Hike #1102; Summit Hill to Middleport

Hike #1102; Summit Hill to Middleport

1/13/18 Summit Hill to Middleport with Red Sean (Patrick Ó Ríoghbhardáin), Justin Gurbisz, Ellie Zabeth, Captain Soup (David Campbell), Alyssa Lidman, and Daniel Trump.

Our next hike would be a point to point, and the twenty third in the 911memorialtrail series we’d been working on now for a couple of years.
This section would be something a bit more special for me, because it would be almost entirely new compared with the other sections that I’ve had at least half familiarity with.
The 911 Trail official route we have been following has been pretty good, as it led us through and out of the Lehigh Valley.

The 911 Trail map and what we've done so far

This section gets a bit more complicated where we leave Summit Hill, because the entire route is mostly road walking for days upon days. Even the “trail” section that was shown on the map was beside Route 209. If I were to follow the actual designated route for the trail, I would ruin Metrotrails, because it’s not really a worthwhile walk. I would certainly have to take some liberties on sections like this to make it doable.

Culvert in Summit Hill PA

To make matters worse, Meetup.com has really screwed up their page badly. I’d been relying on them a lot to post the hikes, but they changed their page so that both desktop PC and mobile app look identical, in order to not have a “disjointed experience”. Unfortunately, this alienated the users more than anything, and most people are jumping ship. Among the things they eliminated were the ability to change the pinned locations of meet points. This was among the most important features for hike meetups because almost no trails heads have “official” addresses. They will come up whatever spot Google calls them on maps. In some areas, it’s particularly bad. My Long Island hike sent people more than an hour west to the very middle of Staten Island. In this case, it wasn’t sending people to the ball field in Middleport, which was where I decided on for the meeting point.
From that point, we shuttled to the east to Summit Hill. Alyssa ran behind and opted to meet up with us out there. Dan would meet up with us somewhere mid day.

Historic image looking to Pine St. Bridge

We decided to park at the turnaround spot from the previous month’s hike on the route, at the former bridge site at Pine Street in Summit Hill. I was able to use this for another then and now photo opportunity while everyone was getting ready.

Pine Street crossover today

We had had a lot of snow recently, but it hadn’t been that terrible, and warm weather the past few days melted most of it off at home. Not quite as warm, Summit Hill lost most of it’s snow, but the torrential downpour of rain ended up freezing everything badly.

Excursion in Summit Hill on the Gravity Railroad

It was amazing that not a bit of salt had been put on the roads. It looked like ice from inside Red Sean’s vehicle, but we assumed it was just salt stained pavement. When each of us got out, we had our own exclamation of “It IS ice!!!”.
I started skating on my shoes down hill toward the former culvert underpass, which today only has part of one abutment remaining. A little coal car was sat just about where the tracks would have been in the years of the early railroad.
The Mauch Chunk Switchback Gravity Railroad is well known as having been a tourist train, and the inspiration for the world’s first rollercoasters, because it’s breaking system and inclined plane were the same. Of course, it dated back earlier than that as the first rail line to bring coal to the Lehigh Canal in Mauch Chunk. At first, it was just a loaded down hill track from Summit Hill to the Lehigh, but the second track was added in the 1840s utilizing inclined planes at Mt. Pisgah in Mauch Chunk, and Mt. Jefferson in Summit Hill, to return the unloaded cars. When better railroads were developed, it was sold for excursion use.

Historic gravity railroad image

Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe) was known as Little Switzerland, and people traveled from all over the world to ride the Switchback. Sadly, it only lasted until the 1930s and the Great Depression when it was sold off for scrap. It lives on sort of as a trail now, but not a lot was really done to develop it as such. It’s still basically an ATV path, and some sections are severed and can’t be used closer to Summit Hill. The one portion directly out of Summit Hill is now Holland Street, which becomes Stony Lonesome Road heading out of town.

