Hike #1104; Split Rock to Boonton

Hike #1104; Split Rock to Boonton

1/28/18 Split Rock Reservoir to Boonton with Jack Lowry, Sarah Jones, Dan Lurie, Daniel Lurie, Caleb Olivar, Jason Itell, Megan Itell, Diane Rieder, Ellie Zabeth, Sue Bennett, Craig Craig, Al MacLennan, Angela Giunta Williamson, Allonna Beck, Jessica Beck, Lyle Beck, Diane ?, Leon ?, four of Pete’s grandchildren, and DJ Raymond Cordts

Our next hike would be a point to point between Split Rock Reservoir and Boonton NJ, following some places I’d been before, and a whole lot of others that have been on the “to do” list seemingly forever. I organized this hike in memory of Pete Beck, a friend who considered the Farney Highlands of New Jersey among his favorite places.

Split Rock Furnace

I had no hike scheduled for this particular weekend yet. I knew Pete had not been well already, but his death came as a shock to me.
I was on facebook after work, when I saw his a post to his profile by one of his daughters that he had passed.
I immediately offered to have my next planned hike in honor of Pete, and I knew it would be most appropriate to do it at a place that he loved so much. I put together a hike that would allow for an early out for his family and friends, and continue the distance to Boonton for those of us doing our normal long hike. I found that Split Rock Furnace was one of the first places Pete went when he began his real interest in history and hiking.
We met at the Walmart in Boonton for those doing the longer hike, and shuttled to the parking lot near the dam at Split Rock Resevoir, where Pete’s family and friends met up to do an abbreviated version of the hike at the start.

Split Rock Furnace

Our long time mutual friend, Al MacLennan related the story of how I met Pete to everyone.
The memory to me is there, but it’s blurry and strange because of my condition at the time.
I was in the hospital in Hackettstown, and not doing well after the fire that took my home in August of 2010. Al said that Pete had heard a lot about me and wanted to meet me for some time, and when Al was coming to see me in intensive care, it was time to meet me. I don’t know if they knew that I was in pretty bad shape, but I found later that I was “not expected to survive”. Fortunately, after about four days in I began to improve and was going to make it.
Pete showed up with Al, and we were able to talk a little bit about the trails and such. My voice was damaged from smoke inhalation, and I don’t remember what was said, but I had known of Pete for a while myself. My wanting to meet him was definitely mutual.
Over the next couple of years, I had the pleasure of talking to and spending more time with Pete. He came out on the hikes, including our anniversary hike, Spruce Run Low Water Special hike, and he really loved the Warren Highlands Trail project I’d been working on.

Split Rock Furnace

Pete was a maintainer of trails himself, and he took care of Four Birds Trail to the north until his health began to fail, and Gregg Hudis took over his section.
When New York/New Jersey Trail Conference put out the Jersey Highlands map series, both Pete and I provided field data for the project, and we hung out together for a bit at an event at Ramsey Outdoors when the maps were unveiled.
It was always nice to see Pete when he’d come to visit Spruce Run in the Summer time while I was working. His last visit to me was only about two weeks before he passed.

The group at Split Rock furnace

I got a message from Pete saying he’d had a lot of maps and books he’d like to pass on to me. He arrived at Spruce Run with three enormous boxes full of all sorts of great maps. He’d already given me others in the past, including old trail conference maps that showed woods roads and such no longer on the current ones, but this box was full of historic maps, including blueprint style William Hoeferlin maps (some of the predecessors to present NYNJTC maps), some of them dating back to the 1920s.
We stood in the parking lot at Spruce Run during my lunch break and chatted for a long while. He was happy to be passing the maps on to me, because he knew that I would put them to good use and reach the largest audience with them. I promised him I would do exactly that and we said goodbye for the last time. I’d have never expected he’d be gone so soon after.
Prior to the hike, I sifted through the boxes of maps, looking for what would be most appropriate for the routes we would be following. There was so much to look at.

Pete's personally highlighted Hoeferlin map

There were not only the historic maps and irreplaceable books, but xerox copies of the historic maps complete with Pete’s personal highlighting and notes. It’s even more an honor to have these personalized pieces showcasing what was important to him.
I sat up late the night before, with a big box of maps next to my bed, leafing through all of them for choice pieces to bring with me in the morning.
I found a few of them that showed the trail system, Pete’s notes, and others with just the trunk trails. The main map I would use would still be the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference Jersey Highlands map.
I was a bit nervous about starting this hike with Pete’s family. I was not as close to him as so many others had been, but had been bestowed such a great honor. It was one of those times when I don’t think anything I could have said would have done justice to him.

