretty overgrown at times, but we were able to find where the road was.

A bridge site at Glass Creek

We decided to backtrack to the north, to where we came from to see for sure where it went, and to see if it in fact could have been a rail line. We reached the tributary to Glass Creek and could see only from the south side that there was a remnant of a low bridge abutment. There is no way we could have seen this from where we were. So, it was probably a road, but still very interesting. We continued on our way from here , and retraced our steps on the old road heading to the south. We crossed the Glass Creek once more at another more obvious bridge site, and the old road went up hill and a bit too far to the west as I recall. We continued to the east and made our way up hill to another old woods road in SGL 13.

Wetland near Laporte

We headed south on this road for a ways, to the intersection of some game roads just north of the town of Nordmont area. The branch of the W&NB railroad is a bit down from there. We turned to the right to follow a wide game road in a straight line up the mountain to the west. There were several herbacious openings for wildlife on the way, and when the obvious straight route became more overgrown and disused, we turned right to follow a less overgrown but parallel woods road which heads through woods on a more back and forth route. This route led through more woods and then had a less wide path go off to the right. It was heading generally northwest, which was where we had to go anyway, and we had done extra mileage exploring. This looked like a smart move.
It worked out great, because the path led through very nice woods and came out on the next wide woods road we were looking for. We followed that woods road to the north and then west to emerge on a wide buried pipe line clearing.
We turned right on the pipeline, which was exactly where I wanted to end up. A side path led from this out to Miller Road, which was my plan. Just before reaching that point, a mother bear and a couple of cubs were ahead crossing the pipe line.

Lark Road, the old Dushore Road

We followed Miller Road out to the northwest until we reached Lark Road, which was actually the old Dushore Road, the predecessor to modern Route 220.
The old road was cracked and beat up, but looked interesting. We turned right on the road and followed it out to Rt 220 where we turned right briefly. The road used to go straight across, but I did not know it yet.
We soon turned left into the parking lot of the Loyalsock State Forest headquarters. We re-grouped here, and I headed to the back lot to see if there was an alternate way for us to get to the Loyalsock Trail Head at Ringdale.

Old Dushore Road

Fortunately, rigth there at the back of the lot was a wooden sign reading “Old Dushore Road” and pointing in the direction we needed to go. It was blazed I think orange, and pretty easy to follow. We passed through the woods and skirted a deer exclosure fence for a bit, then headed very gradually down hill through the woods, actually quite out of the way from present day Rt 220.
It was a lovely route, and was more like a foot path than a former road because the evergreens and sapling branches were in close proximity. It was the perfect swath of woods and trail to close out the hike with.

East end of Loyalsock Trail

It got very steep as we approached the northern terminus of the trail. That was by the intersection of Rt 220 and Mead Road. There was a sign there at the intersection for the Loyalsock Trail. I’d been wanting to connect with this for so long. The trail used to come out right onto Rt 220 where thee was no parking, but it was recently rerouted so the parking area just down Mead Road would be the eastern terminus. Eric was right there with me the whole way, and handled the hike really impressively for not having been out in a bit. We turned and headed up hill on the road rather steeply to get to the parking lot. There was a small waterfall to the left of us on the road. Just a short bit from the parking lot is Dutchman Falls, which I wanted to see, but it was now getting too dark. That would have to be part of the next hike out there.
The completion of this hike opens up what seems like new worlds to me. The Williamsport and North Branch Railroad line, the Loyalsock Trail, and all of Loyalsock State Forest and other local lands. We had connected to a system of trails we could spent yet another lifetime exploring, and we’ll do what we can.