The gravity railroad heading east from Summit Hill

We turned left on Pine Street to head down hill for snacks and such. The Switchback Mini Mart is located on the slope right next to the former right of way, where Holland Street overtakes it. We grabbed snacks and such, then made our way back out and up Pine Street. I got myself another then and now view looking out the street to compare with another historic postcard shot before returning to where we parked on Ludlow Street. The track ran along the south side of the street. We turned left to begin following that route to the west.

Historic gravity railroad image of what is now Holland Street

Alyssa met up with us on Ludlow. She parked just off of it by a bit and was walking toward us along the road. The railroad right of way was slightly below road grade, and now a sidewalk.

Holland Street today

It was still pretty slippery, but we made due with it. We continued along where the railroad rather obviously went to the west. It was only a distance of about three blocks to the former site of the Summit Hill railroad station.

Historic postcard image of the gravity railroad in Summit Hill

I had never been to this point before, but I recognized it from the historic photos, with the curvature of the grassy swath next to a newer building that occupied the station site.

The rail bed today

I questioned it at first, but then I could see that the wrought iron fence from my historic photo was still in place to the left of the yard, though obscured somewhat by a new fence.

Historic image of Summit Hill station

The chain link fence almost obscured it, but the old fence work was still there, looking lower because it was filled around with dirt, but still the same old one.

Summit Hill station site today

My old friend Jim DeLotto lives only a couple of blocks from this point, and I really wished he could join us on this one, but he’d gotten sick and had been out of commission.

The gravity railroad heading out of Summit Hill

The switchback railroad cut to the left and then turned down Holland Street to begin it’s return route to Mauch Chunk. During the days of it’s use as a coal carrying railroad, there was a spur from here out to the mines, but I’m not sure exactly where it was.

Historic postcard

I would assume it went out through what is today Ludlow Park, which was the next part of the trip.
We continued down Ludlow Street, and Ludlow Park was straight ahead. We crossed over Market Street and followed the solid path through the middle of the park heading to the west side of town.

Summit Hill with the gravity line to right, trolley line in middle

The wind was pretty bad up on the hill, but not as bad as some of the more recent hikes. We headed to the end of the park, and found a monument there to Philip Ginder.

Historic Summit Hill postcard

Ginder first discovered “hard” or “rock” coal, the anthracite, near the location in 1791. He never was reimbursed for his discovery or for leading entrepreneurs to the site where he found it, but his discovery led to the start of the anthracite industry.

Philip Ginder monument

A couple of large hunks of anthracite were placed near the monument.
At the end of Ludlow Park, we started following “Linden Street” as per google maps, which took us behind houses. It was a dirt road, and looked to me like a former rail bed.

Historic Summit Hill postcard

We turned back from Linden Street to Ludlow Street again and went to the left. We followed this out past a church and then cut into an open area that had a bit of a path into woods.

Lehigh and New England grade

We soon emerged on a wide ATV trail that looked to me like a railroad bed.
I did not know it at the time, but this was the former Lehigh and New England Railroad. I didn’t even realize it went to Summit Hill. This was among the farthest reaches of the line I had been following for most of my life. It’s another of those rail lines I just haven’t gotten around to finishing. We turned right on this for a bit, and it was full of all sorts of giant puddles that were partially frozen over. It wasn’t enough to walk on, and I went through. My feet were pretty wet, so we had to keep on moving.

View of Lansford

I crossed over a flow of water and then bushwhacked a bit over a crest of the ridge we were on, then descended to another sort of road grade with a small fire pit. We turned right there, and then headed out to another ATV path. I saw another path leading to what looked like a view point, so we went to check it out.
It was an outstanding view of the town of Lansford below, as well as out to Coaldale to the west of us. We then backtracked to the intersection of paths.

Steep

From here, I could see a rather steep path heading down through a cleft in the ridge. It seemed like the best choice, so we started heading down. It was slippery, but there were enough solid rocks to get footing for most of the way. At one point, there was a very steep ATV path, where we had to go down on our butts and hold on for dear life as not to tumble all the way to the bottom. We managed to get past that, and ended up in a large old coal mining area, probably some of the remnants of the oldest anthracite mines of them all.