Historic map of Split Rock iron works from Pete's collection

I met some of Pete’s children, all grown, with Pete’s grandchildren there as well. Pete’s girlfriend presented me with his favorite railroad spike, an interested one with an angled top that might have been part of an inclined rail into a mine shaft. I’d not seen another one like it before.
A couple of stories were told, and we all headed from the parking lot along Split Rock Road toward the main dam of the current reservoir. That reservoir replaced the original Split Rock Pond which had the raceway to power the furnace. There are many ruins at the site, most notably the furnace stack itself.

The group at Split Rock Furnace

The furnace stack seen today dates back to 1862, but there was reportedly a works at the site dating back as far as 1790. The path we followed down to the furnace was completely covered in ice, which made for a much more difficult descent than I had intended for the group.

Small dam and raceway ruins

There were masonry ruins on the hillside where we began to descend, which were supposedly the ruins of the charcoal house. Some of the works were probably covered over by the current dam.
Some of the original millrace appears to be in place, and may now be the main flow of the stream, since it’s masonry that remains there.
On the other side was a forge, as well as a manager’s house and some residences for workers. A company store, which had more masonry ruins, was just down stream, as well as ore roasting kiln and more worker’s houses.

Joe Macasek history map of Split Rock

It took everyone a bit of time to get down to the furnace stack. When I got down there, I went up inside it to have a look.
The first time I had come to the spot was when Commando Tom was shooting video, which became the group’s first promotional film. Jason Itell was there that day, which was one of the reasons he and Megan came out this time, because he knew he’d like to see the place again. That day was a particularly good one, and the places were worth reminiscing about, and the area was worth exploring more.
The rest of the group shopwed up, and we did a group shot in front of the furnace stack.
From there, we continued walking down the old roadway, which paralleled the outflow, known as Beaver Brook. To the left of the trail, we passed the old roasting kiln. I pointed out a few other ruins in the vicinity, as well as a few we could see on the other side of the brook as we walked down hill to the south.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/3XCx1beG11E

Pete’s girlfriend walked closely with me, and told me about trips they had taken. She talked about how she met him, and how he took her to all of the places throughout area.

At Split Rock Furnace

She didn’t really have the appreciation for history until he started showing her all of these interesting places.
I heard about their trip to Peking, China, and the different parks they would visit together.
The trail heading gradually down hill was still icy in spots. The rest of the group with Pete’s family were not able to navigate it so closely, and we got quite a bit ahead of them. We did have to keep going in order to make it back to Boonton in reasonable time.
I passed the message on to give my regards to the rest of the group who were turning back, and we were on our way heading to the Split Rock Loop Trail.

Split Rock Trail

The trail, blazed in blue, went across the old road from the ironworks. It makes a loop around Split Rock Reservoir with the Four Birds Trail. Split Rock Trail goes around the east end, Four Birds on the west.
We turned to the right to follow Split Rock to the west, and crossed a wooden foot bridge over the Beaver Brook. We had to follow the blazes carefully in the next section, because it traverses an area full of boulders of varying sizes.
The trail starts to ascend, and then passes through rock formations known as “The Maze”. Everyone kept up pretty well on the section, but it is pretty rough hiking. The elevation gain wasn’t nearly as much as in other areas we visit, so it wasn’t all that bad. CJ stayed up front close to Jason, Megan, and I most of the time. I often saw him climbing up over rocks just off of the trail, probably just because it was more fun to run around like that.

The Maze

The trail passed through clefts in the rocks on it’s way up hill, and eventually reached a large flat rock in an open area that was good to take a break on. We let everyone regroup before moving on a bit.
Soon, the trail reached the white blazed Four Birds Trail where we turned left to head south.
I didn’t notice it at the time, but some of the group was still behind that I thought were ahead. Somehow they got off the trail, and I fortunately had enough cell service to direct them along and back to us. We continued south on Four Birds Trail and stopped at the red intersection.

The Maze

The red trail is the Beaver Pond Trail which leads to a parking area in Upper Hibernia. I had considered using this as a meeting spot, but opted instead for the easier to get to Split Rock lot, because the furnace was a more appropriate spot.
We continued south more and came to an orange blazed trail to the left. This was the “Meriden Trail” which led south, apparently toward another former iron works and the Beach Glen Trail. I’d never followed this, and it was not even on any of my maps. It was apparently blazed only recently to make a connection with the Beach Glen Trail below.