Steep

Justin and I got down probably the quickest, and we waited for everyone to catch up. There wasn’t that much more descending to do from this point, because the town of Lansford was right there within view. We were soon on a grade, which I thought might have been another rail spur, just above some homes in the town. We took a break at the intersection before turning left, where there were stone ruins to both the right and the left. Delotto told me that the #9 Coal Mine, which is open for tours, is very close to this point. There are probably other tunnels in this area as well. I’m not sure what the structures were.

Ruins

We continued walking to the west from here along the grade, which stayed near houses only for a bit, then started cutting to the south. I tried following it with my phone GPS, but it wasn’t keeping up with where we were that well, and I was fast running out of power with it.
Somehow, when we came to a more open area that is still actively mined or quarried or something, I somehow lost my sense of direction. We should have continued to the west, because we were so closely parallel with Lansford and Coaldale, but we ended up heading to the south through more open mines.

Rock

We reached a giant metal box structure to the right, and we all stepped in out of the wind for a break and talked about everything from philosophical to silly things. Red Sean exclaimed “I always wanted to stand in a giant metal box riddled with bullet holes having donuts with friends!”. Both Sean and Justin had purchased softee donuts from the Switchback Mini Mart which both came out at this time for us to pig out on.
From here, we continued following the mining roads, which took us on a sharp “S” turn up a hill. I don’t even know why we were trying to follow that. I thought it was the correct way.

Metal container

It wasn’t until I zoomed the map on my phone out that I could see we were nearly back to Summit Hill, just a short distance from where we had started. I kept going back and forth, trying to figure out which way to go on these mine roads that all seemed to look the same. It seemed like the best move was just to head back down around the “S” curves the way we had come, and try to find our way to the mining road I had intended to follow west.
It wasn’t all bad, because there was actually a really neat overlook from the top, to the desolate coal mining areas below.
We headed down hill around the curves, then came to where the road abruptly ended. We simply climbed down the slope and bushwhacked through scrubby young trees for a bit.

Coal mine view

We soon emerged in an open area, and a walk just a bit straight ahead took us to the mining road I had intended for us to be on from the start, immediately parallel with Rt 209 a distance to the north, and the official 911 trail route.

Mine road

We followed the mining road to the west pretty easily. It took us up and down hill briefly, and there were some opportunities to go north over to 209, but we just followed it as far as we could to the west.
None of the other opportunities would be easy, and we had to make up for lost time with all of the extra distance I brought us through by mistake. We kept on the main road out ot 209, then crossed directly to the other side, where the road continued parallel with the former Lehigh and New England Railroad.

LNE tracks east of Tamaqua

We took the road down hill until it crossed over the former Lehigh and New England. There were still rails in place here. I think this was probably the only section of the old LNE I’ve been on that’s still in service. There was a parallel track that must have served as a siding that we chose to walk instead of the main line for as far as we could.
The Lehigh and New England has been a huge interest of mine dating back before I started even doing the group hikes. My grandfather brought me on hikes along it, starting in Hainesburg NJ and I was fascinated with where it went to the west.

LNE east of Tamaqua

I’d thought it ended near the PA border for the longest time, and when I found out it continued, the group hikes continued to the west. I only ever followed it as far as just west of Andreas Station PA, an old station that’s still standing on the north edge of the Blue Mountain. That’s probably only one hike’s worth from where we were this time.
For whatever reason, we never went back to following the line, but after this hike I feel like I should really go back and revisit it. There’s so very little left of it that I haven’t done.
Dan met up with us on the rail stretch, having come from Tamaqua where he parked.

Historic aerial of Tamaqua

We followed the line west, crossed the Panther Creek on it’s bridge and entered Tamaqua, an historic town in the region first settled in 1799 by Burdhardt Moser and his son Jacob.
When the tracks reached Rt 209, which is Broad Street, we turned right and walked into the downtown.
When Moser first settled at this point, the confluence of the Little Schuykill River and the Panther Creek, he constructed shelters and a sawmill.