Along Four Birds Trail

We went up and down hill a little bit, and eventually passed over a gravel access road to a cell tower. Just beyond that, another orange trail crossed. This was the Flyway Spur Trail, which also leads to the parking area in Upper Hibernia to the right, but to the left leads to a Hawk Watch Overlook. There used to be an observation platform at that spot, but it had been burned down by vandals back around the first time I’d been there. It has since been removed, and all that’s left to show of it are some holes in the rock outcropping where the legs of it used to be. We turned left to take a break there.

View from the Hawk Watch

Even though the hawk watch platform is long gone, the view is still pretty good. It’s more easily accessible from parking, and so there were other people already there.

Hawk Watch

To the southwest, we could see out toward Rockaway. Straight ahead, to the south, we could see over toward Jonathan’s Woods and the little ridge we would have to cross later on in this hike. It kind of made it seem like really far, but it would end up going by pretty fast.
Dan called while we were there. He handled the hills pretty well, but wasn’t doing as well as he used to. He hadn’t been on so many hikes lately, and so he had to bail out on this one a bit early. When we were ready to go, CJ headed back toward the gravel road to meet back up with him while we returned to the white blazes of the Four Birds Trail.

Hawk Watch

Sue had also ended up separating from us, although I thought she was back with Dan. She seemed to think she was behind us, but she actually got ahead of us because she missed the turn onto the Flyway Spur. Since I thought she was with Dan, she didn’t get the message regarding where we turned off.
She waited up for us, and sure enough she had gotten ahead of the group.
We continued on to the southwest, following the trail to the spur path that leads to the top of Graffiti Cliff. I had wanted to go and take in the view there, but we were running behind.

Beach Brook Trail

Because we’d taken extra time, it was in our best interest to just continue. As we were heading down hill, Jason noted that he remembered this section from nine years ago.
We descended further along some sort of flume, which I can’t remember exactly what it was, and continued down hill toward the crossing with long abandoned Hibernia Road.
We re-grouped again at the old road, and stopped a little extra time for a little lunch break. Jason and Megan gave me some delicious chips and salsa they’d been carrying, and I shared the drinks I had.

Old dam

I was looking over maps at ways of cutting corners and such, or making the hike more interesting. There are so many places I still want to see out there, and others I’d like to revisit.
This time, we opted to leave Four Birds Trail and descend via the abandoned Hibernia Road fo ra bit. We soon noted that the old road was blazed with orange paint. The blazes turned off to the right when the road went a sharp left turn, so we opted to follow it down hill. It soon crossed over the Four Birds Trail again, and continued to descend on an old abandoned road, near some old stone walls.

Old dam

The trail weaved around through woods, and started making it’s way toward Hibernia Brook. It skirted some private land, and then approached the end of a concrete dam spanning the brook, with an old farm pond or something to the right. I turned off the trail to check out the old dam a little bit closer.
The trail to it turned to the left and led to a nice wooden footbridge across the brook, and to a parking area that I think is at the municipal building, near a restaurant. It’d have been nice to stop for a sit down lunch somewhere, but again, I didn’t want to be too late.

Old dam in Hibernia

We headed back the way we came to get back on the Beach Brook Trail heading along the creek down stream. I noticed on the dam a date, presumably of it’s construction: 1918.

Foot bridge over HIbernia Brook

The settlement of Hibernia is taken from the classical name for Ireland, and it was a mining community until about 1916.
The mines in the area were worked prior to the Revolution, and extended upon greatly with the advent of the railroad. The Hibernia Mine Railroad connected directly to the Central Railroad of New Jersey’s High Bridge Branch out of Dover area.
We followed the trail down stream a bit, and there were more ruins off to the left. I really wished we had more time to go and explore all of it, but we had a long way to go to get back to Boonton.

Ruins in Hibernia

We continued along and there was a large stone wall along the left side of the trail. I wondered if maybe this was some part of the old mine railroad bed, because it was somewhat flat. To the right of the trail, there was another old bridge site with stone abutments, so it looked as though a branch of the line might have crossed there. Unfortunately, the historic USGS maps of the area don’t show the full amount of trackage that existed. We continued down stream along the trail, which soon connected with the Four Birds Trail at the end of the Hibernia Mine Railroad as I had always known it.

Old bridge site

We didn’t have the time to go over to the “Bat Cave” as people call it. The Hibernia Mine adit just off of the trail is not too far away, but I didn’t want to waste the time going places I’d already seen before, and the mine is closed off anyway.
The Brown Nose Bat Syndrome I think it’s called has caused a major decrease in bat population, and the old mine is a major hibernaculum.
We walked by the large foundations of the ruins along the old railroad bed to the parking lot where old Lower Hibernia Road comes out (the road we were walking earlier).

Scene at Hibernia Mine

The parking lot was actually the spot where I first met Matt Davis, who would be instrumental in the creation of Metrotrails as a non profit and my partner on so many projects ever since. Our first hike ended at this point back in early 2007.

Historic image at Hibernia

Across Hibernia Road and the parking lot, there was a sign reading that the Beach Glen Trail started ahead. This trail continued along the Hibernia Brook down stream, and was the next major one that I had never done before. It didn’t exist the last trip I did there.

Historic image of Hibernia Mine

We descended a little bit into a sort of parking area of a private business looking for the trailhead. It looked like it went into woods below. Now parking is allowed down near it.

Old Hibernia Mine RR bridge site

To the right as we descended, the Hibernia Brook flowed beneath Hibernia Road, and we could see the abutments to an old bridge next to it that carried the Hibernia Mine Railroad over the same branch.
This appeared to have been a short span. There is a bridge over the Raritan Power Canal to Duke Island Park in Somerset County that was originally used for the Hibernia Mine Railroad. It was removed and made a road bridge in Somerset County for many years later, and when it was to be replaced, they moved it to the park. I’m still not sure originally where it was.

Old rail spur

We continued on the trail, which went over some nice puncheons and such, and eventually picked up another old railroad right of way. The area had pretty obviously been mined in the past. We walked on to where we could see tailings from mines to the left. There was pretty much no question that the right of way was once a railroad because there were occasional ties still in the ground. Historic maps show that there was an eastern spur to the Hibernia Mine Railroad, to the opposite side of the Hibernia Brook, but it did not show it going so far north as where we were walking it.

Old rail bed

The right of way remained closer to the water and got a bit wet, but the blazed trail went up onto some mine tailings directly below the Graffiti Cliff, which was a cool spot. We could look out on the swampy wetlands to the west of us, and down on the old railroad bed. The trail eventually dipped back off of it and returned to the railroad bed.
Current aerial images show a sort of causeway over the water, which might have been the old railroad crossing over. It doesn’t seem to match up with the historic maps, but it’s too hard to say. We continued along, and the rail bed seemed to turn away.

Historic image at Beach Glen Mine

The next point of interest was the Beach Glen Mine. The trail led us from the water up and into an area of obvious ruins. There were tailings all over, and we were on uneven ground switching between woods road grades and foot paths. The area was obviously heavily used by mountain bikers.

Puncheon on Beach Glen Trail

There were a couple of sections of puncheons and such before we got to the area of the Beach Glen Mine itself.
When we approached, there was a sign on a tree to the right of us reading "Beach Glen Mine" with dates. I think it read "1760-1930", which isn't exactly accurate.
The Beach Glen Mine is believed to have started around 1760 because there was an iron forge nearby that would have needed to make use of it's product. The first documented mining at the site was surface mining in 1808. Mining continued on and off from 1851. It was mined at greater depth with the discovery of higher quality magnetite between 1900 and 1903, then left again.

Historic image in Beach Glen Mine

Work started up again in 1923, and used an adit (a horizontal tunnel) 1,450 feet long to access ore, as well as a slanted shaft. It was spuratically mined again through 1930. After this, Hibernia Mine Railroad was abandoned and removed.

Remains of the tipple at Beach Glen Mine

The mine was opened one final time in 1953. The adit had collapsed, and so only the shaft was used with a newly constructed wooden tipple. Because the railroad was gone, ore was transported out by truck. The mine only remained in use until 1956 when it was finally closed for good. The mine remained relatively intact until 1989 when it was capped with concrete and then filled over.
The wooden tipple remained standing until 2003 when it too collapsed.
When we arrived, just beyond the sign was where we found the remains of the tipple. Jason and I went over to it and looked around through it's wreckage with hopes of seeing a mine hole, but there was nothing left and I did not yet know the information provided above.