Burkhardt Moser Cabin

He constructed the first home in town in 1801, which still stands in a sort of hidden spot behind 307 East Broad Street. We saw a sign on an old but not nearly as old a house on the street saying to visit the oldest house, but nothing to say where it was. When I peered between the buildings, I could see a log cabin tucked away in the back. I went to check it out, and sure enough it was there. Still in pretty good condition 217 years later. It’s amazing to think that this cabin could still exist at this spot with the way development happened.
The cabin was built at the base of Dutch Hill for Mrs. Moser, and the community was soon dubbed “Tuscarora”. However, it was found that there was already another community with that name some four miles to the west.

Little Schuykill

It is said that the town takes it’s name from the Tuscarora Indian king of the Turkey Clan, Chief Tahkamochk, or Tam-a-kwah. Another account, from an 1881 history of Schuykill County, claims that the name of the tributary was “Tamaqua”, before it was dubbed Little Schuykill, or perhaps it referred to Panther Creek. It notes the word as meaning “running water”. Either way, the town grew quickly. Moser discovered coal at the site in 1817, and the town grew to about 150 residents by 1829.
The coal industry was slow to pick up at first, but then it blew up and the town swelled.
Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company owned a great deal of land, and I understand that same company still owns much of the land up there to this very day.
As industry grew, Tamaqua was home to the Greenwood Coal Breaker. Labor troubles plagued the area, and Tamaqua was the center of activity for the “Molly Maguires”. An Irish secret society dating back to the home land, the eastern US branches were unhappy with hazardous and unhealthy conditions in the local coal mines. They are attributed with the destruction of the Greenwood Breaker in 1874 as well as some murders including a Tamaqua police man. Several were tried and hanged in 1877, after which less was heard of them.

Historic image of Tamaqua Station

We soon crossed the former Reading Railroad tracks, and the Tamaqua Station, built in 1874, was off to the right. It’s probably the best known building in the town today.

Tamaqua Station today

Everyone was pretty hungry, and we soon found out that the Tamaqua Station was now a restaurant. It seemed like the perfect place for us to get some food.

Former Reading RR in Tamaqua

We made our way inside, and I at first thought the place might be a bit too upscale for us. Beautiful tables and place settings were inside, and it was very well restored. We were soon made to feel comfortable though.
The owner or at least the chef’s wife was one of our servers, and she told us that the station was actually designed to be a restaurant and station in one, and that young black boys were hired to deliver food to those traveling the Reading Railraod by train. It wasn’t surprising that the railroad would engage in such entrepreneurial things. After all, the Reading Railroad was the first conglomerate; they owned not only their rail trackage, but the coal mines as well as Port Richmond where they shipped the product. Having a restaurant was just another source of income.

Silliness

I was pretty hungry, so I got both the recommended soup and a mushroom and swiss burger. Everything was great. The service was excellent.
The inside of the station was absolutely beautiful. It had been very well restored. In the 1980s, there was no longer any passenger service and it was planned to be demolished, but a non profit called “Save Our Station” raised the 1.5 million dollars necessary to restore it. It had wooden paneling and high ceilings in the area we were seated. We were told this was the men’s waiting room when the railroad was still in service.

Ticket booth

At the time of the station’s construction, men and women had separate waiting rooms, and we were told that the ceiling in the men’s area was made higher because of smokers.
In the walls, ticket booths could still be seen. In the front, the main ticket booth and agent’s office now serves as a gift shop.
We probably could have hung around and heard more stories on area history all day, as well as had more food. They made it even more tempting by bringing not a dessert menu, but the entire dessert tray out.