Baby Grand

There were other building remnants around the area as well as some other random junk. There was a busted up old Baby Grand Piano sitting out in the area beyond the mine as well. I couldn't figure out why anyone would dump off a piano like that.
We continued along the trail from this point and I tried to watch my phone GPS closely.
The trail continues to the east a bit, out toward Meriden which was another iron works area, but we didn't want to go that far on this hike. I figured if time was getting close, we could loop the hike back to Split Rock, but we ended up doing pretty well making up for time.

Ruins at Beach Glen

The trail weaved back and forth and then seemed to be gaining elevation in the hills heading to the east. We were supposed to take a spur trail that went ot the south to a parking area off of Meridan Road, but I didn't see the turn. It turned out not to be blazed southbound from the main trail, only northbound. We had to backtrack a bit, and made our way to where I thought it should have broke off, and followed old mining roads and grades out to Meridan Road. Sure enough, there were blazes facing northbound only. We turned to the left on Meridan Road for just a short while.

Mirror shot on Meridan Road

We followed Meridan Road just a little bit to the east, and then turned right on Old Beach Glen Road. We cut a corner through a little business and then headed along the road across Beaver Brook, which was the same one that flowed from Split Rock Furnace.

The Pines

Just after the crossing, there was an unmarked trail shown on my trail conference map into county park land to the right. The area was called "The Pines".
The trail led us through a swath of Eastern White Pine close to a wetland on the Beaver Brook, heading to it's confluence with Hibernia Brook. These trees used to be even more prevalant I was told up until Sandy when many of them were blown down. There was now a meadow to the south of the trail.
We followed the trail for a while, until we got to a green blazed official trail. Instead of following that to the right, we turned left, which brought us to the abandoned old Ford Road.

The Pines

The road was still paved and quite clear and nice. We turned left to follow it to the east. I should have looked at the map a bit more closely, because it sort of threw me off. I didn't see the red blazed trail that was supposed to be near the intersection, and so we continued to the east too far. I could see where the road reached Old Beach Glen Road and I knew we went too far. We'd have to turn back and look around more.
We headed back to a little brook crossing of the road, and tried to find the red blazes I was looking for. There was one on a tree on the road, but nothing leading into woods where the map was saying it should be.They were red tags rather than paint blazes, so some hunter probably removed them to keep people from walking near their stands.

Old Ford Road

There was one unblazed path going into the woods, on the east side of the creek, which was where this trail was supposed to go. I had gone in to look at the site before we went the wrong way because there was a masonry ruin of an old building. I didn't think that could have been it without blazes. The map showed the trail going right along the brook, so I knew it must have been the right way.
We passed the old foundation on the right, and then ascended via steps that used to be part of the building to the east slope above the little tributary. We then started seeing occasional red blazes.

Ruins in Jonathan's Woods

We continued on the trail, which soon picked up a sort of old woods road. Another woods road went off to the right, followed by a second one that was now blazed (I forget what color) leading to a development. When my map was printed, none of that was marked yet. It didn't go where we wanted to be anyway, so we just continued along the red blazed trail.
The entire area is known as Jonathan's Woods. The Jonathan this is named for is said to have been the last known Native American to live in the area. Jonathan and his wife lived in near seclusion out in these woods, and it's said that his grave exists on the property, unmarked and known only to few.

It's also said that Bald Hill, which is just south of the main red trail, was a strategic site for George Washington's Infantry looking for Red Coats during the Revolutionary War. Red Coats were said to have been raiding houses in the area following a battle at Springfield.
We took the trail to the east a bit, which skirted the Bald Knob on it's north side, and there was yet another trail that was marked heading to the south. I almost led the group down it, but I was too uncertain of where it would go, and we needed to be certain to make better time, so I turned back.

Mirror shot!

We continued on the red blazed trail to the east until we got to a blue trail heading up hill to the right. We turned here, reached the top, and intersected with a yellow blazed trail. My map showed this going only to the left, but it now went down and to the right also, on what my map was showing as an unmarked trail. We opted to follow that down hill after a short break.
This trail got us to a green trail, where I wanted to be, and we took it to the right. It led us out to Van Drive above Cedar Lake, next to a private home gate. We were able to turn left here on the road, and headed up hill above Cedar Lake to Florence Ave, which took us along a bit of another ridge.