Captain Soup likes dessert

We eventually had to get moving, so we made our way out of the station, and Dan suggested a route we follow through town rather than the Rt 209 designated 911 Trail route.
None of us really wanted to be walking the highway, and even though the remainder of the hike would technically be on “trail”, it’s a rail trail immediately following Rt 209, so I wasn’t particularly excited about it. Dan’s suggestion was to follow that same rail right of way through town, as he said Greg Pawelewski showed him where it used to go.

Cold

It was really cold leaving the building, but not as bad as it had been all morning. I didn’t bother putting my hat back on, but it’s always tough getting moving again.
We went to the back of the station, and there was an old locomotive parked there. It looked like the front of it had been capped off or something, maybe for show. There was also an old caboose and something that might have been a mining car of some sort.
We could see obviously where the Reading line used to break away, where the caboose was parked, heading to the west.
The Lehigh and New England line that we had been following before used to continue south along the Little Schuykill, and is abandoned below Tamaqua. I had initially though the Lehigh and New England was the line we would be following, but I was mistaken (and Mr. Pawelewski pointed it out to me as well!).
The remainder of the hike would be solely on the former Reading Railroad line.

Historic Tamaqua postcard

The history of the railroad in town dates back to 1829 and the Little Schuykill Navigation Company. Originally, a canal was proposed to connect the town of Port Clinton on the main Schuykill Canal 21 miles north to Tamaqua (note: the only town in the world with this name).

Locomotive in Tamaqua

The land proved too difficult for the construction of the planned canal, and so the railroad was built instead (I may have found evidence of some canal construction that was never finished on the Little Schuykill in the past).
The section opened in 1831 as a horse drawn railroad with strap rail, metal tops on wooden rails. It was only the third railroad to be created in America. A couple of years of success followed, and in 1833, two locomotives, named Catawissa and Comet, were purchased from Liverpool, England. They were brought to Baltimore and taken to Tamaqua by coach.

Caboose

With this development, the Little Schuykill Railroad became the first railroad to use steam power to transport anthracite coal.
The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad was formed in 1839, but the Little Schuykill remained an independent line until it was finally leased to the P & R in 1868.
The original station burned down in 1873, which was when the restaurant station was needed. The station and the restaurant, as well as the railroad continued to thrive. Every year saw more service through their peak operating years, the 1920s through 1940s. Up to forty passenger trains per day would come through.

The station

The restaurant was already on the decline at that time, and closed in the 1930s. Still, by the 1940s, when rail mileage in America was at it’s peak, Reading Railroad was the largest corporation in the world, and the fifth greatest carrier of freight in the US.
Unfortunately, the railroad continued to declined and passenger service was cut off completely in the ‘50s. By 1976, the Reading Railroad was bankrupt and it merged into Conrail with the countless other lines. In the years to follow, an arsonist tried to burn down the old station. Despite damage, it did survive.

Rail bed from the station

The local historical society struggled trying to save the station, and it was handed over to developers a couple of times. Fortunately, it was saved and restored by 2006. The restaurant we visited in the station surprisingly did not open until 2016.
Excursion trains now also operate on the trackage through Tamaqua, on the former Reading line. Most of Lehigh and New England went out October 31, 1961, the second major railroad in the US to be completely abandoned in a day after the New York, Ontario, and Western just a bit earlier.

Historic round house

There was once a lot more infrastructure around, including a giant roundhouse that Scientific American called an engineering marvel.
So much of it has disappeared, but there was still a lot to see. We took to the rail bed and followed Dan through the town to the west from here.
Soon, he pointed out a spot where I could get a “then and now” photo, because he had something of the spot, just not handy. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to match it up very well having not seen the original, but it’s not too bad.

Reading Railroad in Tamaqua

Many of the same buildings are still in place, and the former railroad route is now just a back street used for parking at local businesses. One other thing that was saved was a nice little old blacksmith shop, which sat right along the tracks even though it predated them.

Reading RR bed in Tamaqua

The Hagerty Blacksmith Shop was built in 1848 along the slope on the north side of town. It was operated by three generations of the Hagerty family until 1973.

Hagerty blacksmith shop

The family donated the blacksmith shop to the local historical society in 1974, and it remains in good repair today.
Berwick Street followed the right of way for a bit, then it climbed away and the original grade paralleled Nescopeck Street.
We then paralleled Lafayette Street, and crossed over Swatara Street at an angle. I looked at the sidewalks as we went by, and could see where the rails fit in place at these crossings. I fell behind the rest of the group looking more closely at these little details.

Reading RR bed in Tamaqua

We crossed over Rowe Street, followed by Broad Street near it’s intersection with Lehigh Street. All very obvious former rail crossings. When we reached Cottage Avenue, it went straight into private land, so we turned right out to Rt 209. A short walk on 209 led to where the right of way comes back out to the edge of the road.
An ATV path followed the edge of the road along the railroad bed, but the official “Trail” didn’t start up for a little bit. We came to a sign reading “Schuykill Valley Heritage Trail”.

The rail trail

It was about seven more miles from this point to Middleport where we had met.
Not much of a trail, at least it kept us off the pavement by a little bit. I was still behind taking photos of where the road and rail bed came together, and then some of the right of way. It took a bit to catch up, but I finally did when everyone took a side trip to climb a hill at another mine entrance. We crossed over the Schuykill River’s main route, only a smal l creek at this point, and continued west passing the town of Tuscarora on the south side.

Sun setting on the rail bed

I moved my way toward the front of the group at some point, although Captain Soup and Justin went even farther ahead of me. I didn’t realize how far they’d gotten.

Sunset

Red Sean and I were pretty close together for the final stretch. It continued to get darker, and the orange hue of the sunset grew to over our heads, then quickly receded off to the distance until the last bit of light from it was gone.
Rt 209 was always busy enough that there was some ambient light. The reflective ice surface on much of the trail section always kind of showed the way, and was sometimes annoying because my foot would go through and get wet. I just kept on moving as not to get too cold.
We passed a second little mine patch town known as Brockton, but the railraod didn’t really go into this one either, just skirted the south side of it.

Middleport

My phone had died pretty much by the time I got to Tamaqua, but fortunately Dan had a charger unit with him that he allowed me to borrow. It lasted me most of the walk, but went dead again just before Middleport, and I had to plug it back in. The miles slipped away, and the phone GPS was reading only 1.5 mile more.
We walked into the settlement under the street lights, and the site I believe the station once stood is now a commuter lot with a little bus stop shanty. It doesn’t look like it’s often used, because all of the glass in it had been busted out, and other vehicles were parked sort of blocking it.

Historic image of Middleport Station

Red Sean and I passed the station and then turned to the left to get over to the ball field access road about a block to the south. Just up ahead, the former Reading Railroad line is still in place and apparently has rail cars stored on it. We didn’t see it this time, but we will likely have a closer look on the next hike in this series in February.

Captain Soup's leg

We got back to the parking lot to find Captain Soup with his leg all bloodied up. He took a fall somewhere along the way on the ice and punctured his knee pretty badly. It wasn’t terrible to the point that he couldn’t really walk, because he apparently went miles without even noticing the gaping hole in his knee.
He seemed to think he would be better after a couple of days, he said. He was able to drive well enough, and we all went ot the nearby commuter lot to wait for the others to reach Middleport. When they arrived, we managed to cram all seven of us into his little car to at least get back to Dan’s car in Tamaqua. From there, Dan was able to get the rest back to Summit Hill.
Red Sean’s car died out because of a loose battery connection while we stopped to get gas, so we were set behind a bit more. We found out from the girl running Switchback Mini Mart (the same one we talked to on the previous hike) that the area can be kind of rough, and that the towns were basically “crack dens”, which was what we were joking about them being all day. Particularly we were referring to the post offices as crack dens for their look.
It was overall a pretty good hike, especially considering the fact that this was one I thought might be less interesting than others. It leaves me with high hopes for the next couple in this series as we head to the west and south on the designated route.

Ham