Cedar Lake

While walking the road section, I tried to find the best way to get us to Muriel Hepner Park. We headed down hill on Florence, and two young girls loading stuff from a car to their house asked us what we were doing. I explained the hike, and then asked them if they knew of a way of walking into Muriel Hepner Park from this end. My map didn't show any connecting trails. The closer of the two girls told us to look for the Cedar Lake Community Club, and then go behind it to the swing sets. She said there was a trail that went into the park from directly behind them. This sounded like it would work out great.

Muriel Hepner Park

We headed down to a right turn on Cedar Lake Road east, which provided us with a quite nice view of Cedar Lake itself.
The lake was originally a natural body of water known as Cranberry Lake, and later Silver Lake, used for ice harvesting in the early days. The development in the area started in 1907 when New Yorkers were wooed to the area with houses at two cents per square foot.
We reached the club house building and walked into the playground behind. I didn't initially see the trail that was referred to, but someone else did, I forget who. Jason and I went bushwhacking on in ahead of everyone else, and it got a little swampy, but when we got across the narrow outflow from Cedar Lake it was just fine and dry, and we all came upon the trail we were intended to be on.

Morris Canal at Muriel Hepner Park

Jack and Sarah missed the turn and decided to walk the Florence Road to the east, and reconnect with us when we got to Diamond Spring Road.
We followed the trails around the north and west side of the park, and crossed over a driveway. Someone was driving by when we got to where the trail crossed, and slowed to look at the group catiously before continuing to their near home.
We crossed the driveway and descended a bit more, and I could see our next point of interest.
The Morris Canal has been a huge passion of mine for years now, and there was a section in Muriel Hepner Park I had never walked before. It always looked private from the other side, and it was not a through route except for via the trails there alone. I never had a way through, so we always had to skip it while walking through.

Historic image of Peer's Store on Morris Canal

This time, I had a way of incorporating it, so it was kind of a thrill for me to cover more of the historic route I'd never been on. It was great.

Peer's Store today

We could see it through back yards below the trail, and soon the path dipped down through the canal prism and up to the towpath. We were able to follow a lovely section of it all the way from here to Diamond Spring Road.

Lock #9 at Peer's Store

When we reached Diamond Spring Road, directly across was the La Cucina Italian Restaurant. This was originally Peer's Store, a canal store and lock tender's house at Lock #9 East on the Morris Canal.
The house is still in fine shape and retains historic ambiance. Just beyond the store, the canal crossed over the Rockaway River Aqueduct. In recent years, some of the piers to the aqueduct were removed for "flood control" although they really inhibited nothing at all. It made no sense because the flood plain is so wide, there should be no back up of water at all.

Rockaway River

E. C. Peer tended to the lock at the site, and the place remained a general store for many years.
I was going over the history of the site with everyone when a black car started pulling up along us from the south on Diamond Spring Road. I figured it must be a cop wondering what we're doing.
The car pulled into the restaurant parking, and out stepped none other than my old buddy DJ Ray Cordts! Ray had walked this section with us the first time I ever did it back in 2009, and because he knew the area pretty well, was able to hunt us down. I was delighted to hear he planned to finish the remainder of the hike with us!

Rockaway River

He couldn't park at the limited restaurant space, so I let him know where we were going and he was able to go and find a place to park. We unfortunately couldn't follow the canal on through this time. There is no bridge, and it goes to the golf course. Even though it wouldn't be busy, the river would have to be waded and it was too cold for most of the group to be doing that.
We continued up Diamond Spring Road and turned right on River Road. Jack and Sarah reconnected with us there, and we followed it out to Bush Road, which took us across the river and to where DJ Ray was waiting for us.
We did pretty well making up some time, and so Ray would be able to join us for the last five miles back to the Walmart and have just barely enough time to get to an engagement.

Going over the Tourne

We followed Bush Road across the former canal again and then out to Norris Road. McCaffrey Lane leads up into Tourne Park just to the north of there, but we opted to just bushwack straight into the park and hit McCaffrey Lane a bit further up. If we followed that just a short distance further, the red blazed trail parallels that road and we could get over the Tourne more directly and without roads.
That worked out pretty well; we walked just a short bit of McCaffrey Lane, and then the crushed stone surface red trail led us on a rather level route to the east. I had wanted to go up to the Tourne for the view, but we wouldn't have quite enough time. Still, we had a mostly trail route to get over, which made it better.

Descending the Tourne

The red trail came down to the other side of the Tourne Trail, and we opened the gate to a deer enclosure to follow the path through parallel with McCaffrey Lane. The trails were perfect because McCaffrey Lane would have been quite a bit longer, and with more ups and downs.
When the red trail and the path through the enclosure ended, we walked a short bit of McCaffrey Lane, but then were able to turn left onto an orange trail that cut yet another corner and eliminated some up hill on the same road. It took us back out on the road at the end of the park, having avoided this, not very far from the intersection with Powerville Road.

Grace Lord Park entrance

Once we got down to Powerville Road, we crossed almost directly. From here I did a little more creative stuff again.
There was a bank parking area directly across the street, which we skirted to the right. At the end of the lot, we cut into the woods to the left, around a fence, then came out the other side into the back of the King's grocery store. We followed the edge of this lot to the east, then cut to the right when we got to the end of the next lot, and turned to the right onto West Main Street.
I reminisced with Ray about the last time he and I hiked through the area, how we found bags of chips on a sled hill on the south of Tourne Park, and I found a fresh sandwich along side the road in the morning and ate it (it had apparently fallen off of someone's car that had just purchased it).

Boonton Falls

We headed along the street just a little bit to the entrance to Grace Lord Park on the right. We still had enough light to see and appreciate the Boonton Falls, which is the second largest waterfall by volume in the state of New Jersey.

Bridge over the Rockaway River

We went down to a little rock outcrop to have a better look at the falls, and then continued along the trail, which makes it's way across a stone bridge that was associated with the Boonton Ironworks.
The ironworks here date back originally to 1770 when the Ogden family purchased the land and erected slitting and rolling mills for the production of nail rods and iron bars.
The site was further developed with the coming of the Morris Canal. In 1830, under the New Jersey Iron Company, business expanded. In 1833, a charcoal iron furnace was added, followed in 1848 by a coal fired furnace.

Boulder in Grace Lord Park

Production of different materials continued to expand operations, and the arrival of the Morris and Essex Railroad in the 1850s pushed more factory growth.
Business started to decline in 1881, and eventually ceased in 1911, reportedly after a major fire destroyed much of the infrastructure at the site.
We continued to walk east over a bridge across the Rockaway River high above more cascades. Another trail that had been open on the opposite side of the gorge now had a chain link fence blocking it off, with keep out signs. That was kind of sad to see.

Bridge at Boonton Ironworks

On the other side of the bridge, originally associated with the ironworks, we passed a giant boulder and then reached some of the ruins. I believe one of the taller masonry remnants was that of one of the furnaces. Some stone arches, which appeared to be kilns beyond to the north I have been told were actually a railroad bridge associated with the spur from the railroad.
I was inclined to go to the right after passing by some of the ironworks site, to take everyone over the old railroad bridge over the Rockaway River. It's really a pretty cool one, but we didn't have a lot of daylight left, and Ray had to be to a gig in Hackensack a short while after finishing, so I opted to take the easier way out.

The old rail spur

We crossed the old railroad spur tracks, still visible in the road, as we passed by I think the municipal road department area.
I'd walked through here with Ray before, and we climbed a wall to the left of the access road.
Once we got out of the park and into town, we only had about four blocks remaining to get back to the Walmart, so we were almost there.
There was just enough daylight left that I could get another shot of the old Morris Canal Inclined Plane #7 East. I had in the past been mistaken thinking that the plane was now Plane Street. As it turns out, only part of Plane Street is actually sitting on the inclined plane, filled over slightly.

Historic image of Plane #7E

I was informed through an historian that the sleeper stones for the plane were still somewhat in place in the front yard of a house still standing on the plane. When I looked up from below, I could see how exactly it was oriented, with only some road fill covering.

Plane 7E today

We continued from here along Plane Street to Main Street, and then turned to the left on Division Street which led back to the Walmart. I picked up a shopping cart on the way and pushed my pack in it back to the cars at the far end of the lot. We then piled into cars to get back to Split Rock before we got ticketed for being there after dark.
We stopped by a diner on the way back to get a bite to eat after a long day out.

Pete's spike

This really was a great day, with an always underlying theme of old friends and new discoveries. I'd have been very happy to report back to Pete Beck on what a great day we'd had, which I specifically scheduled in honor of him.
As I write this, I have Pete's odd railroad spike from his desk, sitting on my desk in front of me. It's a reminder to me to always appreciate how compelling the oddities of nature and history really are, to keep asking questions, and to keep sharing. The world is a much greater place when we define it in this way.

In Memory of Pete Beck